Do you have any stories about combat encounters that were so curb-stomp that it was a bit funny? Not the standard Kill Five Dire Rats encounters, but actual battles that should be climatic but ended with either the players or the NPCs wiping the floor with the opposition with no trouble?
We managed to annoy a drow matron mother/ vampire, so she and her army marched up up to our party's town. On our side were four level 12 pc and a small handful of npc, while on the drow's side we had the matron mother, a drow inquisitor (also a vampire) a drow wizard, a blue dracolich and abouta dozen drow (also all vampires). As expected, we TPKed.
Just happened a couple days ago. Playing ToA and our level 5 party runs into an actual Tyrannosaur in the jungle, 900ft off and mad as all get out. It charges at us, and we take it down in 5 rounds without so much as a scratch, rolling at disadvantage the entire time because of distance to the target.
That was the day we learned that Bless + Haste on the ranger and the fighter is downright ugly.
This was in Rise of the the Runelords, a module designed for Pathfinder that we converted to 5e. In book 1, there is a Goblin leader of something, I don't really remember because it was a while ago and they died in the first round as the two level 3 assassin's got surprise and took them out at the top of the first round. I feel like this was supposed to be a big combat or roleplay encounter. At the end of the day, I will likely never know
We were in the Vault of Reflection in the Dungeon of the Nine Gods, when we got to the “Boss” for that level, an invisible beholder named Belchorzh the Unseen. Our first attacker hit him with Faerie Fire, then the second hit him with Hold Monster and he couldn’t pass his Save for 3 tries in a row and we just teeed off on him, destroying it without it even getting a shot off at any of us.
The first fight in my campaign. Although they were meant to win, the thug was meant to survive. But our barb killed him in one hit. He was the whole plot hook.
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'The Cleverness of mushrooms always surprises me!' - Ivern Bramblefoot.
Saw one for first-time-playing Level 1 campaigners where the BBEG was a lone Druid - for whom the DM chose spells that he didn't realize were all Somatic. (Rogue is already hidden. First in initiative. Crit grapple check. BBEG bound. Encounter over.
Saw a 3rd level campaign where the DM decided an Owlbear. the BBEG, was "Beast"-like enough for Animal Friendship. Owlbear appears. Druid PC is first in Initiative. Owlbear fumbles save. Encounter over.
Granted, both times were the DM's fault. (Owlbear's a monstrosity, not a Beast. A Druid has mostly Somatic spells - 7 nonsomatic spells in total within PHB, EEPC, and XGtE.) ...but as the DM stated, "Sod it. It's fun."
Note: "Fumble" in old people terms means natural 1, critical 1, or critical fail in youngster speak. While not RAW for crits and fumbles on checks and saves despite being an extremely popular house rule, a dirty 1 or 20 wouldn't have changed the outcomes of the two encounters anyway.
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Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
My story was from the last session, when the party entered castle ravenloft (at lv. 4) for the first time. One of the players had requested his character died, and I was prepared to oblige. After a nice dinner with Strahd and his court, the sorlock (who wanted to die) went up to Strahd and blasted him in the face.
Strahd blocked the attack easily (15 to attack against 16 AC) and proceeded to beat the sorlock to death with his one action
I love the thought of just befriending the final boss.
"Hey, Owlbear, we know you've been terrorizing the local villagers and stuff, but do you wanna grab some brews and play some skeeball?"
The event was illustrated into a spell card by one of the audience. The spell card has the actual conversation that took place. (The DM makes them RP their attempts.)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Just yesterday, myself and the rest of my fourth-level party encountered a mimic, which would have been an interesting fight, because this was no normal mimic, it was the dreaded HOMEBREW. My char, a rogue 1 warlock 3, cast darkness. The rest of the party used only save spells and AOEs, all of which I saved if I was caught in them. I, having the devil's sight invocation, rolled with advantage every single turn. Within two rounds of combat, it was dead. My dm is going to be super wary of putting sight- reliant creatures in front of us now.
we were once cornered by the servant of an eldritch god. we were supposed to die, have our souls stolen, and be forced to unlock a portal from the gods realm to another world (it was a normal, earthly world, it's just a little hard to trick a bunch of people to destroy their own world). we don't know what god was on our side that day, but the servant rolled 5 critical failures in a row, while we had almost nothing but nat 20s. that's the story of how 5 1st levels beat Cthulhus' right hand man.
