We were 5 adventurers, a rogue (me), a cleric, a sorcerer, a fighter and a barbarian. We came across a cave in a forest clearing doing a DM's own adventure and inside the cave was a young green dragon. No big deal maybe, but we were all level 2 characters. With one acid breath attack the dragon killed 2 members immediately, leaving the the barb, the sorc of all people, and me the tiny rogue with 2 hp. The sorcer ran away, thanks dude, So I hid in the bushes, stealthily avoiding the dragon wherever he went while the barbarian, who was a crazed cannibal, jumped on top of the thing and started eating away at its wings. Wile I hid like the little coward I was the barbarian single handedly, or would it be single toothedly, chomped all the dragons hp away! We survived! Barely but we did it. Well he did it. Too bad he got stomped by a Treant the next week. Guess he couldn't eat that thing haha.
Heh. One in particular sticks out in my mind when talking about a near TPK, and the dungeon was technically an open oasis.
While we headed towards some ruins to find what was an entas piece (long story on that), we came across an area with two Harpies just after we tied up the horses. The harpies were a pain as they loved to daze us, blind us, etc. Despite 7 players, the battle looked more like anyone elses battle. As I, the Wizard, was in the back, I end up hearing something strange behind me. At first, I thought it was the horses. But the horses were getting more and more panicked. I decided that the party could hold for a bit and I check what is up with the horses. When I get closer, I learn that 2 Displacer Beasts were sneaking up on us. I could only yell "BEHIND US!" before getting struck. I was still up, but hurt. Then, the Warlord thought of an idea. We had this language learned for a while as part of our background called the Entas language. This language allows anyone with the Entas language to understand the language and speak it, but only those from the empire could write it (although we could read it). Anyone who didn't know the Entas language all of a sudden became deafened during the duration of the talk and no voice could be said during Entas language discussion. So the Warlord decided to start a battle chant in Entas. We were at first confused by it, but then all of a sudden, many of the Harpy's inhibitating attacks went down hill. It didn't really slow down the Displacer beasts though. After trying to defend the horses by myself and the Rogue coming back to assist, the Rogue got struck down by one of the displacer beasts. I came over to get the Rogue back up, but then was struck down by a displacer beast as well. The 2 Warlocks tried their hardest to switch back and fourth on the most threatening, but they too became struck down. The Fighter is barely standing alongside the bloodied Paladin and it looked like we would all die that fight for a brief second with only 1 bloodied harpy and 1 bloodied displacer beast. While we could all easily revive (through a background element that our characters were never willing since the cost was great), the Warlord goes in to rescue mode. He first comes over to a central point. He then stops the chant for a moment. All of us players were wondering if he was giving up. He then shouts "EVERYONE! GET UP!" All of a sudden, with that shout, all of us gained health back. He then shouted once more some commands for what to do. He Action Pointed and forced a command to start a little early. After, he resumed the chant.
That was enough as everyone was now in just bloodied minimal to 75% full health. I threw a Thunderwave at the Displacer Beasts to throw them back for a sec and I proceded with the command in switching the fight. The Rogue broke the tie on the horses that allowed them to escape for a sec. The Warlocks proceeded with their command and focused fired on the bloodied Harpy. It went down. They then focused on the bloodied displacer beast. The Paladin kept the other Harpy at bay while the Fighter switched and kept the Displacer beast from advancing. The Rogue helped finish off the Harpy while us magic users focused on the Displacer Beast. It decided it wanted to run away, but after the trouble we had, I threw down a sleep spell on it and it failed to recover so it went to sleep for us to multi-strike it dead.
Ah, what a good moment that was.
We were in a gladiator arena fighting for our lives and freedom. After killing one of the opponents one our bard decided it would be a great idea to offend the crowd with vulgar shouts and movements. The crowd did not like this sort of behaviour and they all climbed down into the arena and slaughtered every last one of us. We never should have accepted that bard to the party
I played a (rather unoptimized) dwarven barbarian. He was relativly useless in combat because of horribly unlucky rolls, but managed to at least hold his weight as a meatshield. Later it turned out that he was only 12 years old in human years because I hadn't read the age-tables for dwarves. I decided to roll along with it, because he already carried around a teddy bear.
