I was in a 3.0 game with a GM that had an exploding critical house rule. For those people who didn't play 3rd Edition, critical hits were handled based on the weapon- some weapons had an expanded critical range (swords, for example, threatened a crit on a 19-20), while others offered a larger multiplier for a successful crit- axes did triple damage rather than double. You also had to "confirm" a critical"- rolling a 20 wasn't enough, you then had to make another attack roll at the same modifiers, if that roll hit it was a crit but if it missed the attack was just a normal attack.
So, the GM's "exploding critical" rule was that if you rolled another critical threat on a crit confirmation roll, you rolled again. If that roll was successful, you improved the crit multiplier by one step. If you got another critical threat, go back and repeat, no upper limit.
So, our party was about third level when we got attacked by several werewolves. Not having any silver or magical weapons, this was looking like a tough fight, but on his first attack the party's fighter rolled a critical, and kept rolling crit threats. He ended up doing something like 8 times the normal damage on the crit, which was against the werewolf boss. The GM looked on in astonishment and just said "okay, well... you not only kill him, you skin, gut, and fillet him while you're at it."
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
So, I was a player in this combat. We were a party of 6 level 9 characters. A Paladin, a Warlock, a Barbarian, a Sorcerer, a Ranger, and a Druid. We ended up going up against a Death Tyrant, 2 Aboleths, 6 Dryders, a horde of zombies, and seperate horde of skeletons. We were completely demolished. It was a combination of bad strategy and bad dice rolls. Warlock and Sorcerer both got mind controlled by the aboleths, the barbarian was hit by two of the disintegration beams from the death tyrant, and it was just overall chaos. The 3 members of the party that (sorta) got away were abducted by a Nilshai and sold to the new party members being added in. Great campaign, wonderful DM, just a little overtuned for our party at that level.
Not as epic as some of the battles here, but teaching my 12 year old daughter (at the time) D&D. Session 1, simple combat training. A guard lets out a swarm of spiders. My wife (bard) and daughter (wizard) are both about 90 ft away. Daughter, with her wizard, Leroy Jenkins the swarm, wife just following suit using support rather taking all the work upon herself.
Swarm then moves and attacks, nearly kills wife, another round of melee mage and support via bard, swarm nearly kills daughter (left them both roughly 1 hp)... I'd decided a TPK in session 1 of teaching my daughter to play was not the smartest, so had the guard shoot the swarm, nat 20, rolled max damage. Killed the remainder of the swarm in one hit.
Took my daughter several sessions to take the advice that a wizard is not the front line combatant...at least not her wizard.
I am running a "find these items" quest for some first-time players and they joined a revolution (cause why not). In the street fighting chaos they saw a group of bandits (led by a CR 2 bandit captain) looting a house. They had their warforged (I homebrewed one and made it CR 1/4 so the first level party could use it) NPC shoot a bandit. The warforged was hacked to pieces by the bandit captain. All but one of the 2 rogues in the party fled, some making sure to carry parts of the fallen warforged so it could be rebuilt. That one rogue rogue, at FIRST LEVEL attacked the CR 2 bandit captain. I drew a skull next to his name where I wrote the initiative. I didn't even include the 6 bandits, and with just the bandit captain's multiattack, the rogue dropped like an anvil. I chose that just having the bandit captain proceed to finish him off wouldn't be a good experience, and he promptly rolled a nat 20 on his death saves.
TL;DR: level 1 rogue tries to attack a CR 2 bandit captain solo. I, the DM, choose to let him survive, but not without learning that the bandit captain totally could have finished the job if it wanted to.
my friend was running his second ever campaign, and he got bored of running it so one day he threw a cr 17 death knight at a level 4 party.
however, the party managed to over come it, with my character (hexblade warlock/fighter) striking the final blow. i honestly thought we were all going to die then
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One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
How did you win that fight? It should not have been possible. Hellfire Orb by itself should have obliterated anyone caught in the radius, and a Destructive Wave or two should have finished off everyone else.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I’m running a Supernatural (as in the show) campaign. Last week the party fought a ghost haunting a sign in a CVS. They broke in after disarming the security system and proceeded to burn the sign in a plastic trashbin whilst repeatedly banishing the ghost with iron bullets (1d6 rounds). The only damage the characters took was inflicted by frantically carrying the burning trashbin out of the building, or friendly fire from other party members.
Had a powerful NPC on our team get mind controllled. Had fairly strong abilities and around 167 HP. He had taken a bit of damage but didn't slow. My Hexblade/Paladin was expecting a long fight, through out Hexblades Curse and some EB. A round later it came in close and I crit with Boomie Blade, dumped a 2nd level spell slot into Smite and proceeded to roll max everything.
