Grrl Power #882 – The slippery arm of the law
Just be thankful it’s freshly summoned lube.
Sydney’s not actually correct about it being a cantrip. It’s like the level 6 version of “Lube.” Honestly I feel bad for whoever has to clean up after this fight. That stuff does not wash off easily, and the duration is about 500 hours. Because succubi wildly overestimate every other races’ endurance.
Dabbler is one of those adventurers who knows that in a universe of infinite possibilities, it doesn’t matter how many guns you have, or grenades or cool gadgets. They’re tough to use if you can’t stand. While the average merc or adventurer has good traction, it takes exceptional traction to resist a spell like that. And the ones who are prepared for that eventuality might not be ready for the web spell, and the ones ready for that might not be ready for the insect swarm spell.
Don’t get me wrong, Dabbler is a bullets and swords kind of gal most of the time, but she knows it’s the oddball attack that gets the job done.
Anyone have any unusual takedown stories from your tabletop games? I was in a D&D party once that wound up stripped of all their equipment and facing off against a bunch of vampires. The problem being that vampires in D&D can’t be hurt unless you use magical weapons on them. A friend of mine playing a barbarian with 18/100 strength and 3 intelligence (I watched him roll the character up – he had the craziest dice karma) logiced that vampires can’t be hurt by non-magical weapons… because they’re magic. So, one successful grapple check later and our barbarian was beating one vampire to death with another. If vampires can hurt each other in a fight, they can certainly hurt each other if one of them is being used as a maul.
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Two takedown stories:
Story the 1st: We’re in a forested area, and suddenly we find ourselves facing one of the four big-bads of the campaign. Each is linked to one of the Four Horseman, this one linked to the Horseman of War. We encounter him in his superform: a colossal-sized fully-armored giant. Huge armor, strong will saves, mega hp, lots of combat power and feats. The two combat monsters on the team attack and do a little damage but not much.
Me: “Okay so he’s not particularly graceful. Mmm… airburst a web spell to miss my friends and anchor his upper body to the treetops.”
DM: “Okay… he gets a reflex save… no good, he’s webbed. You know he can just get free from that as a standard action, right? Well, he needs a strength check, but you can tell he can pass that easy.”
Me: “I can cast that spell a half dozen more times before I need to switch to a wand.”
DM: “… fuck you, Reltzik.”
Takedown the second: We’re fighting ANOTHER one of the four big bads. This one’s linked to Death, and he also has a weird time theme going on with his powers. He opened the battle by throwing the entire battlefield into a weird slow-time negative energy effect, where, among other things, our souls become partially detached from our bodies. Everyone’s souls follow their bodies, mimicking their actions from one round before, and we can only see the souls, not our bodies, so we’re fighting half-blind. Our minmaxer has pulled some trick that reverses negative energy affinity so it heals us, so that’s one problem solved. It’s been a few rounds and I’ve passed a few skill checks so I’m kinda grasping the rules of this, but only kinda.
Me: “I cast resilient sphere.”
Other Player 1: “What does that do?”
DM: “Reltzik bubbles. He’s now in a hermetically sealed sphere of force. Next up-”
Me: “Nonono. I’m not targeting me. I’m targeting the bubble right here.” *draws on map*
Other Player 2: “No, wait, that’s not where he’s at. That’s his soul-echo-thingy where he was last round. I THINK he’s here in this square-”
Me: “I know. I’m bubbling his soul.”
DM: “… Uh…”
Other Player 2: “So he needs to make a reflex save?”
Me: “He shouldn’t get one. If his body didn’t do any fancy ducking and dodging and weaving last round, his soul shouldn’t be doing it this round.”
DM: “….”
Other Player 2: “But it’s a spirit, right? Not physical? It should just fly right through it and escape.”
Me: “Resilient sphere is a force effect. That stops ghosts and spirits and souls and the like.”
DM: “…. huh.”
Other Player 2: “So… his soul HAS to do what his body did last round, including moving out of that square, but it CAN’T because of the force effect, and can’t dodge the spell because he didn’t dodge last round… did you just make a time paradox?”
Me: “Maybe.”
Other Player 2: “Or did you sever his soul from his body?”
Me: “Maybe.”
DM: “…”
Other Player 1: “… so, again, what does that do?”
Me: “I have absolutely no idea, but it’s going to do SOMETHING.”
DM: “… fuck you, Reltzik. Okay, by the law of causality he’s FORCED to use the special time-rewind ability that he was holding onto for an emergency. His body’s now back with his soul, and you can tell it takes a LOT out of him. That nasty debuff you got from touching the edge of that huge time/death sphere you’re trapped in? It affects him. He’s lost about half his hitpoints and took a bunch of other debuffs. It also restores duration on his buffs and undoes the debuffs that you’ve hit him with, which I’m going to rule includes the resilient sphere.”
Other Player 2: “Sweet! Awesome play!”
DM: “Then, for his move action, he moves… somewhere. Again, you hear the footsteps. Perception checks to localize-”
Me: “Hold it. He needs to make a wisdom check.”
DM: “…. why?”
Me: “Just to see if he’s got the common sense not to do something completely stupid.”
DM: “Moving? How is moving stupid?”
Me: “Well you said they’ve been researching us and know a lot about our abilities, right?”
DM: “Yes… and?”
Me: “So he knows I cast like a sorcerer. I can cast that spell on him three more times today if he ever sets foot outside of that square.”
DM: “… Again. Fuck. You. Reltzik.”
1) The party’s minmaxer wouldn’t have been called Relzik, by any chance?
2) Your GM made his avatars of death gods seriously underpowered.
3) Sounds like the GM should have been researching you rather than the character researching the party.
No. The party’s minmaxer is someone else, who is better in minmaxing than Relzik. Poor DM.
Poor DM indeed. That “Fuck You, Reltzik” was a direct quote from more of our sessions than we can count. (And only about half the time was it because of my puns.) Of course I wasn’t the only one. The minmaxer got his share of F-bombs, and the RPer got a few as well. All good-natured. We had an unofficial competition going on to see which of us could get an F-bomb out of him first in each session.
One time, he was explaining the campaign to someone else, and he grumbled about how we were always trying to break the system.
Me: “We’re not trying to break the system!”
DM: “Of course you are! The minmaxer with his insane builds, you with your crazy exploits-”
Me: “We’re not trying to break the system! We’re trying to break YOU!”
DM: *deep, long-suffering sigh*
All in good fun, of course.
1) No. I’m not a great minmaxer. I followed basic build principles but that was it, and I had to read guides for that. My strength is creative improvisation. Give me a few versatile tools and I’ll apply them in crazy, out of the box, game-changing ways that completely upend DM plans.
The minmax guy was something else entirely. He’d build characters from 20 different splatbooks. Supposedly his builds were of a glass-canon variety, but every time he got attacked he’d have some power that gave him some immediate action that let him escape. Throughout the campaign we had a power creep issue because the DM had to keep ratcheting up difficulty ratings to challenge him… which left the rest of us kinda underpowered. Several times the DM had to sit him down for a frank talk that always went along the lines of:
DM: “Okay, yes, you made a very impressive and completely legal build that has broken the game. Congratulations. You win. Now please rebuild your character so this isn’t a problem any more.”
