D&D Stories
- spiderwrangler
- Game Master
- Posts: 21091
D&D Stories
Thought I'd start a thread as a place for folks to tell the most memorable, amusing, bonkers, ridiculous or just plain interesting tales from D&D (or other) campaigns. Feel free to share past experiences!
I'll get things started with what happened at tonight's session.
It's a 5e setting with custom races, I'm playing a 10 ft tall gatorman barbarian. Up to now, the core party has been me, a tigerfolk battle master fighter, and a magic mummy gun mage (homebrew class and race). We are all very much melee and ranged physical damage with a few additional magical bits of damage, but no casters in the group. Tonight, we had two new folks to the group join us, one playing a bard, and the other a wizard.
We (the original trio) had been tracking down some dino-lizard folk that had captured a paladin of some import, and met up with the two new guys, the last remnants of a similar squad of mercenaries tasked with cleaning up the area. They joined us for the time being, since we knew the way back to base camp and promised to lead them there after our job was done.
Eventually we follow the trail to a camp, enclosed by a 20 ft palisade wall. My guy has been collecting weapons, and is a bit of a walking arsenal (1 great axe, 1 javelin, 2 hand axes, a gauntlet that adds fire damage to unarmed and melee attacks, as well as allowing the casting of firebolt, a Trident of Fish Command, a Fae Dagger that does extra damage on a crit, as well as a natural bite attack), who in addition to the weapons he's packratted, has picked up what was a belt harness with a 10 ft retractable chain with a boarding hook on the end. This has been strapped to my arm, which allows me to hook and drag folks to me. Well... with a 10 ft character with a 10 ft chain vs the lookout in the tower at the top of a 20 ft wall, I had a pretty good plan of stealthing to the base of the tower, letting the others draw his attention enough for him to move to the edge of the tower, then hooking and dragging him down...
That is, until the wizard casts enlarge on my barbarian... doubling him in every dimension and multiplying his weight by 8 (~6400 lbs?). Sooo... instead, I'm now the height of the palisade, so I grab the guard by the face and yank him out of the tower as the tiger fighter uses an amulet to go invisible and climb the wall on the other side. She pounces on a second guard as I move to the gate... and punch my fist, still holding the guard, through the gate (I did something nasty like 20+ damage to the gate on a punch). The guy is still dangling from my hand, and tries stabbing me a few times, but by that point I'm raging. The bard scrambles up the palisade to the tower and opens the gates for me. I stride through, punching the first guard down into the second on my way to the shaman, eventually switching to a two handed grasp of the legs of an improvised weapon/guard (meat flail?), recklessly slamming him down on the shaman for 1d4+4+2+1d6+2+1d4+1d4 damage (improvised+STR+rage+radiant for zealot path+enlarged damage+racial damage when using two handed). The guy I was using as a weapon is pulp, so next turn I take the greataxe to the shaman, dealing 27 damage and breaking his heat metal on the fighter.
The other guys were all doing stuff the whole time too, but true to the barbarian nature, I got caught up in the excitement of being a 20ft tall gatorman punching people through walls and using them to bludgeon one another to really be able to describe in detail what they did. I think the bard was fighting off a swarm of poisonous snakes that almost killed him, and the wizard was keeping concentration on me and firebolting the snake swarm.
So... what stories do you have?
I'll get things started with what happened at tonight's session.
It's a 5e setting with custom races, I'm playing a 10 ft tall gatorman barbarian. Up to now, the core party has been me, a tigerfolk battle master fighter, and a magic mummy gun mage (homebrew class and race). We are all very much melee and ranged physical damage with a few additional magical bits of damage, but no casters in the group. Tonight, we had two new folks to the group join us, one playing a bard, and the other a wizard.
We (the original trio) had been tracking down some dino-lizard folk that had captured a paladin of some import, and met up with the two new guys, the last remnants of a similar squad of mercenaries tasked with cleaning up the area. They joined us for the time being, since we knew the way back to base camp and promised to lead them there after our job was done.
Eventually we follow the trail to a camp, enclosed by a 20 ft palisade wall. My guy has been collecting weapons, and is a bit of a walking arsenal (1 great axe, 1 javelin, 2 hand axes, a gauntlet that adds fire damage to unarmed and melee attacks, as well as allowing the casting of firebolt, a Trident of Fish Command, a Fae Dagger that does extra damage on a crit, as well as a natural bite attack), who in addition to the weapons he's packratted, has picked up what was a belt harness with a 10 ft retractable chain with a boarding hook on the end. This has been strapped to my arm, which allows me to hook and drag folks to me. Well... with a 10 ft character with a 10 ft chain vs the lookout in the tower at the top of a 20 ft wall, I had a pretty good plan of stealthing to the base of the tower, letting the others draw his attention enough for him to move to the edge of the tower, then hooking and dragging him down...
That is, until the wizard casts enlarge on my barbarian... doubling him in every dimension and multiplying his weight by 8 (~6400 lbs?). Sooo... instead, I'm now the height of the palisade, so I grab the guard by the face and yank him out of the tower as the tiger fighter uses an amulet to go invisible and climb the wall on the other side. She pounces on a second guard as I move to the gate... and punch my fist, still holding the guard, through the gate (I did something nasty like 20+ damage to the gate on a punch). The guy is still dangling from my hand, and tries stabbing me a few times, but by that point I'm raging. The bard scrambles up the palisade to the tower and opens the gates for me. I stride through, punching the first guard down into the second on my way to the shaman, eventually switching to a two handed grasp of the legs of an improvised weapon/guard (meat flail?), recklessly slamming him down on the shaman for 1d4+4+2+1d6+2+1d4+1d4 damage (improvised+STR+rage+radiant for zealot path+enlarged damage+racial damage when using two handed). The guy I was using as a weapon is pulp, so next turn I take the greataxe to the shaman, dealing 27 damage and breaking his heat metal on the fighter.
The other guys were all doing stuff the whole time too, but true to the barbarian nature, I got caught up in the excitement of being a 20ft tall gatorman punching people through walls and using them to bludgeon one another to really be able to describe in detail what they did. I think the bard was fighting off a swarm of poisonous snakes that almost killed him, and the wizard was keeping concentration on me and firebolting the snake swarm.
So... what stories do you have?