3 sessions later, the party got attacked by a few wyrmling dragons. This caused an inter-party conflict, since almost everyone except for two party-members wanted to spare the dragons. Eventually, one of them decided to bullrush me off the ship our party was on, since I was trying to scare the dragons away. I then critted him with my AoO, and dealt maximum damage, killing him in one hit. Afterwards, I rolled a new character as my old one went mad from the guilt and tried to kill the other party-member who had wanted to fight the dragons. He did survive though, and was abondened in the dessert.
He lasted only fairly shortly, and started mostly blank, but the circumstances lead to an interesting characterisation for a my first PC.
Also, one-shotting the guy who tried to bull-rush me became one of the most awesome moments of the campaign, mainly because of how our DM described it and the ensuing RP afterwards.
running a home made game for three friends. one got seperated, the other two got wiped. The fourth found their bodies and tried to be heroic. I laughed so hard when the other players started to root for the badguys to kill the last so that they did not have to be ressurected by him.
That would be a game I played at a convention many years ago. I actually caused it.
We were storming one of the planes where a bunch of demons and devils lived. I was playing a bard, and the paladin really really pissed my character off with the whole holier than thou thing. I threatened to feed the paladin to the demons, and nobody stopped him from continuing to aggravate me... so I teleported down deeper into the plane, got an audience with the demigod in charge of the place, made friends with him (I had a flute that summoned naked dancing girls and that amused him), and ended up joining with him to take on the rest of the party.
What made it even funnier was that only the paladin got away. All the rest of us died horribly.
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danwoskaMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited January 2013
So I can't remember the name but it was a premade 4th ed from the starter box
Tomb of Horrors....this dungeon was an absolute nightmare. Lifeyn1968 above said it is a 12 foot pole dungeon. Make it 24 and you might come close!
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creatorof2Member, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 2Arc User
edited January 2013
It was a creation of the DM's. We were chasing after an artifact and it got sucked into another dimension. One of our characters jumped in after it, as did MOST of the rest of the party. HOWEVER, our healer decided he would wait outside and see what happened. Without our healer we were vastly under manned and under powered. We actually only lost one character but the other three were near death and only barely made it out alive (Thanks to our tank who has minor healing abilities). Our healer will never live that one down.
Question: What dungeon was the closest you came to a total party kill? Was it a premade adventure, or did your DM build a death-trap?
Every single tavern we went into simply to resupply and rest was turned into a deathtrap by one of our PCs, every single time. We could never get to the adventure part since he always started fights with the locals and we'd spend hours fighting in the bar. Good times...
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Currently: Lilyth Lightlorn@dreasimy of Hammerfist Clan. Formerly Neverwinterly Known As:Allsfaire of KORTITB LilythTr1sta of House Fey-BrancheSednablood of BDANWT Cyane
It was the AD&D Open tournament probably around 1996 at Gen Con in Milwaukee. Our group of eight (many who've adventured together for the tournament in past years) ran into a squadron of beholders during the second round (semi-finals). Needless to say they took down six of our party leaving only my mage and one other. Luckily I mem'd Project Image and cast it behind the beholders. I then had the image cast some fireballs from behind which scorched them all very badly since they were looking at the "real" me from a distance with their 270 degree anti-magic vision. The DM commended me on my creative thinking as the other character (a hasted fighter) made short order of them with other spells coming from my image.
Btw, our group made the Finals since most of the other groups were completely killed. Unfortunately, we finished 4th, just out of the prize rewards.
Dr. H
Formerly known from the original Neverwinter Nights Gold Box game as: Viznek I of CoR, St. Vizier of the Bard's Guild (Patron Saint of Bards), and NW Mystek.
My closest to TPK experience was nothing that dangerous. Just a few things gone wrong. It was a Homebrew, but nothing what is not possible in actually ruleset of D&D was involved.