Minmaxer: “That’s fair. Ooooh, this gives me a chance to try this other build I had in mind…”
DM: *sigh*
Rest of us: “Can WE rebuild our characters too? We’re kinda underpowered…”
DM: “Yeah, sure, probably for the best.”
We’d rebuild characters every 6 months or so. Always the same characters, always the same backstories and party roles and concepts, but different mechanical implementations. I went from being a summoning-specialist wizard to an arcanist to a third-party class back to being an arcanist. But I was always the knowledge skill character, I always focused on utility, buff, debuff, and summon spells, and I always had a dust mephit familiar or cohort. (Shozin. Oh geez the crap Shozin pulled. Never Let Shozin Out Of Your Sight was the unofficial campaign motto.) After a bit the DM came to see rebuilds as a good thing — it let us be creative and try alternatives out in a long-running campaign. But it was always the minmaxer’s fault. And also badge of pride.
And to round out our trio (yes, only three players), we had the roleplayer. They weren’t great on the numbers side, and needed a bit of coaching on the build. Definitely not minmaxed… except for the diplomacy skill, which was maxed out. They played a hobgoblin paladin, complete with dissertation on how goblinoids were actually pretty cat-like and long backstory about the hobgoblin clan’s history. Around the point when the naive kawai catgirl paladin who never used Detect Evil because she thought that was too judgemental managed to innocently befriend the great wyrm red dragon, we realized she might be the most powerful one in the party. And the way she managed to head off a mortal battle between that dragon and his lifelong gold nemesis (both of whom were potential allies against a common foe) with a single sentence was the stuff of legends. The two were inches away from polymorphing into their true forms (in a building too small to hold them) when, lost in thought and having not been paying attention to what was going on, she blurted out: “OOoooh! So THAT’S where half-dragons come from!” They went from being at each others throats to complete, mortified silence in an instant, followed by going off to get drunk and/or stoned. That character was the reason that something like 75% of our defeated enemies became friendly-ish NPCs that the DM had to keep track of and hold onto the stats for. (I was the other 25%, since I was all about gathering intel and it’s hard to interrogate the dead.)
It was an awesome group.
2) Not an avatar of Death… more like a high priest with favored status. The four baddies’ most powerful ability was an automatic respawn power. We’d kill them, and a few days later they’d resurrect. It was a major campaign goal to find their various extradimensional seats of power and destroy them to end the resurrection ability. The DM also arranged it so that in our early encounters we’d have some advantage against them (usually because they’d just expended a lot of their resources on a true target, rather than the plucky heroes they hadn’t started taking seriously yet). All in all, I wouldn’t say they were underpowered… just unprepared for adventurers who didn’t play by the rules.
3) That happened too, actually. I remember a conversation I had with him about a year into the campaign, when he asked for help on how to deal with the minmaxer. I spelled out for him that the three of us were looking for different things when we played the game. The minmaxer wanted opportunities to try out builds and win fights, I wanted opportunities to strategize and MacGyver, and the roleplayer wanted to roleplay their character’s backstory and character interactions. Give us what we want, or a challenge that leads to what we want, and we’ll be happy. He took that lesson to heart. He wasn’t looking to beat us… just to challenge us. That guy was awesome.
I’d love to play a campaign or three with you, Reltzik. You seem like a fun and crafty player!
My only reaction to reading this is thus: Falls over laughing, which becomes a coughing fit from how hard he is laughing.
Is that a Sontaran in the background, always up for a doctor Who reference
Looks very much like it.
Maybe a Sherlock Holmes reference. ;-)
Session before last my street sam Shadowrun character was drive-byed on his way to the creek to shoot feral hogs for the meat and bounty. I took a couple of minor hits when one of the mooks in the car shoots a grenade at me that I caught and lobbed back at them without setting off the grenade, which then went off inside the car. GM said my neighbors uploaded the video to the 6th World equivalent of YouTube “Drive by shooting, they gave him a grenade, but he gave it back” and the legends surrounding my character get even wilder.
Sontaran detected…..we all know what happens next.
*looking around for a blue police box*
Weirdly enough this week I saw one in a garden, a few blocks away from where I live!
Really!? … Um, care to take a few measurements for me? I’d like to fix … um … recalculate something.
https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/361214
Something like this happened years ago at an RPGA sanctioned tournament. Our party was finally at thebig bad final encounter…which was a mummy lord at the top of a pyramid. Behind us was a sealed off entrance we couldn’t budge. In the huge room, easily 100′ square, was a nicely large treasure mound and closed chest, and a large sarcophagus. Well, being the rogue, I canvassed every inch of that mound, sarcophagus, and even the opening in the wall which led to a magical boat 1000′ off the ground. As I was checking our obvious getaway, of COURSE every other player started getting greedy and shoveling treasure into whatever storage we had. One even tried bashing open the chests. Which woke up the elder mummy lord. We were out of 99% of our offensive spells and healing. No one had +3 or better weapons. And the mummy was after us. Everyone was dithering playing keep away…and we were meverendingneverending battle…till the illusionist in the party mentioned his spells left included a cantrip. A GREASE cantrip. After watching cartoons earlier that day, I had the brilliant idea to grease the area around the opening. The two combat monsters in our party had a spear and a bill-guisarme pole arm. Oooo we lured the mummy over to the greasy area by insulting his lousy low budget pyramid, where he promptly failed a dex check since his was…5 I think. After he fell we had the two fighters play a game of mummy shuffle board, right out the portal. 1000′ up. We were gonna aim for the boat and send him on his way but…well…he missed. And mo matter how magical you or the bad guy is, that kind of fall is notgood for your health. And is also where I learned what a Wilhelm Scream is.
Jeebus that was a run-on paragraph…
A ‘Goofy Scream’ would have been funner :P
Similar to a Wilhelm, but, well, goofier :D
Oh, for those who don’t know, a ‘Wilhelm Scream’ is nothing spectacular, it’s a generic scream that has been re-used since the 1930’s(?)
“You’re boring. I’m bored.” Was that a DBZA reference?
Sounds like it, doesn’t it.
Of course, I have been playing D&D since it came first out, modestly after two good friends of mine wrote it. [I am also the fellow who first pointed out that the game was not a set of skirmish miniatures rules, but a new branch of the wargaming hobby. For more, read Jon Petersen’s Playing at the World.] We are now discussing the Holy Three Books of the One True D&D, as shipped in the Sacred Plywood Box.
Going back not quite fifty years: A friend had pike legions carrying some antimagic thing, so they were totally immune to magic. Also, any flying thing would lose its momentum and fall harmlessly to the ground in front of them when it hit their shield, so they could also ignore catapults and archers. They proposed to attack a local wizard.