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- Dusk9
- Games Moderator
- Posts: 8012
- Location: Somewhere in the British Isles (exact location unknown).
Re: D&D Stories
It wasn't D&D, more a homebrew system created by the DM. My character was Randaran, aka Randy, the 80-year-old alcoholic hobo wizard (imagine a drunken Grey Gandalf with filthy robes). The rest of the party consisted of a Tielfing battle-cleric, Dragonborn druid, human rogue (who was secretly a werewolf), and an extremely chaotic/slightly evil half-elf bard.
As a wizard, I had 3 spells to start with. "Magpie Eyes", which was basically loot-vision for finding hidden gold. "Firewater", which turned up to a litre of water into pure alcohol (I used it to make molotov cocktails and napalm
). And "Rupture", a straight-up damage spell which caused lacerations to appear on the target's body. Now, the exact wording of Rupture was that "the caster touches themselves to indicate where the lacerations appear on the target". So naturally, during the first battle of the campaign, Randy neutered a bandit by grabbing his balls and thrusting in their direction.
The fact that the other players didn't know the wording of the spell made it even better. They were very confused
In the same campaign, the Tiefling (female) accidentally seduced the potion seller (also female) while stocking up for the final battle. Also, the werewolf failed to lock himself up before the full moon, and almost ate the Dragonborn. And then Randy tossed a leg of salted ham at an evil Tiefling summoner and crit him in the face (salt and iron doing bonus damage to demons/devils), despite having no ranged skill whatsoever. Oh, and the bard charmed Randy into seducing one of the 20-30 year old servants at this manor house we were looting exploring, which I did successfully by asking if he wanted to share a bottle of whiskey....
That was a fun campaign!![Laughing :lol:](./images/smilies/th_goblin-lol.gif)
As a wizard, I had 3 spells to start with. "Magpie Eyes", which was basically loot-vision for finding hidden gold. "Firewater", which turned up to a litre of water into pure alcohol (I used it to make molotov cocktails and napalm
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/th_goblin-bigsmile.gif)
The fact that the other players didn't know the wording of the spell made it even better. They were very confused
![Laughing :lol:](./images/smilies/th_goblin-lol.gif)
In the same campaign, the Tiefling (female) accidentally seduced the potion seller (also female) while stocking up for the final battle. Also, the werewolf failed to lock himself up before the full moon, and almost ate the Dragonborn. And then Randy tossed a leg of salted ham at an evil Tiefling summoner and crit him in the face (salt and iron doing bonus damage to demons/devils), despite having no ranged skill whatsoever. Oh, and the bard charmed Randy into seducing one of the 20-30 year old servants at this manor house we were looting exploring, which I did successfully by asking if he wanted to share a bottle of whiskey....
That was a fun campaign!
![Laughing :lol:](./images/smilies/th_goblin-lol.gif)
- BadgeAddict
- Saves-A-Hyena
- Posts: 9145
- Location: Ohio
Re: D&D Stories
I would suggest that this be moved over into Games Resources, so that it won't get lost as easily as old games. That way, it'll always be near the top of the list. And then delete this post.
- thinkslogically
- Game Master
- Posts: 17223
- Location: Florida
Re: D&D Stories
I posted this a few years ago, but it's still one of my favourites. This is from the first time me and my RL group ever played DnD (4e) and it was glorious stupidity ![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/th_goblin-bigsmile.gif)
OK, so if you've been reading this topic so far, you'll probably know that I wrote and ran a mini-adventure on Saturday for a few friends which worked out pretty well, in large part due to the cool ideas and advice you guys have given in this thread
Now before I explain how the adventure went down, bear in mind that we are all a bunch of total newbies. Three of us had a go at running Kobald Hall for some combat practice about a month ago but for various reasons it just wasn't that much fun (the combat felt slow and grindy, there was no real story because it was really just a pre-made tutorial and there were only 3 of us so there was a LOT of rule-checking and the two players each had to deal with 2 pre-made PCs because no-one else showed up
Still, we learned a pile of things and for this time round I wanted to try building my own adventure so we could have a bit more story and RPing while also bringing in the majority of the mechanics. But this was pretty much do-or-die for whether we wanted to keep playing D&D or not.
Fast forward to yesterday's session. This time around, we have me DMing and 5 players, 3 of whom are totally new to the game. We've got a basic square battle grid for any combat (with coins for tokens) and a couple of sets of dice. That's about it.
So, first off we spent about an hour building the guys' characters using the Wizard's of the Coast Character Generator via my D&DI subscription. It's got some quirks (like it seems impossible to build a character using the Players Handbooks as the only source), but it's otherwise awesome and sped things up massively for us. It's also how I was able to make the monsters I wanted really easily and pick a reasonable selection of treasures. So, character sheets printed and we're ready to go. The party consists of:
Human wizard
Halfling rogue
Elf Ranger
Dwarf fighter &
Drow cleric
Part One: Waking Up (spoilered for size)
[We're about 2 hours through now so we break for pizza]
Part Two: The Village
Part Three: In which my plans go out the window
So that's how it went down really. There were probably a bunch of dodgy rules-calls made but we had a LOT of fun, and I'm more interested in that really than in adhering perfectly to the rules. The players were all involved in agreeing what checks should apply to each skill as well, so it all felt very fair and I think they've had a decent taste of most aspects of the game now. Except combat, but whatever ![Happy :)](./images/smilies/th_smil454d5db651143.gif)
I've also learned a lot about that style of game too and actually really enjoyed winging it. The players really got into it which was a huge help and it was great fun having everyone break in and out of character without feeling weird about it. Not that there was much characterisation going on, but I think that'll come as they get to know their own PCs.
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/th_goblin-bigsmile.gif)
OK, so if you've been reading this topic so far, you'll probably know that I wrote and ran a mini-adventure on Saturday for a few friends which worked out pretty well, in large part due to the cool ideas and advice you guys have given in this thread
![Happy :)](./images/smilies/th_smil454d5db651143.gif)
![Grumble :grumble:](./images/smilies/goblin-grumble.gif)
Fast forward to yesterday's session. This time around, we have me DMing and 5 players, 3 of whom are totally new to the game. We've got a basic square battle grid for any combat (with coins for tokens) and a couple of sets of dice. That's about it.