Conversation quickly went from how are we going to take him down to me frantically repeating that I was doing non-lethal.
and a red dragon with a circlet of blasting and all physical stats high
we ound the tower with the kobolds and the harpy dragon in winged kobold form walked up to the tower with the bard and they told the guards that their "dragon" was an imposter "before rabger had tried to climb wall in stealth and critted and saw the sleeping harpy then went back told team and they bought a potion of climbing" the ranger meanwhile climbed up the tower stole the harpies mask and cloak and stealthed against the wall, the bard and disguised dragon convinced the guards to check with them coming along under guard, the kobold got up and attacked they were not doing very well so the ranger stood up and shot the harpy, the harpy died and the ranger immediately banished the bow to pocket dimension and undid sword belt and surrendered. the ranger and bard convinced the kobold to let them go outside so they could show them a true dragon they went outside and dragon reverted to true form kobolds worship dragons as demigods. they went around gathering more kobolds they later found a dungeon with necromancers and undead wich the kobold proceded to stone to death instantly at the end there was a boss fight with a wight the dragon torched the room a kobold chieftan with a magic shield and sword attacked with a kobold wererat and a kobold sorcerer the wight almost killed the chieftan in the first round but after that died immediatly i have learnt my lesson and will not alow them to gather armies again in a campaign not made for it
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This Mug immediately shared with me a transcendental tale of an Infinite Mug that anchors the Universe and keeps it from folding in on itself. I filed this report under "illogical nonsense" and asked why its sign is in Times New Roman font, when it is basic knowledge that Arial Black is a far superior font. I wondered: How did this mug even get past the assembly line with its theistic beliefs and poor font choices?
quote from Romantically Apocalyptic byVitaly S Alexius
There was an encounter I DMed where the party had to steal information from a mage. Well, I had not balanced it properly. The mage should have been a higher level probably, but more importantly, he was asleep when they showed up. They pinned him down and walloped him before he could do anything. What's even funnier is that, after he'd taken some hits from the monk, one of the bards used Charm Person on him, and he failed the save despite having advantage. So they took him captive and he showed them around. He did not just hand over what they were looking for, though, so they took him away as a prisoner and later used their knowledge of his home to find the information and steal it, along with a bunch of loot.
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Maximilian "Mad Max" Oceanus, transmutation wizard, best known for being on the team that saved the universe from Kozelak's infinite hunger, and also an avenger of the Unspoken. Olaf Ericsson, a jolly ranger with a bit of an anger problem. Also likes to sing. Yaethel Akeelan, a druid with a plan; a very, very big plan. Damien Rook, full time author, part time adventurer. Plays god on Saturdays.
The most one sided combat ever was four of us against a dark Paladin who had returned as an undead revenant. He appeared at the top of the stairs and started slowly descending the stairs toward us while unsheathing his +5 Unholy Sword of Doom. We took him out in one round before he even reached the bottom of the stairs. Ruined the DM’s grand entrance 😊.
On the opposite extreme, it took us an entire 10 hour session to defeat Strahd von Zarovich and the various minions he summoned to defend himself.
When I played Lost Mine of Phandelver, we absolutely destroyed Venomfang. We managed to kill her (or him, can't remember), but then we had a player die during an encounter with a couple orcs. I found it very ironic.
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A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
The players I DM for have way better luck than I do with dice rolls. The half-orc fighter/barbarian has double crit and destroyed monsters that should last a few rounds in a single turn. Recently he got into a fight with a monk, who managed to stun him and then had 3 more attacks. All three attacks at advantage. I rolled nothing higher than a 3 SIX TIMES IN A ROW. Which ment they came out of stun and killed the monk.
Sometimes the dice just want the fight to be easy! LOL!
Some time ago my group (dwarven Cleic, half-orc Barbarian, half-elf Bard and woodelf Druid (me)) fought a Shadow Demon and two Shadow Dogs.
My Druid casted Moonbeam on the Shadow Demon. Then it was the Cleric's turn, who casted Guiding Bolt.
After that the DM decided to already roll the CON save for Moonbeam, even tho it wasn't the demon's turn yet, because to quote our DM: "bc this thing takes double from radiant damage and I wanna see if y'all can two-shot it"
The Cleric's Guiding Bolt (5d6) did 22 damage, doubled to 44
My Druid's Moonbeam (2d10) did 12 damage, doubled to 24
For a total of 68 damage
Shadow Demons have 66 HP, we did two-shot it :D xDD
DM: "I hate you guys lmfao"
We still had to deal with the two dogs, but they didn't live long either xD
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I was in a 3.0 game with a GM that had an exploding critical house rule. For those people who didn't play 3rd Edition, critical hits were handled based on the weapon- some weapons had an expanded critical range (swords, for example, threatened a crit on a 19-20), while others offered a larger multiplier for a successful crit- axes did triple damage rather than double. You also had to "confirm" a critical"- rolling a 20 wasn't enough, you then had to make another attack roll at the same modifiers, if that roll hit it was a crit but if it missed the attack was just a normal attack.