Basically, we were going to face a troll boss after fighting who should not have been a problem at all. We should have been able to kill him while skipping rope. However, our rogue had the great idea to do it without combat. I also had a "staff of resurrection" I received from Selunite church because I had unveiled slavery and saved the lives of some villagers from being enslaved (side quest). Hence it was reward from the church to follow the Dogma of Selune(anti-slavery).
We were all like, "yeah! Lets do it! It would be a challenge!!" We would soon find out that the way of non-violence is harder and more painful than violence.
The troll was sleeping, we were outside and the rogue went inside. He prepared a few traps after the room was described to us (I think DM kept making it up, he might not have actually prepared the design of that cave room beforehand).
So there was this cage, with a kind of primitive mechanism which involved a pulley, a rope and a rock. The rogue went inside, we planned (after rogue laid the traps in case troll woke up) that rogue will drop the stone which may cause the troll to wake up. As soon as the troll wakes up, the wizard will hypnotise the troll and the fighter(in case the cage requires STR check) will take off armor and go and pull up the cage in case rock's weight does not fully opens it. While I, the cleric will stay outside the cave and once everybody leaves the door use sunshine like a flashbang so we can rescue everybody.
Nice plan!!!
However a few things were:-
- rogue did not tell anyone where he laid traps as we were outside waiting on him - he said he would shout and tell us where the traps were.
- Then in went the fighter and wizard - the fighter might have opened the door by himself, but rogue was kind of adamant that he will throw the rock down from height to have dramatic effect (after this game, the rogue took multiclass in bard)
- We could have easily kill the troll or beaten him down and rescued others to run away - but we decided to do it that way, lol
So after the rogue was in position, the fighter took his armor off, his shield off and tip toed inside while wizard was standing near the troll.
Everything went well, too well. I was standing outside in the daylight near cave's mouth - ready with my flashbang... I mean sunburst spell. The on the count of three, rogue pushed the rock off the ledge and wizard took initiative to get ready to cast hypnotize.
~~~~
It was then DM pointed out something which only he and rogue knew, and things started to go bad. The DM (who was definitely enjoying it) pointed out that rogue had set up an acid spell near him to protect himself against troll. So he asked him to roll to see if rock crushes the trap or not. He failed.
The rope was corroded and broke. Fighter was standing under the gate. He asked fighter (dwarf) if he would get under the gate to stop it from falling down. He asked for STR check+roll [roll was required because gate was in motion increasing weight hence not a passive check]. He failed and go crushed (no death but cannot move).
Wizard said - no problem and cast hypnotize. The spell failed - three failures in the row. Troll thrashed the wizard and grabbed him - wizard hadn't many points in concentration.
So it fell upon me and rogue. I told rogue to stay up the ledge and help me by shouting location of traps. DM agreed that if the rogue does not come down, he will grant me immunity from all traps he laid. We agreed and I rushed inside.
However, way was a bit longer (with turns and stuff) so by time I reached there, wizard was dead.
Now I used flashbang - and it had desired effect. The troll was blinded and will not move until his eye readjusted. I wanted to save my spells, so I quickly used staff of resurrection. It should be the best decision right?
However I failed to read (or forgot) the fine print which said that one of your party member will safely be resurrected to the nearest good aligned temple(grr...) and wizard was safe somewhere in some faroff temple.
Hmm... no problem. I can take the troll by myself - cleric is the strongest class in D&D. However, I did not have fire or acid spells left. I looked at the rogue - who pointed at the rock which had crashed his acid trap - we had no acid or fire!
Post has become very long, but it was long, very long fight which ended up me being dead (permanently) and dwarf fighter in the end picked up the stone laced with the trap's acid and crushed the troll for good.
The party held a funeral for my player character and I was honored for my brave sacrifice (QQ)
That one fight is the one which I can never forget. All because adventurers got bored doing ordinary routine stuff - kill monsters frst ask questions later.