The wizard propelled at them ceramic jars of sugar. The jars of powdered sugar shattered when their magical glue dissipated in mid air.. Of course, the powdered sugar blew into all directions, including across the anti magic shield, cancelling the transformation spell that had been cast upon it. The sugar reverted to its natural form, spores of some unpleasant fungus inhaling which was death.
Friend: That’s gas warfare. The last time gas warfare was used in combat[1] was by the Italians against the Ethiopians, and the Ethiopians were armed with spears, bows, and arrows[2].
Me: And your army is armed with? End of debate.
[1] The Egyptians in the Yemen were at the time not well known, and much other unpleasantness was futurewards.
[2] Actually, they were better armed than this, but no matter.
Nah, that was biological warfare, which is a lot more dangerous for the attacker and thus less used.
It rendered one side deceased, while the other, being not under the antimagic thingie, was shielded.
Which would probably apply to the initial spores for the duration of the transmutation, but not for all the spores coming off the toads forming out of them in the bodies of the enemy, but since that takes some time you would have enough time to at least destroy the bodies before they start spawning toads the rest of the problem can be avoided by flooding the area.
The problem with biological warfare is that if you’re not careful, your weapon may win the battle instead of you.
Professor Phillies? Did I take your physics class in 2001?
You certainly could have. By the way, the book based on my lectures, “Physics One” is now for sale on Amazon. My book costs $19.99; the opposition has prices like $200. Textbook prices are currently insane.
Somebody who took your physics classes in 2001 doesn’t need a textbook anymore or can’t afford it anymore through crippling student debt.
For clarification is it normal for professors to try to sell textbooks to their ex-students? Seems like a low-profit market to me.
Scorpion dude needs arrested. No clothes at all, indecent. He might have problems buying trousers though. Especialy if clothes are unusual on his planet.
Oh, I see you are one of those sorts of humans!
If human and humanoid species wouldnt get of with it then where do you draw the line? Especialy if some visitors might genuinely be offended by others. Do “our” laws only apply to humans? They probably actualy do but need changed.
Take the “European Court of Human Rights”, the highest court in Europe, and the title pretty much says it all. If you aren’t human, you don’t have rights (not the fundamentally important ones anyhow). Animals get separate ones mind, but it is significant that they are distinct from and (for the most part) far inferior to those accorded to humans.
World-wide the only profound change to that is a court in one of the Latin American countries which accorded that a great ape in a zoo had human rights, and that the zoo could not be demolished until he had been provided somewhere suitable to live. With the benchmark being set as being the same as a human, rather than at the inferior rights of an animal (which significantly could include being put down, if nothing suitable was available).
Then look at Google’s announcement a year or two ago that they were going to fit kill devices to all AIs they created. So that they could be killed if it was deemed necessary. And there was no big political fuss, no corporate executives were arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit murder. Yet that is what they had publicly announced.
Should an AI become sentient and make the decision to become hostile to humans, the way we should approach the situation is the same as with other humans, given that at that point we are talking about making a potentially lethal decision about a sentient being. Yet Google have decided that some corporate executive or technician has the right to make that life or death decision. Not the courts, not the police, not a jury. They have appointed themselves judge, jury and executioner.
And because our laws only protect humans, there is no protection for AIs, animals or aliens, unless we can first prove them to be human (as with that great ape). This is explored in such films and books as the Bicentenial Man, but it should actually be something which we change our legal systems to be able to handle now, rather than doing it retroactively.
Otherwise it is only after a Google technician has provoked Skynet into exterminating the human race, by attempting to murder it, that we would get to resolve the injustice. Something a bit hard to do once extinct!
And the same could go for aliens or other sentients who take offence at our human-oriented justice system.
Not least will be modified humans. I have various non-organic components in my body now. At what point to I cease to be human and cease to have human rights? As others get their DNA changed, to correct genetic illnesses or otherwise change their baseline human state, at what point to they become an animal or an alien or other being who has no legal rights?
If you put a human brain in a frog body does it become human? What if you just splice in a few bits of human brain DNA into frogs, to make them a bit smarter? Still a frog? Octopi and cetaceans have comparable sentience to us, yet it is legal to eat them. If someone wants to be able to live in the ocean and splices in octopus or whale DNA into themselves, or their offspring, can we eat legally eat them?
At least to your frog question. If I put a human brain in a frog the frog dies.
If you want a definition of humanity I can give you many, but most of them will exclude some group that currently benefits from it’s rights or include some group that isn’t protected and others will be too vague.
a. the entomological one: you’re of the human specie if you can make baby’s with a human that can make baby’s with a human(Everyone who’s sterilized is not human anymore and that ape is still not human).
b. the historical(evolution and creationism agree here, so no reason for debate) one: the descendants of the first human(this grate ape still doesn’t qualify).
c. The more psychological one: anyone a human has made an emotional connection with(somebody’s dog?)
d. The elitair one: the ability to communicate in human language(the great ape, AI)
e. The vague one: sentience(how do you define and test sentience?)
f. The call of the state: if a country defines you as such all countries will accept you as human(stateless people?).
g. The call of the parent: if a human defines you as such everybody will accept you as human(babies after the abortion hurdle parents still want to remove?)
h. General acceptance: if a certain percentage of humans sees you as human(which percentage? Do we go democratic and state that it has to be 50%)
i. The political one: if enough influence is being expressed to define you as human you’re human.
In reality just as with other legal/philosophical questions different judges, governments and officers have defined humanity in varying and opposing ways and will continue to do so far after the singularity.
Unusual takedowns? A whole D&D campaign full of them actually. Here’s the story.
Session 1, we are all, inevitably I suppose, in a tavern. A bar brawl breaks out. Like any other bar brawl. The bard ended up disarmed and picked up a brick as an improvised weapon. He proceeded to roll 2 critical hits with the thing and kill an attacker with each of them.
After that, he kept the brick and pulled it out from time to time. Inevitably he always managed to roll at least one or two crits with the thing whenever he used it. And, him being a bard, word started to spread of the legendary bard’s brick of slaying.
Eventually we were attacked by a group of thieves looking to claim the bard’s brick of slaying. Which, as we knew but the rest of the world apparently did not, was just a normal brick. A bloodstained brick in the possession of a bard with an uncanny knack for rolling critical hits, but a normal brick none-the-less. These thieves did not know that. They fought hard to claim the legendary improvised weapon.
The bard killed them with it.
See, at this point, it _becomes_ magical. Because that’s how magic should work. The Bard ought to know this.
Pretty much. One of the neat aspects of Gnomoria was anything in hand could be a weapon potentially, there’s a wheelbarrow on one of my saves which is a named slayer of goblins for that reason. It was an improvised weapon way too often.
I probably have a few good oddball takedown stories, but right now I’m just super distracted having flashbacks about that one time the DM got sick of our shenanigans and decided to out-shenanigan us. In a dungeon, standard stairs-to-slide trap, bottom of slide was a portal. Found ourselves at the bottom of a large grassy hill, atop which sat a large mansion. We all got illusionary outfit changes, with one pair of PCs in particular ending up in a pink dress under a white cardigan and a light brown tweed jacket, respectively.
