Your Crowning Moments of Awesome

[Rackhir]

There's a fascinating website called www.TVtropes.org. Which I warn you is an endless rabbit hole you can vanish into. It's basically devoted to deconstructing and categorizing all of the plot elements and twists in movies, tv shows and even real life.

One particular "Trope" is The Crowning Moment Of Awesome. Which is basically that moment when a character does something iconic or epic.

One of my favorites from Anime for example is in the movie "Char's Counter Attack". The bad guy has been beaten, but his plan to drop a huge asteroid on earth has basically succeeded. At that point, the hero essentially says "Hell NO!" and goes to try and stop the asteroid by himself with his (relatively) tiny-giant Robot. It's such a magnificently futile gesture that even the enemy soldiers, who mere moments ago, were trying to make sure it hit the earth, join in trying to stop it. Throwing away their lives in the attempt.

This isn't exactly actually the clip, it's from a japanese mashup game that combines a couple of dozen different shows, but it has basically the same things happening.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kWKWx_UsBo[/ame]

Now, moments like this are part and parcel of D&D since you are (hopefully) playing heroes. The first one that really impressed me from a SH was Nwm single handedly taking on and destroying an entire army in Sepulchrave's Tales of Wyre (which has a number of Crowning Moments of Awesome).

So what are your Crowning Moments of Awesome? Or Favorites from Story Hours?

 

[Halivar]

The setting: The Seventh Layer of Hell, in the citadel of Black Bulvaie, a blackguard of indeterminate level (I never did find out) with a sentient "evil unholy avenger".

The backstory: My character (a Ftr10/planar champion 6 from MotP), in a one-on-one session outside the group, has been captured while trying to get his hands on a sentient holy avenger to give another party member as a birthday present. The character's and the player's Wisdom scores are pretty low.

Having personally cut-down the citadel's half-dragon guards and many of its draconic guardians, Black Bulvaie decides to replenish his guards by way of my own character's stock. The humiliation factor for my character (and for me) is pretty high, as my defiant monologue is ignored and cut short, and my character is... for lack of a better term... raped by some dragons. (ANGER.... RISING.... CAN'T.... CONTROL....)

The next session, the rest of the party springs me (and calls me an idiot), and we march off to face Black Bulvaie in his inner sanctum.

THE CROWNING MOMENT OF AWESOME:
DM: Black Bulvaie stands there, with his shimmering black blade. "Fools," he says, "Tiamat will--"
Me: I run up and sunder his blade.
DM: What? Hold on, wait a second.
Me: No. I'm letting him finish his monologue. I'm running up and sundering his weapon.
DM: Huh? Oh, well, roll initiative.
Me: 27.
DM: *scratches head* Umm... you're sundering it? How does that even work?
*Everyone looks up a never-before-used rule*
DM: Alright, now you know this things got bonuses out the butt right?
Me: Ok... *rolls dice* will a 45 hit it?
DM: *rolls eyes* Yes. Roll for damage.
Me: *rolls dice* *adds bonuses for 5 minutes* Over 150 damage. How much do I need?
DM: *slaps face*
Me: Hey, unarmed attacks provoke, right?

It is my Crowning D&D Moment of Awesome. My character comes back from humiliation and pwns the BBEG before the first round of combat.

 

[Vayden]

Heh. This is gonna take a bit to set the scene.

The ruined city lies at the base of the volcano - a wall circles the volcano, dozens of miles long, warded by magic and patrolled by an order of holy knights. Unlike most city walls, this one faces in - the paladins guard against the resurgence of the evil volcano god, imprisoned in the ruins of his empire's capitol by Dawn God centuries ago, after the high priestess of the evil faith turned upon the Volcano God.

Within the ruined city, skeletons and other, fouler undead shamble mindlessly beneath the light of the crescent moon. Somewhere in the center of the city, near the old temple, the sound of battle rages.

In the inner sanctum of the temple, a barbarian, cleric and wizard covered in wounds stand panting over the corpse of young dragon, while the ranger hurriedly clambers up the 30 foot tall statue of the Volcano God, a jeweled cup full of blood balanced in one hand.

The barred doors to the inner sanctum smash open - the centuries dead high priestess, now a powerful lich, stands amid a battleground, dead demons and undead everywhere, her pet Marilith at her side. She points at the adventurers and screams "Stop!"