I played a homebrew campaign. We were walking down a road going somewhere when a party of bugbears came over the hill and charged us. It was a medium-to-hard 4e encounter. Just as we were about to drop the last guy another party of bugbears came over the hill. There was no time to rest. Just as we were about to drop the last guy another party of bugbears came over the hill. A few kills into that group another party of bugbears came over the hill. This was our first encounter for the day and by the end of it every party member had spent all thier dailies, all of thier encounters, used up all available healing and second winds, used all of thier magical items, used all available potions. The only thing we had for the last several rounds were at-will abiliites. Every single person was down to thier last few hit points.
On another occasion, my character was soloing and was swallowed by a purple worm and had to cut my way out.
It was two winters ago I believe, that I was in a game with some friends from school. That weekend in particular saw only three of us playing. Me, the human barbarian, our half-elf Sorcerer, and the DM. Now the Sorcerer was a particularly hated character, none of us liked the player very much, and he went out of his way to make his character unlikeable as well. So here we are, slinking through caves with an NPC cleric the DM wrote up for us. We were trying our best to follow up on a lead to find a Dracolich's phylactery while the giant undead dragon was off on the other side of the continent attacking the capital city. (I've since forgotten the name the DM gave to the city) We ended up finding the Dracolich's hoard, and the Sorcerer goes "Well, he's a dragon so he obviously chose something in his hoard to use as his phylactery." Now my barbarian was intelligent enough to remember that the sorcerer was a greedy little <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>, and I *KNEW* that he would touch something he wasn't supposed to and get us into trouble. I looked at the DM and saw by the smirk on his face that we were, indeed, going to get into trouble. But, what our sorcerer said had made sense and he and the cleric started tip-toeing through the hoard while I kept an eye out for anything that wanted to main and or eat us.
They found the phylactery, it ended up being the skull of another dragon that we assumed the Dracolich had killed. While the cleric and I tried to figure out the best way to destroy the phylactery and make a speedy escape, the sorcerer disappeared without us knowing (because we weren't actively searching for him) and low-and-behold he comes sprinting back to us with all his pockets filled with as much gold and other things he could shove in them, close behind him are all sorts of undead creatures guarding the Dracolich's lair (little <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> set off an alarm while he was looting). The Sorcerer ran behind us to prepare for combat, the cleric started taking out his weapons, and instead of getting ready for fighting I picked up the sorcerer and simply threw him into the oncoming group of undead. The DM found that amusing so he took pitty and made the undead become preoccupied with tearing apart the sorcerer while the Cleric and I ran for our lives. We made it out in one piece, sort of. The cleric lost an arm and I was far below half my total health. In the next session though, we were minus one <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> sorcerer, and we actually got our job done swiftly and without too much difficulty.
A dungeon one of my old buds made years back. Between the traps and all the umber hulks he rigged we didn't survive. <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>.
I have DM'd or been in Party during several TPK's over the years. To this date my most memorable was actually while playing Basic D&D as an elf. It was my first character ever created and it was 1980 on a friday night.. There were 5 of us including the DM and I had just made lvl 3 doing a couple DM made adventures and I was quite proud of my Elf. The Dungeon was Keep on the Borderlands in all its glory. Mission? clear all caves before 2am.. WE FAILED!!! I was so attached to that forst character I almost cried when he died, but back then you could do a few adventures just to gain a single level unlike now days.
2nd to that was an awesome group i gamed with and our first run thru White plume Mountain ended in a total Party kill against the Manticores of all things lol.
trapjawsMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 2Arc User
edited January 2013
My DM never wiped the party. If we all got "killed" in a dungeon, he would just start a new story line and make so we were captured by the enemy and had to escape using our wits and anything we could "find". There was a lot of dice rolls to see if we could pass a stat check. Our DM was very creative and adaptable to whatever we came up with.
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shadowhawksotoqMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero UsersPosts: 3Arc User
I have only ever been involved in one group party-wipe and it was so long ago (back in 1998) that i do not really remember all the Pen & Paper details.
All i remember is how the event played out and how it was caused. So forgive me if i explain this in details that sound more like a story then an actual D&D play-session.