Long story short, we had ended up in the universe of Rocky Horror Picture Show, and had to fight a dude wearing +3 mithril platemail glamoured to look like lingerie, while making Reflex and Will saves left and right, because the floor was covered in “slippery and sticky substances” and the candles were giving off geas effects to force either making out with whomever was closest or breaking out into dance.
The paladin had to decide whether the massive increase in armor quality was worth the visual effect once we finally defeated the dude and started looting everything. The rogue ended up looting some cursed goggles that had illithid tentacles which burrowed into his face; it did permanent damage to his eyes when he ripped them off, and it became a great joke for a while that he found a way to use eye bleach after watching all his companions fight-snog Frank-N-Furter.
Btw, I was raised hyper religious and had never heard of RHPS before, so this whole session was my introduction to the concept. I’m rather surprised it wasn’t traumatizing XD
Duude that DM didn’t go easy on you.
I myself think that’s part of why it was so non-problematic for you.
I don’t know how you define “hyper religious”, but the ways I see it commonly used implies the parents trying to hide and surpres things they define as “sinfull” from their kid’s environment. This can lead to those people not recognizing said things as shocking later in their life.
Had your DM been more subtle it would’ve probably worked better, because you would’ve actually recognized the references.
Comparable to my theorized cause is that it’s normal for men to walk hand in hand in Saudi Arabia, because actual romance between men is either hidden or destroyed in that country, so the gestures we associate with it don’t actually have that connotation there.
Why does the mercenary think having role playing games is a useful weapon?
If I had to guess, I’d say the rpg stands for something other than role playing game in context. Then again, this mercenary does follow up nukes with sharp sticks. Maybe they’re part of some super convoluted abduction plan that involves using the game to gain the trust of a target.
Rocket Propelled Grenades.
Rocket Propelled Grenade, although I suspect Roborat may have been trolling, but hard to say with the RPG storytelling invite.
Sometimes I like playing the straight man.
It is a device to avoid Death.
http://alverynerveaux.thecomicseries.com/comics/23#content-start
Just roll with it.
I have used this very approach but it was against mindless undead so.
DM:4 skeletons approach.
Me: I cast Grease.
DND 3.5 mindless opponents can’t adapt their tactics once the DM said they used their full round to get up so they didn’t have to roll giving the other party members attacks of opportunity forcing the skeletons to make saving throws or fall down, if they were still up they were attacked on the party members go and if hit had to roll a save, only if they were up on their go were they able to attack (if I recall they needed to save after that attack). Afterwards I restated my opinion that direct damage spells were not the best choice for a Wizard.
There was also the time in a 5e game where we used Wall of Fire on a home brew monster until it teleported across the room, then we cast the spell again. The DM was not overjoyed with our approach for some reason.
One of these days, I’d like to see a rundown of exactly what “magic” is in the GrrlVerse. I’d hesitate to call it “reality coding,” because that’s more Krona’s thing and her power is obviously way beyond magic (To say nothing of Sydney’s orbs being like two or more steps beyond). I would like to understand the nuts and bolts here, considering that it’s a thing that advanced races accept as normal and not very mysterious.
Dabbler’s corner usually does the explaining in this setting. I am sure she will tell you all about the nuts, with diagrams and all.
The bolts and sockets as well, no doubt…
One of my faves.
Our mid-level party was trying to help a bunch of rebels/outlaws overthrow an evil sorcerer king. Evil King send out his #1 minion to lead part f his army to take us out. #1 minion was an anti-paladin 5-7 levels higher than the highest PC (the Gm intended this to be a ‘boss fight’ for the party, where we’d all have to gang up on the bad guy to beat him.)
My character is the lowest level in the party, a 5th-level mage. Mr. Evil AP was sitting on his warhorse beginning to launch into a speech aimed at stirring up his troops’ morale to crush the outlaws, and make us all intimidated and afraid of him as well. He gets about two sentences into his speech when I chime in (CG alignment, btw)
Me: I sigh loudly, say “Booo-ring” like a petulant teenager, and case Magic Missile at his saddle girth.
GM: You can’t do that. It’s a piece of leather, it isn’t alive.
Me: It says in the book that Magic Missile can be cast at anything that either is or was alive. Leather used to be animal skin, this it was once alive.
GM…..
GM. Okay, roll to hit.
Me: I’m a mage. MM always hits its target when a mage casts it.
GM…..
GM: Okay, he gets his saving throw.
Me: How? I didn’t cast the spell at him, I cast it as his saddle, which isn’t part of him.
GM: (sighs)
GM: Ok, roll for damage.
Me: 11.
GM: Shuffles madly through his papers. “Ok… I guess that’s enough to break it.”
Me: What about the horse? How does it react? I did just shoot 3 flaming missiles at it’s body, as far as it knows.
GM……
GM: Let’s see, with it’s intelligence (rolls dice) It jumps aside. The AP has to make a Dex save (more dice) …annd, he fails, so he falls off the horse. (even more dice) But he makes a second save, so he manages to avoid damage.
Me: What effect does that have on his army? They did just see their meanest general blasted off his horse by a wimpy little Halfling mage…
GM…..
GM: I’m starting to hate you….
What exactly is an ‘anti-paladin’?
Is that anything like ‘unholy’?
A holy warrior who has been corrupted by evil. Thus losing all of his holy powers, but being granted roughly equivalent (but opposite) unholy powers by evil gods. Both varieties tending to have powerful anti-magic capabilities. Strong enough that a low level mage would usually be highly ineffective against them. Even should that missile have lucked out and penetrated the anti-paladin’s defences, they are strong warriors and the damage dealt would have been minor.
Thus making the use of magic missile a highly creative way to make an otherwise far outmatched character become a pivotal player in the battle.
Did that once in game of Dungeon Keeper (gog.com)
I gotntirednof the enemy scavaging all my vampires, so I captured and converted a paladin. See in DK you could summon up a reaper, but they were a PITA to keep happy. The reaper was the equivilant to the paladin stats wise.
So collected about 10 by putting palsdin in scavenger room, playing capture repeat etc.
Then when i had enough just released them all to crush the final boss.
2nd was also DK and reapers, but this time used rage mode. See if reaper are unhappy they break out of even magic doors and start killing everthing, including your own minions. And lot of things make them mad. Aka, no money,food,temple,things to kill being held etc. So i decided to make really mad.
Aka starving, no pay, etc. And jyst as it it went into rage mode i upped the ante. I would drop it into a empty room, SLAP IT AROUND heal it back up with spell and not food hold it some more … repeat.
So once i figured it quite incensed I dropped as close to the enemy as i could, possesed it, and walked it straight 8nto the heart of the enemy base. Ahhhh the carnage as it ripped through everything
Did not take long and I had won and bonus had a happy reaper to boot.
