What's the most cinematic thing one of your character's has ever done?

[nameless]

I've got another self-sacrifice one to tell.

This was in Legend of the 5 Rings, and my character was a Kitsu Sodan-senzo (bsaically, he could see, speak with, and summon ghosts). I was invited to a prestigous festival in the Unicorn lands, in which all castes were allowed to celebrate together around a great bonfire.

The thing that nobody else knew was that the festival was haunted by numerous spirits. One from each unicorn family except for the Moto, as a matter of fact. As time went on, a brash unicorn killed a lower caste farmer, and the mystery became more clear. Basically, the Moto family had an evil ancestor come to wreak havoc hundreds of years ago. Only by a powerful ritual in which a member of each caste (Samurai, Heimin and Hinin) sacrificed their life to banish and imprison the evil spirit. The festival occurs on the same day each year to celebrate the cooperation of all castes and to renew the binding through the harmony. The slaying of the farmer ruined that harmony, and the Moto lord of the castle was aware of what must be done.

He knew the only way to re-imprison the evil spirit was to re-enact the ritual which required the sacrifice of three lives. As the final preparations were made, the evil spirit broke free and began to destroy and corrupt anything it could. It spoke in the gibbering tongue of demons, which only I could understand as a Sodan-senzo. While I resisted its magic, I was still far weaker and unable to hurt such a powerful enemy. I assisted the Moto lord in his preparations, and we found volunteers of each caste who would lay down their lives to save the many. As the last moment, a great wall of flame erupted between the sacrificial ring and the people. The courageous Moto lord jumped through and awaited his two fellows. The virile farmer also leaped through and survived. Unfortunately, the elderly leatherworker was unable to handle the flaming pillar, and nobody else was willing to lay down their life.

In the most dramatic way possible, my haughty, honorable shugenja cast down his sword and broke it under his heel, throwing away all his honor, glory, and social standing. Sacrificing everything he could want in the afterlife, he leaped through the flames, and ended his life as well.

My GM was so impressed with my sacrifice that he not only let me reroll a new character with the same xp total as my last one, but gave me an additional 10 to play with *grin*.

-nameless

 

[Richards]

We ran through this one adventure (in 2E) where an evil wizard had used a feeblemind spell on a centaur druid and hooked him up to his normally horse-drawn wagon. The PCs are chasing after him on horseback, trying to rescue the centaur. Naturally, they don't want to hurt the centaur to get him to stop the wagon, so they decide they're going to ride up alongside it and jump on.

The wagon is covered on top, basically a wooden box on wheels, with the wizard riding up front. The first one to ride within range is the party paladin. He balances up onto the saddle, leaps toward the wagon, hits it...and fails to grab hold. He tumbles to the ground in a heap, rolling over and over, denting his plate armor up pretty good and narrowly avoiding getting run over by the rest of the mounted party. He finally comes to a stop in the ditch...he's out of the picture.

Next up is a female elven mage/thief. She rides up to the wagon, and whether due to her greater Dexterity or lighter armor, she makes the jump successfully...but just barely. Hanging on to the back of the wagon, her body's flung out sideways as the wizard steers the centaur around a bend, but she manages to hold on. She also manages to pick the locked door at the back of the wagon, and stagger inside.

Meanwhile, the party fighter pulls up alongside the wagon, but he saw the heavily-armored paladin fail his jump and isn't too keen on following in his footsteps. He decides to remain mounted and try to get in a few blows with his sword from where he is.

Inside the wagon, the mage/thief's having a hard time keeping her balance - the wagon is jostling back and forth as it barrels down the forest path, the wizard flogging the centaur on to greater and greater speeds - but she makes her way up to the front of the wagon, opens a small shutter leading to the driver's seat, and then does her best to backstab the evil wizard while being jostled from side to side. Her "window" to the wizard is only about 6 inches wide, and the bumping of the wagon throws off her aim. Her sword hits the wood on the side of the window.

In the meantime, the wizard's managed to blind the fighter who's pulled up beside him with a glitterdust spell. Unable to see, he slows his mount to a halt and waits for the rest of the party to come find him and cure him up. He's now out of the picture as well. It's all up to the mage/thief.

Her second attempt misses as well, but now the wizard is aware of her presence. He glances back over his shoulder, sees a figure in his wagon and the glint of a weapon and fires a sleep spell her way.

He had no way of knowing she was an elf. Naturally, the spell had no effect on her.