I was in a group of four other players, i recall being a Ranger i believe, i honestly can not recall the roles of the others except one, the Rogue, and of course, the Rogue is really the central focus of this misadventure.
We were exploring an out-door area in search for an artifact we had learned about in a town a few play-sessions back, apparently the Artifact was of great value and most of the party took much interest in finding it, especially the Rogue.
The Rogue was played by a very reckless D&D player, who enjoyed finding ways to boarder on a fine-line of trouble, but in this play-session he crossed a dangerous line of what is appropriate and inappropriate playing behavior, but in the end the Dungeon Master allowed it and used it in an interesting fashion.
We had come to a Forest area with heavy fog and many frightful sounds and it was currently getting close to nightfall, we learned that to continue our adventure, we would have to traverse this area as it was our only passage. We decided to make camp not far from the boarder of this forest to discuss how we would approach the situation with the Forest and the fog.
We took turns keeping watch over the camp to wait for Day-break (I think we actually rolled for camp encounters during this session). Anyway, during the night the Rogue had slipped away during his turn keeping watch to do his own private exploration (again, this guy was reckless)
It wasn't until early in the morning that we had discovered that he had left the group.
Around the time we started out to look for him, The Rogue was already deep into the Forest. He had made his way to an area were the fog was much thinner, and had already survived quite a few solo encounters. He came upon a lake, and he (the rogue) noticed that there was a nude woman bathing in the lake. The woman did not seem to be reluctant to the rogues presence, she had long flowing silver hair, and the fog in the area could not touch her, as if an invisible barrier kept the fog away from her.
The rogue, being the reckless person he was, went into the lake to approach the woman with silver hair. As the Rogue closed in on her she started to speak in a language that was unfamiliar to him.
****WARNING**** This was the part where the Rogue player made the worse decision a player could make.
I'm not even going to go into detail to save-face, let's just say the Rogue took sexual advantage of the Silver-haired woman, the silver-haired woman turned into a Dragon, the Dragon ate the Rogue, We caught up to the dragon while she was still eating the Rogue, we tried to subdue the dragon but couldn't, we then tried to escape but failed.
We all died.
Not the best experience but in the end some interesting things happened and we got to continue the play-session, of course because the rogue was eaten whole by the Dragon, well.... let's just say the player had to Re-roll later on.
Edit: I forgot to mention the actual particulars of the DM motives. - Like i stated above this was so long ago for me that i can't even remember the Dungeon Master name, let alone what type of game-building intentions he had.
All i do remember is that he had been DM'ing for quite awhile, he was in his 50's, and he only DM'ed Adult player-sessions
As for Module or Campaign names, i can't recall no matter how much i try. xD
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cierdwynMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero UsersPosts: 0Arc User
Question: What dungeon was the closest you came to a total party kill? Was it a premade adventure, or did your DM build a death-trap?
Answer and you could win this Neverwinter shirt:
This contest ends Monday, 01/21, at 12 PM PST. Good luck, Adventurers!
In the Temple of Elemental Evil. Our Dwarf Cleric for some odd reason thought it would be ok to jump on top of a Juggernaut and fight it up there. He died. Badly. Both wizards we had died, the thief hid in a pocket realm while the ranger and fighter nearly died. The Ranger was down to 1 point and the fighter at 4.
DM made dungeon. "horror house" we called it. it was situated in a forest where one by one the dungeon almost killed the whole party, but the DM made it so that we all survived in the end.
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raiknaseemMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 0Arc User
It was actually during a Neverwinter campaign. We were hunting down an aboleth living in the sewers, and its psychic powers were slowly driving our party insane. At one point my warlock was attacked by a party member and went into a blind rage killing friend and foe alike, while our wizard was lighting people on fire.