So, first off we spent about an hour building the guys' characters using the Wizard's of the Coast Character Generator via my D&DI subscription. It's got some quirks (like it seems impossible to build a character using the Players Handbooks as the only source), but it's otherwise awesome and sped things up massively for us. It's also how I was able to make the monsters I wanted really easily and pick a reasonable selection of treasures. So, character sheets printed and we're ready to go. The party consists of:
Human wizard
Halfling rogue
Elf Ranger
Dwarf fighter &
Drow cleric
Part One: Waking Up (spoilered for size)
► Show Spoiler
Part Two: The Village
► Show Spoiler
► Show Spoiler
![Happy :)](./images/smilies/th_smil454d5db651143.gif)
I've also learned a lot about that style of game too and actually really enjoyed winging it. The players really got into it which was a huge help and it was great fun having everyone break in and out of character without feeling weird about it. Not that there was much characterisation going on, but I think that'll come as they get to know their own PCs.
Games I'm running:
The Wandering Archipelago (D&D 5e)
The Wandering Archipelago (D&D 5e)
- Natrivv
- Chronically Blathering
- Posts: 1524
Re: D&D Stories
So as a GM, I've only ever had one character death, there are days where I'm prepared for someone to die. This was not one of those sessions...
To set the stage, Tiamont has made a comeback, and the group was split into two parties of 4 and 6 respectively this day, some of mine were missing. The gods actually had the forsight to know that Tiamont might comeback and launch a sneak attack rendering them useless so the other party was in charge of finding weapons that are effective against Tiamont, and my group was in charge of finding items to defend against her and her breath attacks.
So the group was a
Tiefling Bard who never used magic (Her background was charalton so we joke about how she forged her diploma in crayon)
Kenku Monk
Half-orc barbarian named Moozilla who wanted to have the biggest herd of cows ever
and a Goliath Paladin dedicated to Gond who thought all of the small races were just children.
So they were in a realm of sickly yellow clouds, the few traces of flora were yellow and sickly breaking apart with the faint wind that carried the scent of rot and decay. They noticed that there was some text ontop of a pillar and reached it by have Moozilla throw the Kenku to it.
The Gond Paladin was angry at this and proceeded to give a lecture about how dangerous it is to be thrown, and how dangerous it is to run giving everything from an example to how a neck might snap with bones sticking out to how running causes knee scrapes. To what he perceived as a kid mind you.
So this goes on till they come across and I quote "You find a lack of acid, in the center appears to be a top of a pyramid resisting the corrosion of the waterfall of acid falling from the sky on top of it." One of the sharper eyed members notices that the pyramid top has runes engraved on it, though the distortion of the liquid acid makes it harder to percieve more then that. So there solution approved by 3/4th's of the party THROW THE KENKU INTO THE LAKE OF ACID!
I'm just sort of standing there in shock as they describe the plan, and make their rolls. They pull it off the kenku makes it to the pyramid creates a wind blast before landing and creates a safe spot to land. While the acid oozes back down the kenku creates an engraving and proceeds to jump/slash windblast his way back to the shoreline, and fails landing into the lake of acid.
This is where things get bad because he almost made it so he's close enough to the shore to have the other's intervene. The tiefling is shrieking in the back ground from panic, as the Paladin holds out a scythe to have the Kenku grab onto to go to shore. He fails his wisdom/will power saving throw to resist the pain and think logically enough to grab on. So Moozilla takes the scythe and using her strength stabs the Kenku in the abdomen and drags him to shore. The paladin takes one for the team and uses lay on hands to prolong the Kenku's life while yelling at the tiefling to heal him too.
The tiefling refuses because she doesn't want to take acid damage. That's when they notice that the acid is still slowly dissolving the kenku and they need to wipe it off. Moozilla whips out her blacksmith apron in an atempt, she does get some of it off, but the half-orcs panicked actions also damage the body a little. The paladin has nothing, and the tiefling is sitting on the ground with four tampons in her hands bawling out "All I have are tampons!"
Unsurprisingly the Kenku dies. At this point the tiefling remembers the sentient magic orb that functions as a wand of wonder( given to her by her fiance) and tries using it hoping for a resurrection spell, she ended uping rolling "helpful destruction magic" So what happened is a blizzard swept through the area freezing the Kenku's body with a giant ice spike through it.
The group moved the body on top of a cow spike and all and covered it with a blanket. Moozilla made an oath to never thrown anyone again, The Paladin was more aggressive about taking actions to prevent stuff, and the Tiefling learned nothing.
The group was actually lucky that they left the spike in because that was the Kenku's soul frozen, if they had left it behind they couldn't resurrect the body. And typing this out I realized this was a day I was dming for a group of all women. (The group was about 50/50 so the parties tended to be that way too. just an interesting side note.)
To set the stage, Tiamont has made a comeback, and the group was split into two parties of 4 and 6 respectively this day, some of mine were missing. The gods actually had the forsight to know that Tiamont might comeback and launch a sneak attack rendering them useless so the other party was in charge of finding weapons that are effective against Tiamont, and my group was in charge of finding items to defend against her and her breath attacks.
So the group was a
Tiefling Bard who never used magic (Her background was charalton so we joke about how she forged her diploma in crayon)
Kenku Monk
Half-orc barbarian named Moozilla who wanted to have the biggest herd of cows ever
and a Goliath Paladin dedicated to Gond who thought all of the small races were just children.
So they were in a realm of sickly yellow clouds, the few traces of flora were yellow and sickly breaking apart with the faint wind that carried the scent of rot and decay. They noticed that there was some text ontop of a pillar and reached it by have Moozilla throw the Kenku to it.
The Gond Paladin was angry at this and proceeded to give a lecture about how dangerous it is to be thrown, and how dangerous it is to run giving everything from an example to how a neck might snap with bones sticking out to how running causes knee scrapes. To what he perceived as a kid mind you.
So this goes on till they come across and I quote "You find a lack of acid, in the center appears to be a top of a pyramid resisting the corrosion of the waterfall of acid falling from the sky on top of it." One of the sharper eyed members notices that the pyramid top has runes engraved on it, though the distortion of the liquid acid makes it harder to percieve more then that. So there solution approved by 3/4th's of the party THROW THE KENKU INTO THE LAKE OF ACID!