So, the GM's "exploding critical" rule was that if you rolled another critical threat on a crit confirmation roll, you rolled again. If that roll was successful, you improved the crit multiplier by one step. If you got another critical threat, go back and repeat, no upper limit.
So, our party was about third level when we got attacked by several werewolves. Not having any silver or magical weapons, this was looking like a tough fight, but on his first attack the party's fighter rolled a critical, and kept rolling crit threats. He ended up doing something like 8 times the normal damage on the crit, which was against the werewolf boss. The GM looked on in astonishment and just said "okay, well... you not only kill him, you skin, gut, and fillet him while you're at it."
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
So, I was a player in this combat. We were a party of 6 level 9 characters. A Paladin, a Warlock, a Barbarian, a Sorcerer, a Ranger, and a Druid. We ended up going up against a Death Tyrant, 2 Aboleths, 6 Dryders, a horde of zombies, and seperate horde of skeletons. We were completely demolished. It was a combination of bad strategy and bad dice rolls. Warlock and Sorcerer both got mind controlled by the aboleths, the barbarian was hit by two of the disintegration beams from the death tyrant, and it was just overall chaos. The 3 members of the party that (sorta) got away were abducted by a Nilshai and sold to the new party members being added in. Great campaign, wonderful DM, just a little overtuned for our party at that level.
That's an odd monster mashup.
Why would Aboleths team up with a Death Tyrant?
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Not as epic as some of the battles here, but teaching my 12 year old daughter (at the time) D&D. Session 1, simple combat training. A guard lets out a swarm of spiders. My wife (bard) and daughter (wizard) are both about 90 ft away. Daughter, with her wizard, Leroy Jenkins the swarm, wife just following suit using support rather taking all the work upon herself.
Swarm then moves and attacks, nearly kills wife, another round of melee mage and support via bard, swarm nearly kills daughter (left them both roughly 1 hp)... I'd decided a TPK in session 1 of teaching my daughter to play was not the smartest, so had the guard shoot the swarm, nat 20, rolled max damage. Killed the remainder of the swarm in one hit.
Took my daughter several sessions to take the advice that a wizard is not the front line combatant...at least not her wizard.
I am running a "find these items" quest for some first-time players and they joined a revolution (cause why not). In the street fighting chaos they saw a group of bandits (led by a CR 2 bandit captain) looting a house. They had their warforged (I homebrewed one and made it CR 1/4 so the first level party could use it) NPC shoot a bandit. The warforged was hacked to pieces by the bandit captain. All but one of the 2 rogues in the party fled, some making sure to carry parts of the fallen warforged so it could be rebuilt. That one rogue rogue, at FIRST LEVEL attacked the CR 2 bandit captain. I drew a skull next to his name where I wrote the initiative. I didn't even include the 6 bandits, and with just the bandit captain's multiattack, the rogue dropped like an anvil. I chose that just having the bandit captain proceed to finish him off wouldn't be a good experience, and he promptly rolled a nat 20 on his death saves.
TL;DR: level 1 rogue tries to attack a CR 2 bandit captain solo. I, the DM, choose to let him survive, but not without learning that the bandit captain totally could have finished the job if it wanted to.
Proud poster on the Create a World thread
my friend was running his second ever campaign, and he got bored of running it so one day he threw a cr 17 death knight at a level 4 party.
however, the party managed to over come it, with my character (hexblade warlock/fighter) striking the final blow. i honestly thought we were all going to die then
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
How did you win that fight? It should not have been possible. Hellfire Orb by itself should have obliterated anyone caught in the radius, and a Destructive Wave or two should have finished off everyone else.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Why hasn't anyone mentioned Hoard of the Dragon Queen yet? The first battle against the adult dragon? Anyone have stories on that?
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
my dm (also my brother) had a dragons champion challenge my sorcadin to single combat.
it was really unfair on the champion.
he even had a magic item that reduced my strength.
I crit and dealt over 80 damage at level 4
“I will take responsibility for what I have done. [...] If must fall, I will rise each time a better man.” ― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer.
I’m running a Supernatural (as in the show) campaign. Last week the party fought a ghost haunting a sign in a CVS. They broke in after disarming the security system and proceeded to burn the sign in a plastic trashbin whilst repeatedly banishing the ghost with iron bullets (1d6 rounds). The only damage the characters took was inflicted by frantically carrying the burning trashbin out of the building, or friendly fire from other party members.
That time in ToH when a single one of my players took out Acerak in a single round, legendary actions and all.
I was more than a little salty afterwards...
I would be interested to know what he was playing
“I will take responsibility for what I have done. [...] If must fall, I will rise each time a better man.” ― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer.