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While we headed towards some ruins to find what was an entas piece (long story on that), we came across an area with two Harpies just after we tied up the horses. The harpies were a pain as they loved to daze us, blind us, etc. Despite 7 players, the battle looked more like anyone elses battle. As I, the Wizard, was in the back, I end up hearing something strange behind me. At first, I thought it was the horses. But the horses were getting more and more panicked. I decided that the party could hold for a bit and I check what is up with the horses. When I get closer, I learn that 2 Displacer Beasts were sneaking up on us. I could only yell "BEHIND US!" before getting struck. I was still up, but hurt. Then, the Warlord thought of an idea. We had this language learned for a while as part of our background called the Entas language. This language allows anyone with the Entas language to understand the language and speak it, but only those from the empire could write it (although we could read it). Anyone who didn't know the Entas language all of a sudden became deafened during the duration of the talk and no voice could be said during Entas language discussion. So the Warlord decided to start a battle chant in Entas. We were at first confused by it, but then all of a sudden, many of the Harpy's inhibitating attacks went down hill. It didn't really slow down the Displacer beasts though. After trying to defend the horses by myself and the Rogue coming back to assist, the Rogue got struck down by one of the displacer beasts. I came over to get the Rogue back up, but then was struck down by a displacer beast as well. The 2 Warlocks tried their hardest to switch back and fourth on the most threatening, but they too became struck down. The Fighter is barely standing alongside the bloodied Paladin and it looked like we would all die that fight for a brief second with only 1 bloodied harpy and 1 bloodied displacer beast. While we could all easily revive (through a background element that our characters were never willing since the cost was great), the Warlord goes in to rescue mode. He first comes over to a central point. He then stops the chant for a moment. All of us players were wondering if he was giving up. He then shouts "EVERYONE! GET UP!" All of a sudden, with that shout, all of us gained health back. He then shouted once more some commands for what to do. He Action Pointed and forced a command to start a little early. After, he resumed the chant.
That was enough as everyone was now in just bloodied minimal to 75% full health. I threw a Thunderwave at the Displacer Beasts to throw them back for a sec and I proceded with the command in switching the fight. The Rogue broke the tie on the horses that allowed them to escape for a sec. The Warlocks proceeded with their command and focused fired on the bloodied Harpy. It went down. They then focused on the bloodied displacer beast. The Paladin kept the other Harpy at bay while the Fighter switched and kept the Displacer beast from advancing. The Rogue helped finish off the Harpy while us magic users focused on the Displacer Beast. It decided it wanted to run away, but after the trouble we had, I threw down a sleep spell on it and it failed to recover so it went to sleep for us to multi-strike it dead.
Ah, what a good moment that was.
3 sessions later, the party got attacked by a few wyrmling dragons. This caused an inter-party conflict, since almost everyone except for two party-members wanted to spare the dragons. Eventually, one of them decided to bullrush me off the ship our party was on, since I was trying to scare the dragons away. I then critted him with my AoO, and dealt maximum damage, killing him in one hit. Afterwards, I rolled a new character as my old one went mad from the guilt and tried to kill the other party-member who had wanted to fight the dragons. He did survive though, and was abondened in the dessert.
He lasted only fairly shortly, and started mostly blank, but the circumstances lead to an interesting characterisation for a my first PC.
Also, one-shotting the guy who tried to bull-rush me became one of the most awesome moments of the campaign, mainly because of how our DM described it and the ensuing RP afterwards.
We were storming one of the planes where a bunch of demons and devils lived. I was playing a bard, and the paladin really really pissed my character off with the whole holier than thou thing. I threatened to feed the paladin to the demons, and nobody stopped him from continuing to aggravate me... so I teleported down deeper into the plane, got an audience with the demigod in charge of the place, made friends with him (I had a flute that summoned naked dancing girls and that amused him), and ended up joining with him to take on the rest of the party.
What made it even funnier was that only the paladin got away. All the rest of us died horribly.
was a bad character tho, so fk it.
Every single tavern we went into simply to resupply and rest was turned into a deathtrap by one of our PCs, every single time. We could never get to the adventure part since he always started fights with the locals and we'd spend hours fighting in the bar. Good times...
Currently: Lilyth Lightlorn@dreasimy of Hammerfist Clan.
Formerly Neverwinterly Known As: Allsfaire of KORT ITB Lilyth Tr1sta of House Fey-Branche Sednablood of BDA NWT Cyane
Btw, our group made the Finals since most of the other groups were completely killed. Unfortunately, we finished 4th, just out of the prize rewards.