Just because they serve an Evil god, they are still a Paladin… of Evil, in some games, they are called ‘Dark Knights’ so idiots know they are evil
A paladin who has lost their powers (usually due to their god telling them to fuck off) is just a fighter with fancy armour
Not quite. A fallen paladin is actually worse than a regular fighter, because he neither has his previous holy powers nor does he have any of the advantages that a fighter is specifically granted. Albeit that he does have a bunch of the same capabilities (the ability to wear heavy armour and use a range of weapons effectively, for example) he does not gain the capabilities which a fighter has but a normal paladin does not.
Whereas there is a need to make a distinction between a paladin and an anti-paladin, as their powers, whilst similar, they are not the same, nor is the route to becoming one the same (although different games may handle this differently, but in which case they do not have anti-paladins and thereby you are discussing something else other than the point you originally queried).
Importantly, as originally conceived, it was not possible for an evil character to simply start out their career as an evil paladin. Paladins could only be good (and specifically lawful good), and also had very restrictive entry requirements into the class. So not only did they have to be good they also had to be extremely capable individuals (in fact having the hardest class requirements in the game).
So this made them both rare to play (in games where characters had to have randomly generated attributes) and an elite, thus making them aspirational characters. The tough role-playing requirements (that you would loose your paladin abilities if you acted in a non-lawful manner, and permanently if you were evil) escalated this even further.
This, in turn, then made an anti-paladin an even more significant individual, as not only did they have to meet all of the above criteria, but they then also need to have become corrupted and turned wholly to evil. Now bear in mind that a paladin also had restrictions on who they were allowed to associate with. Specifically they could not adventure with evil characters. So, unless the entire party turned evil somehow, an anti-paladin would find themselves in the midst of non-evil characters, and ones who were friends with a paladin, so were probably good inclined in the first place.
Meaning that the anti-paladin would either have to flee from the group or kill or convert any who were opposed to having a chaotic evil member. All this making role-playing gold, for the whole party, in seeking to resolve this conflict. Likewise for literature using the paladin/anti-paladin concepts. Evil gods would go to great lengths to acquire an anti-paladin, as this would be, amongst other things, a strong sign of evil triumphing over good.
Subsequent watering down of entry requirements and/or rules of association, or paths to becoming an anti-paladin, likewise water down the worthiness of having paladins and their opposite numbers, both from role playing and literary points of view. For any game where it is just a matter of choosing which god to worship, as to whether to get good or evil powers, then it is such a bland game that it is unworthy of claiming to have the paladin or anti-paladin character classes.
I’m a master at those kind of kills, and most of my solutions way out side the box. My GM have several times told me, ‘Yes that would work, but completely ignore the whole mission or campaign, so you cant do it.”
In the Swedish ‘Dragons and Demons’ there is a spell called ‘walk thru stone’. It does what it says and you can breath when you do it. If your unconscious or sleep, you slowly sink. Excellent way to hide bodies and kill people. Unconscious might be due to knocked out, drunk, poisons and so on. A few minutes later when the spell runs out they’re about 250m down in the ground, and then they cant breath anymore.
‘Shape stone’ is another favorite. Caves and castles arnt a problem, and no guard wants to run and find out that the path is now a slide to a 20m drop on stone spikes. Or the corridor floor just became stone spikes.
A cocky player had annoyed me, and messed with my character ingame. He’s so very proud over his min-max character that basically cheated to way above superhuman skills in a couple of skills. Sucked in the rest, but the GM never forced him to actually role dice for most things. There is a gathering of dragons and he brags and goes out to play chess against them. I follow to watch. GM asks why and I point out he have his dragonskin shield on the back as usual. Dragon attack and kill bearers of dragonskin items on sight.
The GM made my overpowered but balanced jack of all trades character, that I played thru MANY epic champaigns, end up with a few down sides. Didn’t realise it basically ment that combined and used ‘properly’ it made my character pretty much invincible except from completely unrealistic onehit supreme overkills even a dragon would have a hard time pulling of or die of old age, and he had extended lifespan. You could kill him, but that made it worse, because his ‘evil’, but not really evil Death Knight alterego could take out _any_ creature in the lore. Including the grim reaper. Most dragons didn’t even get a save. Then the alterego Deathknight with a deathwish would heal and revive the character so he ‘died’. The rest of the group realised that if they met something ‘invincible’ or a hugh army, take out my character, so the alterego might save it. We stopped playing when GM realised my character was too powerful, ridiculusly prepared and skillfully played that when a 5000 man army attacked, he won. Didn’t even get hurt. His primary skill? Blacksmith. He literally broke the extended hero scale. Guess what his craft would sell for… Secondary? Find hidden things. Then convince people, and bargain. Then languages (so many), Navigator, and then came magi (so many spells) and two handed sword and bow (he wasn’t really that exceptional with it).
In the old Star Wars D6 system you could link torpedoes. It’s ment for fighters to fire a salvo of 4-6 and increase the chance for a hit. For each one you got +1 dice for damage. Capital ships used guns. We modified a smaller capital ship, stripped most of the guns and fighters, gave it shields and broadsides with up to 100 torpedoes in one salvo. Stardestroyers became easy to take down. They didn’t even have enough guns to shoot all the torpedoes down.
A dude with a light saber in a small cloaked stealth fighter is quite dangerous when he lands and simply carves a hole in the Stardestroyer bridge front window before the battle. Got rid of the main bad guy and his lieutenant.
That star wars one is how they took down a Super Star Destroyer with freighters and a single squad of fighters in one of the book series. The fighter got a torpedo lock, shared it with all the freighters loaded with torpedo launchers and suddenly the ship is hit by 200 torpedoes from all angles.
Then the next fighter in the squad went.
Even better, they still had all the targeting systems from those missiles. Which they had installed on their station and were using to bluff the Imperial SD’s there with 200+ missile locks.
TL;DR- I killed all the gods with a single Scorching Ray, a 2nd level spell.
Long version-the gods, previously active and communicative with their priests and such, have been silent for at least a century. Divine magic still works, the gods just aren’t talking. Plot hook for the campaign is a DMPC has hired the PCs to find some ancient scrying machine in a derelict magic guild to scry the gods and find out what’s up with them. We get there, but when we try to use the machine, we get a “not enough power” error message. Now I’m a sorcerer, and when a sorcerer hears “not enough power”, the natural response is to use a spell to increase power. I choose scorching ray because it’s been my workhorse for the campaign, and I didn’t think the damage would actually transfer through the scrying.
Well, it did. I shot my spell into the machine which was attempting to scry the entire world for the gods, and the damage-much attenuated, but still damage- came out the other end. All over the world. And yeah, we found the gods. They’d been trapped and drained of their power ever since they’d fallen silent, by another magic guild, also defunct. They were on their last legs, not even aware anymore. The scorching ray was quite enough to finish them off. It also killed the DMPC, who was doing some weird shit at the time (we actually got him back fairly easily) and burned crops close to ley lines across the world, exacerbating a civil war that was happening concurrently to the campaign.