I'm just sort of standing there in shock as they describe the plan, and make their rolls. They pull it off the kenku makes it to the pyramid creates a wind blast before landing and creates a safe spot to land. While the acid oozes back down the kenku creates an engraving and proceeds to jump/slash windblast his way back to the shoreline, and fails landing into the lake of acid.
This is where things get bad because he almost made it so he's close enough to the shore to have the other's intervene. The tiefling is shrieking in the back ground from panic, as the Paladin holds out a scythe to have the Kenku grab onto to go to shore. He fails his wisdom/will power saving throw to resist the pain and think logically enough to grab on. So Moozilla takes the scythe and using her strength stabs the Kenku in the abdomen and drags him to shore. The paladin takes one for the team and uses lay on hands to prolong the Kenku's life while yelling at the tiefling to heal him too.
The tiefling refuses because she doesn't want to take acid damage. That's when they notice that the acid is still slowly dissolving the kenku and they need to wipe it off. Moozilla whips out her blacksmith apron in an atempt, she does get some of it off, but the half-orcs panicked actions also damage the body a little. The paladin has nothing, and the tiefling is sitting on the ground with four tampons in her hands bawling out "All I have are tampons!"
Unsurprisingly the Kenku dies. At this point the tiefling remembers the sentient magic orb that functions as a wand of wonder( given to her by her fiance) and tries using it hoping for a resurrection spell, she ended uping rolling "helpful destruction magic" So what happened is a blizzard swept through the area freezing the Kenku's body with a giant ice spike through it.
The group moved the body on top of a cow spike and all and covered it with a blanket. Moozilla made an oath to never thrown anyone again, The Paladin was more aggressive about taking actions to prevent stuff, and the Tiefling learned nothing.
The group was actually lucky that they left the spike in because that was the Kenku's soul frozen, if they had left it behind they couldn't resurrect the body. And typing this out I realized this was a day I was dming for a group of all women. (The group was about 50/50 so the parties tended to be that way too. just an interesting side note.)
- Lurks_In_Shadows
- Cures Light Wounds
- Posts: 7631
- Location: In the Pharoh's mud pits, making bricks without straw.
Re: D&D Stories
(I'm definately revealing my age by doing this.) ![Razz :P](./images/smilies/th_goblin-razz.gif)
My most memorable game involved a TPK, self inflicted. This was back in the early days of AD&D (Yes, Thaco and I are contemporaries). The rules were not as well developed and there was a lot more "flexability" (read homebrewing) done. As far as that goes the rules almost more guidelines at that point.
So the way this panned out was that one of my buddies was DMing and me, my brother, and a couple of others were playing. This was a one off adventure rather than a campaign, since we had to arrange a time to physically get together (pre-internet too!). We'd done several low level campaigns, so just to mix things up, we did a high level with pre-made characters, basically level 16 pretty much across the board. We had a couple of wizards, a cleric, and a fighter in the group. I believe one of the wizards was an elf. I don't remember the premise for the adventure, but it essentially involved us going in a cleaning out a bunch of underground catacombs of all the monsters. The DM, being a LOTR fan, drew heavily off the Mines of Moria for a premise, right down to the squid at the entrance...which meant that the boss of the dungeon was a home brew balrog. He essentially took the properties of a mature red dragon and grafted it onto a demon and made it a giant, and I'm guessing he doubled the normal hit points for the dragon. In short, it was one tough critter that could toss flame thrower bursts around like a fire truck throws water. And it was kicking our tails up between our ears.
In desperation, our wizards came up with a collaberative spell. One had a homebrew spell that amplified the effects of any spell that was afterwards cast through it (I think it was a 3x spell, increasing damage, duration, and AREA). He cast this spell and the other cast his most potent remaining spell... an advanced fireball. The battle was taking place in a largish room. But not that large. The fireball spell used became more potent depending on the level of the caster, so we're talking about 300-400 hp damage by the time it went through the amplifier. One wizard made his save and came through with a few hit points remaining. Everyone else was instantly vaporized. The balrog, being a firebased creature, only took half damage and was rather PO'd afterwards. He basically punched the remaining wizard through the wall.
Since this was a one-off, we were'nt heavily invested in the characters, so we had a good laugh about it and learned to be careful about reading the spell descriptions.
![Razz :P](./images/smilies/th_goblin-razz.gif)
My most memorable game involved a TPK, self inflicted. This was back in the early days of AD&D (Yes, Thaco and I are contemporaries). The rules were not as well developed and there was a lot more "flexability" (read homebrewing) done. As far as that goes the rules almost more guidelines at that point.
So the way this panned out was that one of my buddies was DMing and me, my brother, and a couple of others were playing. This was a one off adventure rather than a campaign, since we had to arrange a time to physically get together (pre-internet too!). We'd done several low level campaigns, so just to mix things up, we did a high level with pre-made characters, basically level 16 pretty much across the board. We had a couple of wizards, a cleric, and a fighter in the group. I believe one of the wizards was an elf. I don't remember the premise for the adventure, but it essentially involved us going in a cleaning out a bunch of underground catacombs of all the monsters. The DM, being a LOTR fan, drew heavily off the Mines of Moria for a premise, right down to the squid at the entrance...which meant that the boss of the dungeon was a home brew balrog. He essentially took the properties of a mature red dragon and grafted it onto a demon and made it a giant, and I'm guessing he doubled the normal hit points for the dragon. In short, it was one tough critter that could toss flame thrower bursts around like a fire truck throws water. And it was kicking our tails up between our ears.
In desperation, our wizards came up with a collaberative spell. One had a homebrew spell that amplified the effects of any spell that was afterwards cast through it (I think it was a 3x spell, increasing damage, duration, and AREA). He cast this spell and the other cast his most potent remaining spell... an advanced fireball. The battle was taking place in a largish room. But not that large. The fireball spell used became more potent depending on the level of the caster, so we're talking about 300-400 hp damage by the time it went through the amplifier. One wizard made his save and came through with a few hit points remaining. Everyone else was instantly vaporized. The balrog, being a firebased creature, only took half damage and was rather PO'd afterwards. He basically punched the remaining wizard through the wall.