Dr. H
Basically, we were going to face a troll boss after fighting who should not have been a problem at all. We should have been able to kill him while skipping rope. However, our rogue had the great idea to do it without combat. I also had a "staff of resurrection" I received from Selunite church because I had unveiled slavery and saved the lives of some villagers from being enslaved (side quest). Hence it was reward from the church to follow the Dogma of Selune(anti-slavery).
We were all like, "yeah! Lets do it! It would be a challenge!!" We would soon find out that the way of non-violence is harder and more painful than violence.
The troll was sleeping, we were outside and the rogue went inside. He prepared a few traps after the room was described to us (I think DM kept making it up, he might not have actually prepared the design of that cave room beforehand).
So there was this cage, with a kind of primitive mechanism which involved a pulley, a rope and a rock. The rogue went inside, we planned (after rogue laid the traps in case troll woke up) that rogue will drop the stone which may cause the troll to wake up. As soon as the troll wakes up, the wizard will hypnotise the troll and the fighter(in case the cage requires STR check) will take off armor and go and pull up the cage in case rock's weight does not fully opens it. While I, the cleric will stay outside the cave and once everybody leaves the door use sunshine like a flashbang so we can rescue everybody.
Nice plan!!!
However a few things were:-
- rogue did not tell anyone where he laid traps as we were outside waiting on him - he said he would shout and tell us where the traps were.
- Then in went the fighter and wizard - the fighter might have opened the door by himself, but rogue was kind of adamant that he will throw the rock down from height to have dramatic effect (after this game, the rogue took multiclass in bard)
- We could have easily kill the troll or beaten him down and rescued others to run away - but we decided to do it that way, lol
So after the rogue was in position, the fighter took his armor off, his shield off and tip toed inside while wizard was standing near the troll.
Everything went well, too well. I was standing outside in the daylight near cave's mouth - ready with my flashbang... I mean sunburst spell. The on the count of three, rogue pushed the rock off the ledge and wizard took initiative to get ready to cast hypnotize.
~~~~
It was then DM pointed out something which only he and rogue knew, and things started to go bad. The DM (who was definitely enjoying it) pointed out that rogue had set up an acid spell near him to protect himself against troll. So he asked him to roll to see if rock crushes the trap or not. He failed.
The rope was corroded and broke. Fighter was standing under the gate. He asked fighter (dwarf) if he would get under the gate to stop it from falling down. He asked for STR check+roll [roll was required because gate was in motion increasing weight hence not a passive check]. He failed and go crushed (no death but cannot move).
Wizard said - no problem and cast hypnotize. The spell failed - three failures in the row. Troll thrashed the wizard and grabbed him - wizard hadn't many points in concentration.
So it fell upon me and rogue. I told rogue to stay up the ledge and help me by shouting location of traps. DM agreed that if the rogue does not come down, he will grant me immunity from all traps he laid. We agreed and I rushed inside.
However, way was a bit longer (with turns and stuff) so by time I reached there, wizard was dead.
Now I used flashbang - and it had desired effect. The troll was blinded and will not move until his eye readjusted. I wanted to save my spells, so I quickly used staff of resurrection. It should be the best decision right?
However I failed to read (or forgot) the fine print which said that one of your party member will safely be resurrected to the nearest good aligned temple(grr...) and wizard was safe somewhere in some faroff temple.
Hmm... no problem. I can take the troll by myself - cleric is the strongest class in D&D. However, I did not have fire or acid spells left. I looked at the rogue - who pointed at the rock which had crashed his acid trap - we had no acid or fire!
Post has become very long, but it was long, very long fight which ended up me being dead (permanently) and dwarf fighter in the end picked up the stone laced with the trap's acid and crushed the troll for good.
The party held a funeral for my player character and I was honored for my brave sacrifice (QQ)
That one fight is the one which I can never forget. All because adventurers got bored doing ordinary routine stuff - kill monsters frst ask questions later.