The third time, she finds her mark, and her blade stabs into his back. He slumps into the seat, dropping the reins. Unable to reach the reins through the narrow opening of the window, the elf now has to go all the way to the back of the unguided wagon, exit through the rear door, and crawl over the top to reach the front. Many Dexterity checks later, she's made it - she grabs the reins, pulls the dazed centaur to a stop, deals a finishing blow to the unconscious wizard, and goes back to gather up the rest of her party.

We haven't had a cool chase scene like that since.

Johnathan

 

[Dalamar]

This was back when the 3E PsiHB had just come out, my first psion (savant). 2nd level.

The party, consisting of a dwarven fighter, elven (IIRC) fighter/rogue, halfling rogue and a human psion (me), had been almost completely depleted of HP (except for me as I had stayed in the background). We are about to set camp when an ogre attacks us.
Due to unskillful playing, the halfling goes down first, at -2 I think. She is quickly followed by the elf a round or two later, reaching two negatives further than the unstabilized halfling. A round or two further, the dwarf goes down too.
All the time, I had been firing finger of fires at it, missing badly. The rest of the party looks at me and are already starting to think their next characters. "You need to kill the ogre and stabilize three characters, first of which will die in two rounds. Not a chance."

Well, thinking I have nothing to lose, I decide to throw my short spear at it with my amazing total of +2. I hit just barely. Rolling damage... it goes to -1! I use my move-action to move next to the elf.
Come next round, I used an untrained heal check with my +1 Wis modifier and made the check by 1, leaving the elf at -9. Next round I move over the halfling to use heal on her on the next round. And I make it again, barely, she's at -9 too.

I start treating the dwarf as soon as I can, but keep missing the rolls. Two rounds, two failures and the dwarf is up for his last stabilization roll or die. And a success. We were darn surprised of our survival. And of course I boasted (OoC) for quite a while about me saving us.

-------

Same party, 2 levels later. We are fighting hobgoblins in some underground complex. We manage quite well, except the the dwarf gets pushed over the ledge of a 60ft fall to 10ft of water total of 70ft). We quickly dispose of the remaining hobos and pull out the rope that the elf has... only 50ft.
The dwarf had sunken to the bottom, caused by him carrying almost half his weight in equipment. But thanks to his constitution, he's able to hold his breath for a while.
We have an idea and look up our character sheets: the elf's and my height adds up to somewhere around 13ft!
So, we attach the rope and climb down. When we reach the end of the rope, the elf climbs me down so he's holding my legs, his legs dangling in the water. The dwarf makes an amazingly good jump roll and a climb roll, and manages to catch the elf's legs.
We survived from that, but I'm thinking of how much we actually had to bend the rules to accomplish it.

 

[Stalker0]

In the last adventure of one campaign, the party was defending this town against this huge army of the undead.

We spent pratically a whole adventure planning out how to handle them.

My bard Nadesico was led to a room by the elven queen of the town, who turned out to be a vampire. She turned me, but I was high enough level to become a vampire as well.

I was bound under her, and took out some of the key npcs. Then, the ancient bronze dragon "The Bronze" that we had worked with before and that Nadesico had had "relations" with found out about the transformation. After a half- hour of intense roleplaying and some awesome bluff and diplomacy checks, I convinced the Bronze to join my side!! I turned him, and made him a shadow dragon that served me. I was so happy that I decided to sing. I rolled a perform check and rolled a perfect 20. With my godly perform bonus, my Dm decided that the dark lord of the Vampires came down to hear me sing. He decided that I was much stronger than the Elven Queen, and broke her hold over me. I had the Bronze kill her, and therefore took over her entire Vampire army. I then proceeded to attempt to hunt down the rest of the party. I turned one of them, turning him into a Death Knight. However, in a big fight with the party he got killed and the party escaped.

The ending of the campaign was a picture of me sitting in a throne watching over the horizon as this huge undead army approached me. Then a large explosion went off (one of our character's planted a magical "bomb") that took out half of their army. My vampires moved forward, and I released a haunting song (I picked up requiem when I leveled, which occured in the middle of this). My vampire warriors were inspired of courage and greatness and charged. The two armies clashed and my Dm closed with, "And you win"

Vampire Bards kick ass

 

[Azzemmell]

This happened not too long ago in the game I currently DM.