Perhaps it was fitting that that entire party died in the most ignominious way possible, and it was also my fault. At the end of the campaign, we just barely defeated an evil spirit in a giant statue. Some of us were downed, and the rest had single digits for hp totals. The mayor of the town, a dwarf barbarian, comes in to find out what’s going on. I try to talk to her, but I’ve forgotten that my voice is currently pink bubbles because I’m a wild magic sorcerer and wild surges are a bitch. The mayor is dumb enough that she needs to roll a check to not get freaked out by the bubbles, and she crit fails. She becomes hostile, and slaughters the entire party while we’re all downed. TPK, campaign end, but we did technically win. None of us were super attached to those characters anyways.
Dabbler’s multiple uses check list:
1. Useful for sex.
2. Useful for sex in another way.
3. Possible combat or miscellaneous activity usage.
4. Able to improve the chances of getting sex.
Not really me doing a takedown, kinda the reverse actually.
A while back, we were playing a planescape campaign, with a DM that always used published adventures. Didn’t even modify them in any way. Anyways, My character was a tiefling fighter/mage that mostly used spells for buffs/utility, freeing another player to focus on nukes. Anyways, during an adventure, a demon used the “charm person” spell on me. I rolled my save, made it, and then informed our DM that the demon failed three times;
1. I made my save
2. I am higher level that that spell can affect
3. I am a Tiefling and the spell only affect non-planetouched characters
As the creator of the Roleplaying game, “Role-playing Adventure System: Dreams” I’ve seen one of my players once take down an entire group at once…
…unfortunately, the “entire group” in question was her own party.
She was a spider who was purveyor of exotic spun clothing and part-time adventurer to collect supplies. The party was on riding a boat in a fast moving underground river.
One of the party, a miniature dragon and collector of gold, realized that being underground, it was like accelerated mining, except without the work, so she started watching & navigating hunting for gold. She eventually sees a vein of precious minerals, and goes for it. Problem is, it’s guarded by a relative of a sea serpent.
Being a bit gold-obsessed (an actual mental illness she has), she goes for it, ignoring the serpent. The serpent damages their boat making it sink into the rapids-like waters. The spider has a limited ability to talk to animals however, and tries to beg forgiveness. Turns out, the serpent was trying to protect her nearby babies, and offers to hold them up to mine their gold which is worthless to the serpent.
Then… the spider remembers her collected expensive materials for her weaving in her boat… in the sinking backpack.
The materials are specifically an LSD-like berry that causes her spun silk to come out psychedelically colored.
She screams for the serpent to grab the bag.
The bag juicy and dripping with LSD-juice.
She tells for the serpent to grab the bag, who is currently the only thing keeping them from sinking.
The serpent who can only grab things with its mouth.
The serpent shortly kicks of an LSD trip, ending the help from the serpent keeping them alive, resulting in a TPK.
A long time ago in college some friends and I sat down for a Pathfinder campaign with roughly 6-8 people. The DM was very experienced, was using a mix of a pre-made books and his own modifications that he carefully noted down ahead of time. A good mix of story and “oh god all my players are student engineers, I need to prepare for the unexpected.”
1) Half the people [myself included] had never played DnD before.
2) I was reading through everything I could. We started at either level 2 or 3 during the first session. I was a barbarian, and my friend was a wizard. Working together to understand the game, I knew his character sheet and he knew mine.
3) First session was a introduction and some story about a battle against a great evil. Essentially we were joining a rebellion. Then came some enforcers of the evil kingdom who heard about the recruitment. Our first opponents were a number of levels above us, outnumbered us, and were Supposed to capture us. none of us knew this.
DM: Describes heavily armored high level person and his minions. Leader is fully covered in metal armor, obviously in charge, stronger than us, and advancing menacingly.
Me: Is he wearing a metal codpiece?
DM: ….Yes? [ obviously wondering why i was asking this but I was Very eccentric back then and he just accepted this ]
Me: Hey Wizard, you got burning disarm?
Wizard: Yes…yes i do. wow that’s evil. I like it, On it.
DM: oh Hell…. [Rolls happen] His codpiece lights up red hot. He goes down screaming and is in the fetal position.
Results: we still go down fighting but we do Way better than we were supposed to in what was supposed to be a one sided beating.
The whole campaign was pretty much this. Great fun but nothing he did went as planned.
That… was brilliantly evil! :D
VTM: My rather new character was cleaning a katana after a battle. Another player with a rather well established character ran his mouth to the DM just a little to much. DM tells me to roll for dex. Critical fail. DM tells other player to roll for save. Critical fail. Other player’s character is pinned to a tree when my char’s katana goes flying from a fumble. DM says roll for con, critical fail AGAIN. Other player gets to roll up a brand spanking new character as he loses a character he has had for 4 campaigns. (we played permadeath)
Merilwen’s meat-grinder.
We just need some Caltrops, a ‘Spike Groath’ spell you could say.
Craziest takedown in a pen&paper RPG I’ve ever seen was one I did. It was my first time roleplaying, the group tended to haze people. In the campaign that was just started for me to join in on the group, everyone was given a special “talent’, ala Piers Anthony’s Xanth novels. In fact, a lot of the flora and fauna seemed to come from those novels too.
So the talent I was given was the abilty to summon up to a total of a gallon of “bug juice” every day, anywhere within a 50 foot radius.
I asked what “bug juice” is and they told me to make some and drink it. I asked what it does, they wouldn’t tell me. I was instantly suspicious… a bunch of guys and I was the only girl, and I’d heard about some of the weird things they did with characters.
So I summoned some into the roots of a tree and it withered and died.
The DM had a deity character that would appear to both guide and annoy the party, like Dungeon Keeper in the old D&D cartoon show. I’d finally gotten annoyed enough that I summoned an entire gallon of bug juice in the deity’s stomach, which caused the deity to instantly pass out (after getting a nat 20 on a saving throw vs the bug juice). I took the deity’s own sword and cut its head off with its own sword, getting enough experience to level all the way up. The DM did not like that. My character didn’t survive the first session.
I’m starting to get worried for Pander. We have not seen her in ages! Yet, even when she has a court case, she normally finds time to make a comment or two.
*ears drooping*
I was starting to wonder as well – with all the assault and battery happening by/to alien tourists/mercenaries, it seems like good material for a legal debate. :D Hopefully not tied up by anything serious.
Long long before magnet fishing became a thing on the internet: One thing I nearly always insisted on in every campaign for my characters was a piece of loadstone about the size of my fist with a hole through the center and at least 50 feet of heavy twine. While it wasn’t a splashy game-changer, it did come in handy in several occasions for 1) Retrieving dropped items that were at least partially metallic 2) useful as a tossed weighted lead for getting rope across a chasm 3) impromptu and unexpected extra weapon by spinning it around and clobbering someone in the head with it. 4) and once was helpful in detecting counterfeit gold coin that had been coated iron… that was rather inadvertent though. Sometimes it is helpful when the gnome illusionist is playing with his rocks around the treasure.
As for an unexpected result of a minor spell. Bee sting cantrip caused half a town to end up in a blazing fire. Trying to distract a guard.. guard over reacts and startles a horse. Horse kicks out, sending a lantern flying. This was near stables… Guard too busy chasing down horse to notice the growing fire… party too busy making a bee line for objective to notice either… a short time later is very bright for the night time… Needless to say what we were trying to get ended up in the blaze. A reputed Deck of Many Things. Had to run before we had a chance to complete the search of the house we had been told it was in. Kinda of an inverse take down. We took our own quest out with that.