Since this was a one-off, we were'nt heavily invested in the characters, so we had a good laugh about it and learned to be careful about reading the spell descriptions.
- spiderwrangler
- Game Master
- Posts: 21091
Re: D&D Stories
Ha! Was that when fireball affected a certain area, regardless of distance from the point of origin, right? Where you could roast yourself in a hallway if the room you chuck it into was small enough that it blew back on you? I might be mis-recalling.
I know I told this one somewhere, but it might have been on a facebook group, since it takes place in the same world as I'm running players through for my Sundered Way game. This is part of an ongoing series of one-shots that I've run for one of the play groups when we don't have enough people to do main campaign, but still want to play. This time I found out an hour before hand that 2 people weren't showing up, so the DM asked if I had anything I could run... sure, I'll toss some orcs in a Skyrim-esque set of partially ruined lookout towers connected by a bridge spanning a gorge. I'll find some reason for the Father of the local abbey to want them to clear out the orcs, and that should work.
Well, the last time we ran one of these one-shots, the DM's dwarven barbarian and another player's tiefling warlock had, along with a third guy (not at this session) who was a dragonborn paladin, had just arrived in town (after a tussle with some blights, which the dwarf grappled, lit on fire, and used as torches to bludgeon the others with). Their goal upon reaching town was to settle down and open a brewery... not deal with orcs in a tower. The first hour and a half was them negotiating with the Abbey on land deeds and the like, with the warlock wanting to join the abbey to get on their good side. No hint of being able to make use of the planned encounter.
Eventually, they end up in the library of the Abbey, to research hop and barley growing, I think, and the DM's dwarf rolls bad for finding a relevant text and ends up with a book of nursery rhymes or something. In his frustration, he snaps another book over his knee (good check comes one too late!), which the Abbey then wants him to pay 50 gold to replace. They refuse to shell out for the book, and somehow I'm able to cobble that into a reason for them to go this gosh danged orc tower! They get an NPC cleric that the warlock's player is running (and they name him Forkyou McKenzie... except it wasn't fork)...
Before they leave the Vale, they buy as much rope and robes as they can get a hold of... I start to get nervous. They head north, reaching the towers a bit before dusk. They start whispering conspiratorially. I get more nervous. The plan, as it is revealed, is such...
They gather underbrush and stuff it into the robes, propping up a row of scarecrow people as a distraction. The cleric knows orcish, so calls out in his high clear, not very orcish voice, hailing the tower. The barbarian is waiting at the base of the tower, lasso in hand. Now, I didn't have mechanics in mind for range/difficulty, etc. for trying to rope someone, and definitely gave them more freedom on their subsequent check than was likely reasonable.... as the dwarf easily loops and proceeds to yank the orc lookout off the top of the tower, where he is subsequently dispatched.
They bust in, and hear footsteps running down the wooden stairwells and landings that circle the inside perimeter of the first tower. The warlock is taking pot shots when he can, but Rope Dwarf is running up the first set of stairs on the far side, and ties it off between a ring in the wall and a wooden support, making a quick trip trap, before retreating and taunting the descending orc.... who doesn't notice the rope at all, fails his DEX save, and beefs it face first into the bottom of the stairs, and is promptly murderized. They clear out the rest of this tower, and peek across the way, where the see a couple of javelin toting orcs on the far tower across a bridge. Cue the robes, ropes and hijinks again.
They end up lashing a dead orc to the front of Rope Dwarf, with the warlock using mage hand to "Weekend at Bernies" his arms, while the cleric calls out in orcish to get them to leave the tower. Rope Dwarf has also tied a length of rope to himself, weighted the other end and thrown it under the bridge hard enough to get the other end, so now has a loop of rope that goes under the stone span so he's secured to the bridge. It predictably is sussed out by the orcs in the tower that something is up, and out the door comes a handful of regular orcs, an orog (bigger, smarter, meaner) and an Eye of Gruumsh (shaman/caster).
The orcs charge, and things are looking dodgy for the party, until Rope Dwarf gets a grapple on the orog, who tries, but can't get away. With the orog grappled, Rope Dwarf shouts "Do it!"... and the warlock shoves them both over the side of the bridge... The orog tries to grab hold of the dwarf, but can't, and plummets 90 ft into the gorge and river below (falling damage leaves him at 4 HP... and a possible nemesis for the party...). So now the cleric and warlock are on top of the bridge, weathering attacks from the orcs and the caster, while Rope Dwarf is swinging underneath by his loop of rope... and starts climbing. He eventually manages to climb, the rope constricting as it slides around, to where he can grab hold of stone and haul himself back up. By then, the other two have taken down the regular orcs, and together dispatch the caster. At the top of the tower, the orc war chief appears, and starts hucking javelins at them. The party takes exception to this, and the warlock drops a Hold Person on him, and the Rope Dwarf lassoed him too, yanking him from the top to fall to the bridge, still paralyzed. Orc war chiefs have nearly 100 HP, but that goes away quickly when your paralyzed and three guys are just curb stomping you. The last orc runs down to help his boss, but as they arrive, the cleric reaches down and casts inflict wounds on the chief.
Me: "Ok, he's paralyzed, so you have advantage on the attack."
Warlock's player running the cleric: "Ummm... what does two natural 20's get me?"
Me: "...He liquefies under Forkyou's touch, black liquid spurting from every gap in his clothing to soak the stone around you."
Rope Dwarf: "I want to persuade the other orc."
Me: "Ok, I'd say you have advantage on that given what just happened."
Rope Dwarf: "Throw down your weapons, you work for us now!"
Me: "Well, that sounds more like an intim-"
Rope Dwarf: "Natural TWENTY!"
Me: "Yeah, he works for you now."
And that's how they stormed the towers with rope and robes and make quick work of a tower full of orcs, and gained an orcish farmhand. The next time I ran a session with them, I didn't bother to prepare anything...
Also, my first time in person behind the DM screen rather than here on the forum was with this side session group... I think I had 3 hours heads up for that one but NPC names weren't the top of my list of things to prep...
"You've all been traveling the last few weeks with this caravan, after having been hired on as guards by the middle aged human who runs it."
"What's his name?"
"Uh, Bob."
"Bob? Bob what?"
"...Caravan..."
"So... this is Bob Caravan's caravan?"
"Yep, apparently he was destined for it."