On another occasion, my character was soloing and was swallowed by a purple worm and had to cut my way out.
They found the phylactery, it ended up being the skull of another dragon that we assumed the Dracolich had killed. While the cleric and I tried to figure out the best way to destroy the phylactery and make a speedy escape, the sorcerer disappeared without us knowing (because we weren't actively searching for him) and low-and-behold he comes sprinting back to us with all his pockets filled with as much gold and other things he could shove in them, close behind him are all sorts of undead creatures guarding the Dracolich's lair (little <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> set off an alarm while he was looting). The Sorcerer ran behind us to prepare for combat, the cleric started taking out his weapons, and instead of getting ready for fighting I picked up the sorcerer and simply threw him into the oncoming group of undead. The DM found that amusing so he took pitty and made the undead become preoccupied with tearing apart the sorcerer while the Cleric and I ran for our lives. We made it out in one piece, sort of. The cleric lost an arm and I was far below half my total health. In the next session though, we were minus one <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> sorcerer, and we actually got our job done swiftly and without too much difficulty.
2nd to that was an awesome group i gamed with and our first run thru White plume Mountain ended in a total Party kill against the Manticores of all things lol.
there it is, my memorable TPK's
All i remember is how the event played out and how it was caused. So forgive me if i explain this in details that sound more like a story then an actual D&D play-session.
I was in a group of four other players, i recall being a Ranger i believe, i honestly can not recall the roles of the others except one, the Rogue, and of course, the Rogue is really the central focus of this misadventure.
We were exploring an out-door area in search for an artifact we had learned about in a town a few play-sessions back, apparently the Artifact was of great value and most of the party took much interest in finding it, especially the Rogue.
The Rogue was played by a very reckless D&D player, who enjoyed finding ways to boarder on a fine-line of trouble, but in this play-session he crossed a dangerous line of what is appropriate and inappropriate playing behavior, but in the end the Dungeon Master allowed it and used it in an interesting fashion.
We had come to a Forest area with heavy fog and many frightful sounds and it was currently getting close to nightfall, we learned that to continue our adventure, we would have to traverse this area as it was our only passage. We decided to make camp not far from the boarder of this forest to discuss how we would approach the situation with the Forest and the fog.
We took turns keeping watch over the camp to wait for Day-break (I think we actually rolled for camp encounters during this session). Anyway, during the night the Rogue had slipped away during his turn keeping watch to do his own private exploration (again, this guy was reckless)
It wasn't until early in the morning that we had discovered that he had left the group.
Around the time we started out to look for him, The Rogue was already deep into the Forest. He had made his way to an area were the fog was much thinner, and had already survived quite a few solo encounters. He came upon a lake, and he (the rogue) noticed that there was a nude woman bathing in the lake. The woman did not seem to be reluctant to the rogues presence, she had long flowing silver hair, and the fog in the area could not touch her, as if an invisible barrier kept the fog away from her.
The rogue, being the reckless person he was, went into the lake to approach the woman with silver hair. As the Rogue closed in on her she started to speak in a language that was unfamiliar to him.
****WARNING**** This was the part where the Rogue player made the worse decision a player could make.
I'm not even going to go into detail to save-face, let's just say the Rogue took sexual advantage of the Silver-haired woman, the silver-haired woman turned into a Dragon, the Dragon ate the Rogue, We caught up to the dragon while she was still eating the Rogue, we tried to subdue the dragon but couldn't, we then tried to escape but failed.
We all died.
Not the best experience but in the end some interesting things happened and we got to continue the play-session, of course because the rogue was eaten whole by the Dragon, well.... let's just say the player had to Re-roll later on.
Edit: I forgot to mention the actual particulars of the DM motives. - Like i stated above this was so long ago for me that i can't even remember the Dungeon Master name, let alone what type of game-building intentions he had.
All i do remember is that he had been DM'ing for quite awhile, he was in his 50's, and he only DM'ed Adult player-sessions
As for Module or Campaign names, i can't recall no matter how much i try. xD
I almost want to illustrate that scene! haha