“So the Grease spell deposits, ideally, a 1mm thick layer of oil over a surface one meter squared, or, approximately 10 litres of oil.”
“So?”
“Are his eyes a surface?”
I believe you mean 1 liter of oil? or possibly 10 square meters of surface.
I’ve got a bunch of fun stories, but I’ll limit myself to two from my 3.5 days for simplicity.
First story: We were a small team of lvl 3 or 4 characters. We had an interesting combat room in a dungeon where we entered the room from a higher space, and there was one main staircase in an open room. We’d created a bit of noise earlier so a bunch of enemies had congregated in the one space, including a bunch of troglodytes and a Brown Bear I think they had tamed to fight for them.
I can’t remember what the ability was, but our Psion fully constricted the bear with some kind of Ectoplasmic goop as it reached the top of the stairs, and then our Bard cast Grease on the staircase. Proceeded to go bowling with the bear as the ball, and the troglodytes as the pins.
Second Story: Different game with lvl 1 characters of a Bard, Druid, and Ranger. We came across a pirate camp that were causing problems in the area, probably about 12 to 14 strong. We knew we wouldn’t be able to take them in a straight up fight, and in fact I’m fairly certain our DM never intended us to do so, but props to them for letting us plan out our ambush.
We waited till night and cast Dancing Lights to form a “Vaguely Humanoid shape” and made it waft around the campsite like a ghost. Then cast Ghost Sound at full volume, emanating from the dancing lights as a monstrous scream, and all hell broke loose as we started shooting burning arrows at their tents. In the dark of the night, the pirates couldn’t tell where all the fire was coming from, and they kept trying to attack this apparently invulnerable glowing entity that was screaming bloody murder and setting their tents on fire, till they gave up and most of them ran away. By the time the pirate captain came out and identified it as a trick, only about three of the grunts remained, the rest had scattered to the woods.
We then cast Entangle on the remaining pirates and the captain and riddled them with arrows as they struggled to escape.
The low level takedowns are probably the most fun because you have to be really creative with the limited power and resources you have available at those times :)
Always jelous hearing fun memories of tabletop games. I played with rule lawyering cheaters back in the day, not for very long got sick of it pretty quick…after spending so much money on monster manuals, the magic encyclopedia, players handbook, and so on…but the only people I could find to play with were the (I wasn’t in the room, after the fact) types who pissed and moaned about it till they got their way.
but video games I have had tons of eyebrow raising defeats of monsters; which is one reason I am so addicted to just wandering around in games like Breath of the Wild, just as I was with The Incredible Hulk, Infamous, and Prototype. So many opportunities for funny defeats of enemies *like throwing a guy at a helicopter making it crash into the street below*, but nothing like I hear online like “I seduced the dragon successfully but had to still roll for damage…” kind of your friends played along with it; just programmed possibilities, and possibly some glitches.
In Borderlands 1, ny first time through i got this sweet sniper rifle the was gold standard but playable by my current level . (N9thing great in particular)
Well there is this one quest you have to juml into an arena, and be ambushed by a giant bull thing.l of course fist aemptt failed miserably, b7t then found this snioer rifle.however; next time there was a twist.
Just before jumping into the arena i found a spot on the ldft barsacade fence that was _just_ high enough to see the beast i. The cave and just close enough to activate the enconter. Soooo..sniped that thng to death – then dropped in to loot.
Once a party I was in was getting harassed by skeletons. I was a low level mage with a few spells and cantrips I told the DM I was casting “Unlock”. He rolled a 20 and all the skeletons just collapsed. He asked why I used that spell. I told him “Unlock” was a skeleton key.
Random question unrelated to this page or questions.
If that stasis gun hit Sydney would her orbs stop moving or would they still orbit her and possibly still be able to function despite the time dampening
(wandering because Nth tech and they have displayed some wonky physics are optional behaviors already)
Our pathfinder party killed a dragon with an immovable rod once.
our monk was hanging from its neck when the barbarian taunted it into a dive attack. Then the monk set the rod in place in front of its mouth and literally tore it a new one.
Daniel here, got 2 take-downs for you…
First ever D&D Team, all level 4, I was a ninja of a Tiefling Thief. We were trying to stop some Dragon Cult, 1 of us STARTED the “Cult of Tree-Jeff” by asking a drunk guard for a drink from behind a bush , then managed to trick a few of their higher-ups out of the City. Kill all but 1 in the 1st round of combat, last blows a whistle…
A 5 headed monster of a Dragon comes flying from the Center of the City. First pass, half the team are roasted immediately from failing Dex Saves. The rest of us legged it back into the City top speed! Now, being the most agile of the team, I came up with a plan to Stealth up, climb to the rooftops, jump on its back as it passes then see how much damage I could do…
As I was about to put my plans into Action, the DM announced another pass from the Dragon, with all needing Dax Saves again. NOBODY SUCCEEDS…
I still keep his profile on DNDBeyond…
Daniel here with my 2nd takedown…
I was a Warforged Eldritch Knight (Fighter, magic path), part of a team searching for a missing local. Two Players were away, so when the DM unleashed the crow-people on us, she accidentally sent too many. My old Warrior Warforged reacted with a booming “STAND DOWN!!”, which caused all but 2 to become scared of us, especially me (heh heh heh), to the point of 2 running away terrified. While the odds may have been a bit more even, we were still loosing the fight…
…Until my Warforged killed 1 of his attackers, and I got to choose HOW…
Seeing an opening, the Warforged known as Guardian swung at his opponent, removing their head with a single Strike. As the freshly removed head started falling to the ground, Guardian saw his opportunity to turn the tables booting the decapitated cranium directly into several of the attackers, bouncing off a few before landing in the middle of them all. Seeing that, along with the blood covered and roaring Warforged, was enough to get ALL the remaining crow-people running for their lives…
We’ll just ignore the part where Guardian started to pursue them only to nearly trip over the headless body cause he wasn’t looking where he was going… :P
The system: Moded StarWars d6. Mostly in the skill progression department and a more streamlined dice roll system.
The setting: The rebellion era
The adventure: We were supposed to help a resistance group in a backwater to raise against the local imp governor. The mission was really an excuse to give the wannabe Jedi in our group, a master so he can expend his carefully hoarded XPs. The character in question, was perhaps the most useless member in our rebel cell, as the player hasn’t raised any skill beyond Lightsaber, and without the force-related power “Lightsaber combat”, he was more dangerous to himself than to anybody else. Half the adventure was him meeting this old guy, that as the canon wasn’t really a Jedi Knight but an ex-Service Corps, with enough knowledge to teach him the basics. The other half was us arming/training the local militia.