I know I told this one somewhere, but it might have been on a facebook group, since it takes place in the same world as I'm running players through for my Sundered Way game. This is part of an ongoing series of one-shots that I've run for one of the play groups when we don't have enough people to do main campaign, but still want to play. This time I found out an hour before hand that 2 people weren't showing up, so the DM asked if I had anything I could run... sure, I'll toss some orcs in a Skyrim-esque set of partially ruined lookout towers connected by a bridge spanning a gorge. I'll find some reason for the Father of the local abbey to want them to clear out the orcs, and that should work.
Well, the last time we ran one of these one-shots, the DM's dwarven barbarian and another player's tiefling warlock had, along with a third guy (not at this session) who was a dragonborn paladin, had just arrived in town (after a tussle with some blights, which the dwarf grappled, lit on fire, and used as torches to bludgeon the others with). Their goal upon reaching town was to settle down and open a brewery... not deal with orcs in a tower. The first hour and a half was them negotiating with the Abbey on land deeds and the like, with the warlock wanting to join the abbey to get on their good side. No hint of being able to make use of the planned encounter.
Eventually, they end up in the library of the Abbey, to research hop and barley growing, I think, and the DM's dwarf rolls bad for finding a relevant text and ends up with a book of nursery rhymes or something. In his frustration, he snaps another book over his knee (good check comes one too late!), which the Abbey then wants him to pay 50 gold to replace. They refuse to shell out for the book, and somehow I'm able to cobble that into a reason for them to go this gosh danged orc tower! They get an NPC cleric that the warlock's player is running (and they name him Forkyou McKenzie... except it wasn't fork)...
Before they leave the Vale, they buy as much rope and robes as they can get a hold of... I start to get nervous. They head north, reaching the towers a bit before dusk. They start whispering conspiratorially. I get more nervous. The plan, as it is revealed, is such...
They gather underbrush and stuff it into the robes, propping up a row of scarecrow people as a distraction. The cleric knows orcish, so calls out in his high clear, not very orcish voice, hailing the tower. The barbarian is waiting at the base of the tower, lasso in hand. Now, I didn't have mechanics in mind for range/difficulty, etc. for trying to rope someone, and definitely gave them more freedom on their subsequent check than was likely reasonable.... as the dwarf easily loops and proceeds to yank the orc lookout off the top of the tower, where he is subsequently dispatched.
They bust in, and hear footsteps running down the wooden stairwells and landings that circle the inside perimeter of the first tower. The warlock is taking pot shots when he can, but Rope Dwarf is running up the first set of stairs on the far side, and ties it off between a ring in the wall and a wooden support, making a quick trip trap, before retreating and taunting the descending orc.... who doesn't notice the rope at all, fails his DEX save, and beefs it face first into the bottom of the stairs, and is promptly murderized. They clear out the rest of this tower, and peek across the way, where the see a couple of javelin toting orcs on the far tower across a bridge. Cue the robes, ropes and hijinks again.
They end up lashing a dead orc to the front of Rope Dwarf, with the warlock using mage hand to "Weekend at Bernies" his arms, while the cleric calls out in orcish to get them to leave the tower. Rope Dwarf has also tied a length of rope to himself, weighted the other end and thrown it under the bridge hard enough to get the other end, so now has a loop of rope that goes under the stone span so he's secured to the bridge. It predictably is sussed out by the orcs in the tower that something is up, and out the door comes a handful of regular orcs, an orog (bigger, smarter, meaner) and an Eye of Gruumsh (shaman/caster).
The orcs charge, and things are looking dodgy for the party, until Rope Dwarf gets a grapple on the orog, who tries, but can't get away. With the orog grappled, Rope Dwarf shouts "Do it!"... and the warlock shoves them both over the side of the bridge... The orog tries to grab hold of the dwarf, but can't, and plummets 90 ft into the gorge and river below (falling damage leaves him at 4 HP... and a possible nemesis for the party...). So now the cleric and warlock are on top of the bridge, weathering attacks from the orcs and the caster, while Rope Dwarf is swinging underneath by his loop of rope... and starts climbing. He eventually manages to climb, the rope constricting as it slides around, to where he can grab hold of stone and haul himself back up. By then, the other two have taken down the regular orcs, and together dispatch the caster. At the top of the tower, the orc war chief appears, and starts hucking javelins at them. The party takes exception to this, and the warlock drops a Hold Person on him, and the Rope Dwarf lassoed him too, yanking him from the top to fall to the bridge, still paralyzed. Orc war chiefs have nearly 100 HP, but that goes away quickly when your paralyzed and three guys are just curb stomping you. The last orc runs down to help his boss, but as they arrive, the cleric reaches down and casts inflict wounds on the chief.
Me: "Ok, he's paralyzed, so you have advantage on the attack."
Warlock's player running the cleric: "Ummm... what does two natural 20's get me?"
Me: "...He liquefies under Forkyou's touch, black liquid spurting from every gap in his clothing to soak the stone around you."
Rope Dwarf: "I want to persuade the other orc."
Me: "Ok, I'd say you have advantage on that given what just happened."
Rope Dwarf: "Throw down your weapons, you work for us now!"
Me: "Well, that sounds more like an intim-"
Rope Dwarf: "Natural TWENTY!"
Me: "Yeah, he works for you now."
And that's how they stormed the towers with rope and robes and make quick work of a tower full of orcs, and gained an orcish farmhand. The next time I ran a session with them, I didn't bother to prepare anything...
Also, my first time in person behind the DM screen rather than here on the forum was with this side session group... I think I had 3 hours heads up for that one but NPC names weren't the top of my list of things to prep...
"You've all been traveling the last few weeks with this caravan, after having been hired on as guards by the middle aged human who runs it."
"What's his name?"
"Uh, Bob."
"Bob? Bob what?"
"...Caravan..."
"So... this is Bob Caravan's caravan?"
"Yep, apparently he was destined for it."
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- Lurks_In_Shadows
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Re: D&D Stories
spiderwrangler wrote:Ha! Was that when fireball affected a certain area, regardless of distance from the point of origin, right? Where you could roast yourself in a hallway if the room you chuck it into was small enough that it blew back on you? I might be mis-recalling.
