So, Backstory: I'm in a group of four, with an old high school friend as DM, myself, my brother, and a friend of mine as players. Party makeup is Open Hand Monk (me) Battle Master Fighter (brother), and War Cleric (friend). We run a level 1-5 homebrew campaign by our friend, kill evil necromancer king, save a city, much huzzahs are had. DM is slightly burnt out, offers up chance for one of us to act as DM to give him time to recharge, write new stuff, and all that jazz. Brother says he wants to do Lost Mine of Phandelver, and since we really don't want to do the 1-5 progression again, Cleric and I import our level 5 characters into the new game.
Skip ahead a bit, we've done pretty much all the main quest stuff-we're level 8 at this point- all that's left is clearing out the mountains full of orcs. We dive deep into the mountains and run into a boss my brother based off Trinexx from Link to the Past. Basically, it's a three-headed turtle with heads that do flame and cold breath attacks. So, because of bad perception rolls, none of us notice the giant thing lurking in the lake and it gets a surprise round on us. It hits us with the cold breath, we all fail the Con save, andwith everybody hanging around 50ish HP, it does 40 points of damage. I'm up next, and with 14 hp left and on the high end of what we all have left, I figure the I'll just throw the hail mary and hit the thing with a stunning strike. Since I boosted my wisdom, save DC is now 15 and the monster with a +6 Con save rolls... a 14. We've picked up another player at this point who rolled a druid, so he hits it with a wall of flame, cleric hits it with a guardian of faith, and long story short, we do over 90 damage on the thing in the round its stunned for and it gets one more attack before I finish it off for good.
To get to the point of the post, when have you landed that stunning strike that's saved your party from a TPK? I know it's sort of the joke that level 5 and above monks are good for nothing but spamming Stunning Strike, but, it's just so damn useful. So please, when have you ruined you DM's hope for a challenging boss fight by making their monster sit out a turn?
Love your story, stunning strike really is such a useful tool.
Our DM changes a lot of monster stats, beefing them up or changing them so that we can never really rely on previous knowledge from other games. So we'd been bumbling through this cursed forest, looking for a lost friend, we're 4 level 7 characters at this point. Finally we stumble our way to the lair of whoever rules this forest, but we're a bit low on hp and spells slots so it's not an ideal situation, and it's a mindflayer, even worse, an Alhoon.
I go first in the initiative round, and my first thought is just to get my monk in there and stun it before it can do something nasty with it's spell. Luckily it fails it's saving throw, both for the first round, and the next one when I repeat the action. As it turns out, this Alhoon as really been beefed up as it's still standing, and on the third turn it unleashes hell. Or more accurately, it banishes one of our guys to a hell dimension as he failed his saving throw. Thankfully we take him down during the 4th round, but things could have gotten really nasty if it hadn't had to sit out the two first rounds. Our DM admitted that the encounter was supposed to be a lot more difficult than what it turned out to be.
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So, Backstory: I'm in a group of four, with an old high school friend as DM, myself, my brother, and a friend of mine as players. Party makeup is Open Hand Monk (me) Battle Master Fighter (brother), and War Cleric (friend). We run a level 1-5 homebrew campaign by our friend, kill evil necromancer king, save a city, much huzzahs are had. DM is slightly burnt out, offers up chance for one of us to act as DM to give him time to recharge, write new stuff, and all that jazz. Brother says he wants to do Lost Mine of Phandelver, and since we really don't want to do the 1-5 progression again, Cleric and I import our level 5 characters into the new game.
Skip ahead a bit, we've done pretty much all the main quest stuff-we're level 8 at this point- all that's left is clearing out the mountains full of orcs. We dive deep into the mountains and run into a boss my brother based off Trinexx from Link to the Past. Basically, it's a three-headed turtle with heads that do flame and cold breath attacks. So, because of bad perception rolls, none of us notice the giant thing lurking in the lake and it gets a surprise round on us. It hits us with the cold breath, we all fail the Con save, andwith everybody hanging around 50ish HP, it does 40 points of damage. I'm up next, and with 14 hp left and on the high end of what we all have left, I figure the I'll just throw the hail mary and hit the thing with a stunning strike. Since I boosted my wisdom, save DC is now 15 and the monster with a +6 Con save rolls... a 14. We've picked up another player at this point who rolled a druid, so he hits it with a wall of flame, cleric hits it with a guardian of faith, and long story short, we do over 90 damage on the thing in the round its stunned for and it gets one more attack before I finish it off for good.
To get to the point of the post, when have you landed that stunning strike that's saved your party from a TPK? I know it's sort of the joke that level 5 and above monks are good for nothing but spamming Stunning Strike, but, it's just so damn useful. So please, when have you ruined you DM's hope for a challenging boss fight by making their monster sit out a turn?
Love your story, stunning strike really is such a useful tool.
Our DM changes a lot of monster stats, beefing them up or changing them so that we can never really rely on previous knowledge from other games. So we'd been bumbling through this cursed forest, looking for a lost friend, we're 4 level 7 characters at this point. Finally we stumble our way to the lair of whoever rules this forest, but we're a bit low on hp and spells slots so it's not an ideal situation, and it's a mindflayer, even worse, an Alhoon.
I go first in the initiative round, and my first thought is just to get my monk in there and stun it before it can do something nasty with it's spell. Luckily it fails it's saving throw, both for the first round, and the next one when I repeat the action. As it turns out, this Alhoon as really been beefed up as it's still standing, and on the third turn it unleashes hell. Or more accurately, it banishes one of our guys to a hell dimension as he failed his saving throw. Thankfully we take him down during the 4th round, but things could have gotten really nasty if it hadn't had to sit out the two first rounds. Our DM admitted that the encounter was supposed to be a lot more difficult than what it turned out to be.