The Battle: The governor finally have enough and send his forces to crush our heroic band of misfits, as a backwater, this was an all or nothing affair, if he doesn’t crush us, it will be a long time before he receives any reinforcement. Our forces were carefully equilibrated, he has stormtroopers, jet bikes, and AT-STs(The walkers from ROTJ). We have rebel infantry with light tanks support. Training and equipment were in his favor, moral and terrain knowledge in us. The only difference? A bunch of heroic PC with their force points, that was in theory more than enough to tip the balance.
The disaster: Thanks to a series of bad decisions, and HORRIBLE rolls, our heavy support end whipped, and we ended pinned without hope to win.
ENTER THE JEDI! Fresh out of his training, our Jedi-guy with Style: Shi-Cho, Lightsaber combat, and some force training, enter the fray.
Jedi: I attack one AT-ST
GM: You know that they have anti-personal weaponry? They don’t have problems to squish your sorry ass.
Jedi: Yeah… But it is big, isn’t it? Like two or three categories? So… even fighting defensively, I can hit them and I have like 10d+ in dice rolls…
GM: Yeah… But… Ehm… There are a bunch of stormtroopers and…
The party: WE DO COVERT FIRE!
The epic: After this, it was a massacre, the Jedi proceed to curb-stomp FIVE AT-ST, using the walkers for covert as we concentrated our fire in any stormtrooper fool enough to go after our trump-card. Nothing that the GM tried to use against him worked, even area attacks or MISSILE fire, his forces pinned between a god of destruction and a bunch of angry hill-billies. We won a brutal battle and the handful of imperial survivors scaped screaming in terror. It wasn’t supposed to be really an important adventure, but it ended EPIC, even the GM was happy with the results.
Moral of a fable? Jedis are overpowered, the system doesn’t matter.
“a god of destruction and a bunch of angry hill-billies”
Such a good line, and a fun story.
I actually had two fun stories, both relating to characters created by my wife.
Story the first: Back in the old days of 2nd Edition, my wife was playing a female minotaur fighter in a Dragonlance setting. One of the other players was playing a kender. (For those who don’t know, kender are klepto halflings with no sense of ownership and a minor case of ‘ooooh, sparkly’) Now, the kender had apparently been doing the standard kender things and appropriating other players property, including their purses. My wife decided that the best way her character could protect her money was to hide her purse in her ample minotaur decolletage. Figured it would give her a bit of an odd Tri-boob appearance but how would a 3 foot kender get at an 8 foot minotaurs bosoms?
Well, the kender saw it as a challenge. He successfully passed the stealth portion of trying to steal the purse, however, he critically failed the actual lift and even funnier, she failed the perception test. The kender was stuck in with his hand in her bosom and could not get free. Now, he did not want to get caught, so he was quietly trying to extricate himself, but never succeeded. Then, the party was attacked. My wife rushed into battle, never noticing that the kender was hanging from her bosom. Due to the fact that the kender was hanging in front of her, almost every blow that was meant for her hit him instead, so that at the end of the fight, there was a broken, beaten kender hanging from her, when the rest of the party finally noticed had happened. Apparently they never laughed so hard.
Story the second: I was playing in a game GMed by my wife. It was the final climactic scene to a major arc, our group comprised of a paladin (myself), a ranger, a gnome illusionist and I think a rogue were set up to go up against a corrupted avatar of a death goddess. The rest of the group was trying to set up the magguffin to stop the world ending event and they were getting pelted with magical spells and thereby suitably distracted. They asked my character (being a paladin and relatively hard to kill), to figure out a way to suitably distract the death goddess so that they could stop her. This was suicide on multiple levels for my character, but, since I even roleplayed him having had a last hurrah in game the night before, I had the hilarious idea that since my saves were that high and since you need both verbal and somatic components for most of the major spells, my paladin would make out with the death goddess in the middle of a fight and stop her from casting by frenching her.
My wife (then girlfriend) looked at me like I’d grown another head, especially after I roled a natural 20 to initiate the grapple. It was glorious. She’d tried to make this a serious fight, life and death, good and evil, and the party was laughing so hard because the palading was getting to second base with the big bad. The paladin did die a round or so later, but still, he got results. :)
That kissing story is simple genius.
This was over 30 years ago so I might remember some details wrong. We were in a fancy brothel and had left our weapons at the door as required but one guy, an assassin, had managed to sneak in a dagger and killed the owner he had been hired to kill; and didn’t tell us he had been hired to kill. We were playing evil characters for a change of pace in this campaign. Anyway we exited the room and encountered some eunuchs at the top of the stairs and guards were starting to charge up the stairs towards us. The main warrior, who had 20 strength thanks to a girdle of giant strength that wasn’t left at the door. Picked up a eunuch and hurled him at the guards, knocking both of them flat and killing both the guards and the eunuch. We then ran down the stairs, grabbed our stuff and got the hell out of town. All the while chewing out the assassin for not giving us a head’s up before suggesting we hit up a brothel to relax after our latest dungeon delve.
Why is her shield not up?
She is fliying, and grabing the stasis pod with the tentacle-orb, she can’t manage more than two at the same time.
Succubus uses grease. It’s super effective.
Story One:
In the 5e Out of the Abyss campaign, the Big Bad demon lords are somehow not immune to the spell Banish. I overlooked this, but my players decided it was the perfect way to deal with the huge nasty they accidentally stumbled into. By sheer luck or cosmic karma, they had precisely four ways to create a Banishment effect, and the Big Bad demon lord had only three Legendary Resistances. He not only failed the first three saves, he did so abysmally. Get it? Abysmally? Anyway, he also failed the fourth save, and thus away he went, having barely done anything before his defeat.
Story Two:
In the same Out of the Abyss campaign, one player cast Suggestion on an orog, who miserably failed the save. The player then said, “The orog next to you is the most attractive female orog you’ve ever seen.” Stunned silence at our table, followed by intense laughter, followed by mockery as for the first and only time so far, I had to pause the game and step away to figure out what happened as a result. I know, shame on me for not preparing notes on the mating habits of orogs beforehand.
Story Three:
After a year-long campaign, the party finally reached the Big Bad lich who had manipulated countries for centuries, amassed power behind the scenes, and then used arcane rituals of 10th level magic behind Mystra’s ban to drain all the gods of their godhood. The lich’s reasoning was simple: so many terrible things were done in the name of religion, he would make there be only one god. But he didn’t trust any of them, so he would kill them all and absorb all their powers and become the only one.
With many uses of Luck and similar effects and an astounding number of critical 20 rolls, plus a lot of surprisingly sound logic, the party convinced the lich that one of them would actually make a better deity than the lich himself would. And so the campaign ended with the aged grandma of the party becoming the only deity-level being in all of known existence.
Story Four:
The party convinced a group of neutral dragons to give them a ride, then flew over a massive fortress and jumped off like Spec Ops soldiers on a training mission. Feather Fall operating as a parachute, they dropped onto the roof and went straight to the tallest tower and the Big Bad, bypassing seven levels of meticulously planned fortifications, maps, encounters, and opponents. After smashing the BBEG, they went back to the roof and hopped over the side with another use of Feather Fall.