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- spiderwrangler
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Re: D&D Stories
Also, the camp that I smashed through as a 20 ft tall gatorman looked like Cuphead concept art...
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/c2vFNel.jpg?1)
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/c2vFNel.jpg?1)
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- M0rtimer
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Re: D&D Stories
A bit of a "belated" story, and not a super interesting one, but I'll tell the tale of how my first proper session went last week... It was great, and we all had fun- Up until the "revenge of the dice" in the final battle.
Anyways, it was meant to be a simple tutorial dungeon, with a simple story to start off with- They were simply hired to collect something what was called the "horn of evermore", which was kept in an abandoned dwarven stronghold. Things went great at first, as I started off with introducing skill checks, introducing advantage/disadvantage, before our first combat in which we got modifiers explained... Squishy mage got knocked out and learnt about the virtues of keeping distance, but so far so good! We enter the actual dungeon and I throw a trap at them, before a little puzzle, the first which they solve by throwing the halfling at it, the second one they figure out pretty easy. Then we moved on to explaining darkness mechanics (And again have the mage regret not picking up a light spell looking back on things) before we came to the final boss battle...
So the room was initially dark, but there were a couple braziers around the room that would quite effectively light it, which they managed to do first without triggering anything just yet... Revealing the room to be filled in a thin layer of rather foul booze, the foulness being because it soon became apparent a lot of dwarves had died in the room, and turned into skeletons. While in the middle of the room, one of the skeletal dwarves in question was holding the horn in question, and there was a massive diamond upon a pedestal. Now my players being genre savvy enough to know it was an obvious trap, avoided it for the longest time... But of course, being typical adventurers, would also inevitably move to try and grab it for themselves.
So the "story" really turns down to that the "horn of evermore" is a "decanter of infinite water", except rather than water it decants cheap beer... Either slowly when cupped to fill a glass, or by speaking the dwarven word for "party" it would cause a small flood of the stuff. The diamond meanwhile, was cursed- It was supposed to be a "party" diamond, activated either by speaking the word "party" in any language, or touching it... It was likely advertised as the dwarf to create "fancy lights" and music (which it did, to be fair), but it also caused all dwarves to dance uncontrollably, meaning the dwarves had one hell of a party before they literally all danced to death.
And naturally, as my players reawakened it, they'd get to dance too! The "boss battle" basically consisted out of them needing to destroy the diamond while the skeletons all became animated, and I introduced save checks to them as they'd need to save against dancing. (Which was a modified version of Otto's irresistible dance- They got a free check at the end of every turn, and the only penalty was they couldn't move.)
With the diamond only being able to force them to dance, and only targetting the closest enemy each round, as well as the skeletons being very spaced out, I figured that the party would be up for a challenging battle, but one far from impossible... After all, if they were smart, they could easily keep outrunning the skeletons at a certain point- They were dwarven, and all melee, so I was ruling they could only move 25 ft each round.
That was until the rolls started, that is.
First round of combat, everyone needed to do the save before the diamond would do only one target per round... No one made the check. Only one person managed to snap out of it on it's second turn, and one guy even needed three checks before he managed to break loose... Well, not too big of an issue, because everyone but the paladin had ranged attacks. Some attacked the diamond, starting to deal some decent damage, while others targeted some of the skeletons that were closest. All misses, of course.
Then, some of the first skeletons get near to the mage... So I roll for damage- It's a crit. Doesn't knock out the guy, but there's a second one too... Which rolls max damage and knocks him out. Paladin rushes over and heals him. Paladin then gets forced to dance, and can't move anywhere more useful to help in the fight/block, which eventually leads to our ranger being overwhelmed as he whiffs three times in a row. I roll for damage against him and... It's another crit. He goes down.
Paladin manages to break free, rushes over with a cure wounds to help him get back up- At this point they've pretty much been surrounded because over the past four rounds they only managed to knock out like three skeletons, and there'd been maybe 5 rolls that had rolled over a ten on their side.
So at this point they start figuring out that they could probably outrun the skeletons with some luck... The mage especially, because he cast expeditios retreat. Which the ranger and mage start doing, being chased by a couple as another bunch stick around with the paladin. Which goes well, until the mage is forced to dance... And fails his check. Three times. The skeletons catch up, and all hit, knocking him out.
The paladin meanwhile, I thought was going to be fine... In fact it might even be good because, despite the fact that he was surrounded, the only reason I figured the mage and ranger were having so much trouble was because they were squishy- He had 18 AC, so could probably dodge most of the attacks for a while, and keep a bunch of the skeletons stalled.
So I rolled for accuracy.
I rolled a crit.
And then I rolled another one.
And then I rolled like an 18, which was still a hit.
So the paladin went down in a single round. Meanwhile, the mage had to do his first death saving throw, and rolled a crit fail, so one more and he was gonna be officially dead. He actually ends up doing two more successful saves, before he fails once more, and we had our first death. The paladin also got down to two failed saves and two successes, so he was very close to dying, too... But lucky for them, the ranger had meanwhile been strafing and shooting the gem, and managed to destroy it- Rushing back to the paladin and feeding him a healing potion before he had to do another death saving throw. The ranger was also on like 2 HP, after he got hit by being frozen by dancing.
So yeah, that's how the whole party almost got TPK'ed because the dice really didn't like them. Wizard now wants to play the tankiest class available next time we get around to playing.![Roll Eyes :roll:](./images/smilies/goblin-rolleyes.gif)
Anyways, it was meant to be a simple tutorial dungeon, with a simple story to start off with- They were simply hired to collect something what was called the "horn of evermore", which was kept in an abandoned dwarven stronghold. Things went great at first, as I started off with introducing skill checks, introducing advantage/disadvantage, before our first combat in which we got modifiers explained... Squishy mage got knocked out and learnt about the virtues of keeping distance, but so far so good! We enter the actual dungeon and I throw a trap at them, before a little puzzle, the first which they solve by throwing the halfling at it, the second one they figure out pretty easy. Then we moved on to explaining darkness mechanics (And again have the mage regret not picking up a light spell looking back on things) before we came to the final boss battle...