The PCs are making a nightime raid on a manor house to rescue a friend and mess things up; they are found out and melee insues. The baddies unknowingly run past two hiding PCs and descend some stairs to fight the raging barbarian PC in the cellar.
One of the two hiding PCs, a halfling shaman (who has aspirations of becoming a monk) charged from his hiding place, leapt from the top of the stairs(feet- first) and landed a solid hit on the baddy standing near the bottom of the stairs. As the enemy saw him coming he had time to brace for the blow, keeping them both from tumbling down the stairs, but the baddie's torch flies straight into the air, he stumbles down three steps, the halfling backflipped off of the enemie's chest, lands perfectly and holds his hand out... catching the torch. NINJA!!

haha, it was beautifull, so were the three very high rolls he managed.

In another game I was running, a PC was being chased up the side of a tall building while climbing a rope. The pursuer was climbing the same rope. Upon reaching the top, the PC gets a good hold on the rope, cuts it behind her, leaps off the roof (looping the rope around a ... can't remember the name now, it's the cover on top of a castle wall... damn, can't remember, anyway archers use them for cover and fire from between them). Her momentum carries her speeding towards the baddy, whom she kicks off the rope sending him to his death, and catches the other end of the rope and slows her descent, barely avoiding splatting on the cobblestones below.

Some amazing rolls.

I have some stories from amazingly BAD rolls.. but, another time...

 

[Richards]

(looping the rope around a ... can't remember the name now, it's the cover on top of a castle wall... damn, can't remember, anyway archers use them for cover and fire from between them).

Battlements?

Johnathan

 

[Andrew D. Gable]

Most cinematic was by an NPC, a cohort of one the PCs. The PCs were having quite a time of a battle against a wyvern (much tougher IMC, gaining age categories). She (the cohort) had been stung by the wyrm, and as her last action before the wyvern's poison claimed her life, hurled her battle axe through the air and scored a critical - smacking the wyvern squarely between the eyes and felling it. Would have been a great movie scene.

 

[Roland Delacroix]

1e/2e game. I was playing a LE monk. Months ago I had put on these cursed Ruby Slippers that I couldn't take off. They let me walk on any liquid, but looked sooooo lame with my beautifull silk kimono. Months (real time) later:

My party is traveling in a convoy of 3 galleons on the high seas. A terrible storm has come out of nowhere and we are in danger of being smashed to splinters by the several hundred foot waves. Everyone is below decks puking except for a few critical seamen, me, the party elf wiz and the cavalier. Suddenly, a portal opens on the heaving deck.

Out steps a 12' tall demon-woman, wearing nothing but a gold necklace and brass bracelets on all 6 of her arms! She begins to take the ship apart, smashing wood to pieces with her fists, as the party slides all over the wet, churning deck. We yell for our friends but don't stand a chance to be heard over the storm. The seamen try to stop her but get thrown overboard like wet rats. I throw chunks of wood at her and pose meanacingly, trying to get her to fight me instead destroying the ship. She approaches, I grapple her, and pull her over the side of the ship!

She sinks into the sea as I stand, safe, on top of the heaving sea! One monent the ship is hundreds of feet above me, seconds later hudreds of feet below. I make my way back to the ship through the driving rain when 4 hands grab my legs! The demon-bitch pulls herself up, then casts some sort of water-walk spell. At this point the Mortal Combat music starts as we joint in a massive kung-fu beat down on the roiling, storm driven sea. My allies yell "Finish her!" from the deck of the ship. Lightning arched down, striking a ship once, but noone could tell the smashing thunder from the sound of our massive blows.

Unfortunatly for this kali wanna-be i was quite proficient with Imobilizing Hold. She got in some good licks, but after I disabled all 6 of her arms all she could do was gibber while I slowly snapped her neck.

 

[Kai Lord]

At this point the Mortal Combat music starts as we joint in a massive kung-fu beat down on the roiling, storm driven sea. My allies yell "Finish her!" from the deck of the ship. Lightning arched down, striking a ship once, but noone could tell the smashing thunder from the sound of our massive blows.

Unfortunatly for this kali wanna-be i was quite proficient with Imobilizing Hold. She got in some good licks, but after I disabled all 6 of her arms all she could do was gibber while I slowly snapped her neck.

Flawless victory....

 

[justinsluder]

I'd have to say that my most "cinematic" event would have to be the time I set fire to half of a city just to watch it burn. I was playing a multiclass psion/psychic warrior trying to become a pyrokineticist.

Anyways, that's my story.

- Justin Sluder