Ignoring her, the ranger lifts the chalice to the statue's lips and pours - the blood of a goddess runs down the statues throat, and stone cracks and falls away. The Volcano God, freed from his imprisonment by his last loyal cultists, looks down at his former high priestess and says four words - "I AM MOST DISPLEASED" - outside, the mountain roars to life for the first time in centuries, sending a flood of lava and burning ash pouring down on the heads of the paladins.

And that's the story of how our party resurrected our Evil god. For those interested, I was the barbarian.

 

[Mallus]

I'm guessing nothing from the CITY campaign/Chronicle of Burne (et al) belongs in this thread, eh Rackhir?

 

[Halivar]

I have another example... this one heavily relying (unintentionally) on a "Checkhov's Gun" (look it up on the same site).

It's a sci-fi game. My previous character in the campaign was a pilot. He was rather useless in combat, so my response to every danger was "I hit it with the ship." It turned into a running gag. Once I crashed, and everyone said I'd finally made good on my favorite battle tactic.

That character walks out, and in walks a much more serious character, who becomes the ship's captain.

The "Checkhov's Gun": at the beginning of the campaign, our characters are stationed at a scientific station on a remote planet, where a scientist is creating something called the "Eigen Drive", which will speed FTL travel. The problem: every time he tries to turn it on, it blows up whatever planet it's on. Before we can test it, pan-galactic kerfluffle forces us to flee from an imperial armada. We have the scientist pack up his gear and his prototype on our capital ship and we run off into the campaign proper.

Flash forward one year of real time, final session of the campaign: An unstoppable alien force is destroying planet after planet, and our ship is the last defense for a helpless planet.

Our players bungle everything, and we expend all of our munitions. Half the party is dead, and our shields are gone. It's looking like a TPK. I give the order to abandon ship (which the other players were, in my opinion, overeager to oblige). I stay behind at the helm of the ship.

Me: I hit it with the ship.
*General laughter and applause from the group as I resurrect my old gag.*
DM: You *do* know their ship is the size of the moon, right? They won't even notice you smashing yourself against it.
Me: I know.
DM: Ok... you start speeding torward the enemy vessel...
Me: Let me know when I'm right about to hit it.
DM: Why?
Me: I'm turning on the Eigen Drive prototype we've had in our hold since the first session.

It's good to revisit a game world with new characters, and finding statues of your previous character all over the place.

 

[Rackhir]

I'm guessing nothing from the CITY campaign/Chronicle of Burne (et al) belongs in this thread, eh Rackhir?

Kenji has at least one. Atlatl definitely at least one or two. Perhaps the druid intimidating that guy with a ball of string. I'm not sure Rackhir or Burne have really had one (aside from Burne's players write ups being a CMOA in their own right they're so funny).

I figured I'd let others put up their CMOAs first.

What would you consider to be the CMOAs from the campaign?

 

[Mallus]

What would you consider to be the CMOAs from the campaign?

I'll have to think on that... certainly some of Atlatl's recent imperiling of the cosmos just by being Atlatl.

As for Rackhir, feeding an elixir of swimming to his armor-plated construct gryphon and then riding it in pursuit of enemies who were escaping underwater in their submarine was pretty awesome, even though he only managed to badly damage their control fins...

 

[Terwox]

Mostin discovering timestop, and what Murmurr said to Eadric in my signature. (Perhaps not the same, but that resonated as character and story defining for me.)

 

[Vorput]

Mostin discovering timestop, and what Murmurr said to Eadric in my signature. (Perhaps not the same, but that resonated as character and story defining for me.)

Agree on both! Sep's story hour has them all over.

 

[SSquirrel]

Well a D&D moment I can think of was helping a friend playtest one evening. He had created some characters for us and I had a Dwarven Fighter/Cleric who had specialized himself into his Battleaxe. He was 5th level I think and only 2 or 3 levels of Cleric so I played him as a very devout warrior, deep in prayer while the rest of the group was getting situated on the gigantic ship we were on. The ship was literally several hundred feet high to the deck (don't ask me not my adventure) and we got attacked by giant flying wasps or some such. They start eating holes in the boat, attacking people etc. I pick up my axe and challenge one of them, charging in, swinging for blood.

I rolled a 1.

DM rolled for which direction the axe flew from my hands. Right out the hole in the side of the ship. A couple of our group ran into the room to help me fight in time to see my precious axe disappear. I yelled "NOOOOO!" and dove after it. Several rounds of me investigating falling damage while they all fought, casting Prot from Elements, etc. I survived the fall by about 6 HP. A couple of us were sick during all this so that session ended and we never picked it back up, so I never got to play him more. He was a great one shot tho