So the room was initially dark, but there were a couple braziers around the room that would quite effectively light it, which they managed to do first without triggering anything just yet... Revealing the room to be filled in a thin layer of rather foul booze, the foulness being because it soon became apparent a lot of dwarves had died in the room, and turned into skeletons. While in the middle of the room, one of the skeletal dwarves in question was holding the horn in question, and there was a massive diamond upon a pedestal. Now my players being genre savvy enough to know it was an obvious trap, avoided it for the longest time... But of course, being typical adventurers, would also inevitably move to try and grab it for themselves.
So the "story" really turns down to that the "horn of evermore" is a "decanter of infinite water", except rather than water it decants cheap beer... Either slowly when cupped to fill a glass, or by speaking the dwarven word for "party" it would cause a small flood of the stuff. The diamond meanwhile, was cursed- It was supposed to be a "party" diamond, activated either by speaking the word "party" in any language, or touching it... It was likely advertised as the dwarf to create "fancy lights" and music (which it did, to be fair), but it also caused all dwarves to dance uncontrollably, meaning the dwarves had one hell of a party before they literally all danced to death.
And naturally, as my players reawakened it, they'd get to dance too! The "boss battle" basically consisted out of them needing to destroy the diamond while the skeletons all became animated, and I introduced save checks to them as they'd need to save against dancing. (Which was a modified version of Otto's irresistible dance- They got a free check at the end of every turn, and the only penalty was they couldn't move.)
With the diamond only being able to force them to dance, and only targetting the closest enemy each round, as well as the skeletons being very spaced out, I figured that the party would be up for a challenging battle, but one far from impossible... After all, if they were smart, they could easily keep outrunning the skeletons at a certain point- They were dwarven, and all melee, so I was ruling they could only move 25 ft each round.
That was until the rolls started, that is.
First round of combat, everyone needed to do the save before the diamond would do only one target per round... No one made the check. Only one person managed to snap out of it on it's second turn, and one guy even needed three checks before he managed to break loose... Well, not too big of an issue, because everyone but the paladin had ranged attacks. Some attacked the diamond, starting to deal some decent damage, while others targeted some of the skeletons that were closest. All misses, of course.
Then, some of the first skeletons get near to the mage... So I roll for damage- It's a crit. Doesn't knock out the guy, but there's a second one too... Which rolls max damage and knocks him out. Paladin rushes over and heals him. Paladin then gets forced to dance, and can't move anywhere more useful to help in the fight/block, which eventually leads to our ranger being overwhelmed as he whiffs three times in a row. I roll for damage against him and... It's another crit. He goes down.
Paladin manages to break free, rushes over with a cure wounds to help him get back up- At this point they've pretty much been surrounded because over the past four rounds they only managed to knock out like three skeletons, and there'd been maybe 5 rolls that had rolled over a ten on their side.
So at this point they start figuring out that they could probably outrun the skeletons with some luck... The mage especially, because he cast expeditios retreat. Which the ranger and mage start doing, being chased by a couple as another bunch stick around with the paladin. Which goes well, until the mage is forced to dance... And fails his check. Three times. The skeletons catch up, and all hit, knocking him out.
The paladin meanwhile, I thought was going to be fine... In fact it might even be good because, despite the fact that he was surrounded, the only reason I figured the mage and ranger were having so much trouble was because they were squishy- He had 18 AC, so could probably dodge most of the attacks for a while, and keep a bunch of the skeletons stalled.
So I rolled for accuracy.
I rolled a crit.
And then I rolled another one.
And then I rolled like an 18, which was still a hit.
So the paladin went down in a single round. Meanwhile, the mage had to do his first death saving throw, and rolled a crit fail, so one more and he was gonna be officially dead. He actually ends up doing two more successful saves, before he fails once more, and we had our first death. The paladin also got down to two failed saves and two successes, so he was very close to dying, too... But lucky for them, the ranger had meanwhile been strafing and shooting the gem, and managed to destroy it- Rushing back to the paladin and feeding him a healing potion before he had to do another death saving throw. The ranger was also on like 2 HP, after he got hit by being frozen by dancing.
So yeah, that's how the whole party almost got TPK'ed because the dice really didn't like them. Wizard now wants to play the tankiest class available next time we get around to playing.
![Roll Eyes :roll:](./images/smilies/goblin-rolleyes.gif)
- Lurks_In_Shadows
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Re: D&D Stories
I know this isn't one of our people, but I thought I might put the link to this individuals site, since he has some really entertaining D&D tales. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUpkp- ... qfoJ99XTmw
- spiderwrangler
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Re: D&D Stories
Ha! Yeah, I've watched all of Puffin Forest's stuff!
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- spiderwrangler
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Re: D&D Stories
My new character is a hill dwarf folk hero cleric of the grave (race, background and stats (in order) rolled randomly). Somewhere along the line, his adjectives got mixed such that I said "Hill Folk"... which cemented his voice as Boomhauer from King of the Hill.
[BBvideo=400,300]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8Kk1556OYA[/BBvideo]
I'll probably dial it back a bit, second session is Friday night, as the other characters get to know him he'd be a little easier to understand. As it is, he has to keep repeating himself to the others.
Main offense is toll the dead, and for the next session, I have an app with a deep tolling bell on it I'll play when I cast it. His only melee weapon is a shovel that we are treating as a quarterstaff (a shovel will also be his spiritual weapon once he has access to it).
Hasn't come up yet, but I plan to make full use of one of his domain features the first time it comes up. If he's healing someone at 0 HP, they get max dice on the spell. If one of the party members wants to be healed (post fight) but only has a few HP, I'm gonna tell them to close their eyes and crack them with his shovel to knock them out, then heal them.
[BBvideo=400,300]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8Kk1556OYA[/BBvideo]
I'll probably dial it back a bit, second session is Friday night, as the other characters get to know him he'd be a little easier to understand. As it is, he has to keep repeating himself to the others.
Main offense is toll the dead, and for the next session, I have an app with a deep tolling bell on it I'll play when I cast it. His only melee weapon is a shovel that we are treating as a quarterstaff (a shovel will also be his spiritual weapon once he has access to it).
Hasn't come up yet, but I plan to make full use of one of his domain features the first time it comes up. If he's healing someone at 0 HP, they get max dice on the spell. If one of the party members wants to be healed (post fight) but only has a few HP, I'm gonna tell them to close their eyes and crack them with his shovel to knock them out, then heal them.
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