Had a powerful NPC on our team get mind controllled. Had fairly strong abilities and around 167 HP. He had taken a bit of damage but didn't slow. My Hexblade/Paladin was expecting a long fight, through out Hexblades Curse and some EB. A round later it came in close and I crit with Boomie Blade, dumped a 2nd level spell slot into Smite and proceeded to roll max everything.
Conversation quickly went from how are we going to take him down to me frantically repeating that I was doing non-lethal.
My party of 4th Level adventurers tried to kill a demon lord. It went terribly.
i was dming a 5e version of in search of the unknown and into the borderlands with level 3 characters
a white dragonborn eldritch hunter ranger with a cloak of elvenkind very high dexterity and a lot of charisma and the sentinel feat
a draconic tiefling college of healing bard with a cloak of displacement and high dexterity
and a red dragon with a circlet of blasting and all physical stats high
we ound the tower with the kobolds and the harpy dragon in winged kobold form walked up to the tower with the bard and they told the guards that their "dragon" was an imposter "before rabger had tried to climb wall in stealth and critted and saw the sleeping harpy then went back told team and they bought a potion of climbing" the ranger meanwhile climbed up the tower stole the harpies mask and cloak and stealthed against the wall, the bard and disguised dragon convinced the guards to check with them coming along under guard, the kobold got up and attacked they were not doing very well so the ranger stood up and shot the harpy, the harpy died and the ranger immediately banished the bow to pocket dimension and undid sword belt and surrendered. the ranger and bard convinced the kobold to let them go outside so they could show them a true dragon they went outside and dragon reverted to true form kobolds worship dragons as demigods. they went around gathering more kobolds they later found a dungeon with necromancers and undead wich the kobold proceded to stone to death instantly at the end there was a boss fight with a wight the dragon torched the room a kobold chieftan with a magic shield and sword attacked with a kobold wererat and a kobold sorcerer the wight almost killed the chieftan in the first round but after that died immediatly i have learnt my lesson and will not alow them to gather armies again in a campaign not made for it
This Mug immediately shared with me a transcendental tale of an Infinite Mug that anchors the Universe and keeps it from folding in on itself. I filed this report under "illogical nonsense" and asked why its sign is in Times New Roman font, when it is basic knowledge that Arial Black is a far superior font. I wondered: How did this mug even get past the assembly line with its theistic beliefs and poor font choices?
quote from Romantically Apocalyptic by Vitaly S Alexius
There was an encounter I DMed where the party had to steal information from a mage. Well, I had not balanced it properly. The mage should have been a higher level probably, but more importantly, he was asleep when they showed up. They pinned him down and walloped him before he could do anything. What's even funnier is that, after he'd taken some hits from the monk, one of the bards used Charm Person on him, and he failed the save despite having advantage. So they took him captive and he showed them around. He did not just hand over what they were looking for, though, so they took him away as a prisoner and later used their knowledge of his home to find the information and steal it, along with a bunch of loot.
Maximilian "Mad Max" Oceanus, transmutation wizard, best known for being on the team that saved the universe from Kozelak's infinite hunger, and also an avenger of the Unspoken.
Olaf Ericsson, a jolly ranger with a bit of an anger problem. Also likes to sing.
Yaethel Akeelan, a druid with a plan; a very, very big plan.
Damien Rook, full time author, part time adventurer.
Plays god on Saturdays.
@OP cool user name
The most one sided combat ever was four of us against a dark Paladin who had returned as an undead revenant. He appeared at the top of the stairs and started slowly descending the stairs toward us while unsheathing his +5 Unholy Sword of Doom. We took him out in one round before he even reached the bottom of the stairs. Ruined the DM’s grand entrance 😊.
On the opposite extreme, it took us an entire 10 hour session to defeat Strahd von Zarovich and the various minions he summoned to defend himself.
When I played Lost Mine of Phandelver, we absolutely destroyed Venomfang. We managed to kill her (or him, can't remember), but then we had a player die during an encounter with a couple orcs. I found it very ironic.
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
My Improved Lineage System
I listened to that episode! It was hysterical!
Some time ago my group (dwarven Cleic, half-orc Barbarian, half-elf Bard and woodelf Druid (me)) fought a Shadow Demon and two Shadow Dogs.
My Druid casted Moonbeam on the Shadow Demon. Then it was the Cleric's turn, who casted Guiding Bolt.
After that the DM decided to already roll the CON save for Moonbeam, even tho it wasn't the demon's turn yet, because to quote our DM: "bc this thing takes double from radiant damage and I wanna see if y'all can two-shot it"
The Cleric's Guiding Bolt (5d6) did 22 damage, doubled to 44
My Druid's Moonbeam (2d10) did 12 damage, doubled to 24
For a total of 68 damage
Shadow Demons have 66 HP, we did two-shot it :D xDD
DM: "I hate you guys lmfao"
We still had to deal with the two dogs, but they didn't live long either xD