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I look out of my brain and I can understand it perfectly, I look into my brain and it's like an alien planet.
Saw one for first-time-playing Level 1 campaigners where the BBEG was a lone Druid - for whom the DM chose spells that he didn't realize were all Somatic. (Rogue is already hidden. First in initiative. Crit grapple check. BBEG bound. Encounter over.
Saw a 3rd level campaign where the DM decided an Owlbear. the BBEG, was "Beast"-like enough for Animal Friendship. Owlbear appears. Druid PC is first in Initiative. Owlbear fumbles save. Encounter over.
Granted, both times were the DM's fault. (Owlbear's a monstrosity, not a Beast. A Druid has mostly Somatic spells - 7 nonsomatic spells in total within PHB, EEPC, and XGtE.) ...but as the DM stated, "Sod it. It's fun."
Note: "Fumble" in old people terms means natural 1, critical 1, or critical fail in youngster speak. While not RAW for crits and fumbles on checks and saves despite being an extremely popular house rule, a dirty 1 or 20 wouldn't have changed the outcomes of the two encounters any
Just saying, grappling doesn't prevent somatic. If it doesn't impede attacks, it doesn't impede casting
Our party had been hired by an adventurers guild to investigate & deal with a colony of kobolds that had turned a nearby mine into their home.
Now...our DM had warned us that the stereotypical tropes of D&D may not apply in this campaign setting...
So our Level 2 adventurers got to the kobold colony, scouting it out. Our morally-questionable Warlock enchants some "Magic Stones" and gives them to our party members, and like a team of skilled snipers, we begin to pick off some kobold sentries with the thrown rocks.
We kill one, and injure another...a third kobold sees this happen, and tries to drag his wounded ally into the cave, calling out for help in Draconic...
Our party descends on the cave entrance as reinforcements arrive...our warlock keeps giving us "Magic Rocks", and we keep chucking them...we kill two more kobolds, and they begin to retreat into the mine.
At this point, we begin to sense something is...off. These kobolds don't seem to be putting up much of a fight; just mainly trying to run away.
That doesn't stop our warlock from throwing another rock...which hits the wounded kobold and finally kills them, dying in their friends arms.
The remaining kobolds look devastated, and our Fighter has had enough; he demands the remaining kobolds surrender.
They throw down their meagre weapons, and our group orders that they all exit the mine.
After some magically-enhanced translation, we discover that this group of kobolds are actually very peaceful...they even trade with a nearby town for goods.
Our adventuring guild had apparently been hired by someone who wanted access to the mines the kobolds were living in, and to deal with the kobolds.
And we...had just started massacring them without a second thought.
We tell the surviving kobolds to leave, and they do so without question...taking their children with them.
We inspect the mine, and there really isn't anything there...my paladin found a stuffed kobold doll, however, which must had belonged to one of the kobold children.
My paladin keeps it with them, as a reminder of the horrible deed they performed, emotionally-traumatized and seriously considering taking an "Oath of Redemption" to atone for what they did.
After the session, our DM said that there were checks we could have performed to determine the good-nature of the kobolds, but our group just chose to initiate combat.
It was one of our groups most morally-devastating moments.
Next session, my paladin confronted our patron about how the kobolds living there were peaceful, and the patron said that it was common knowledge (not common to our party, however).
My paladin SLUGGED the patron with their fist, knocking them on their ass.
So yeah...it was a one-sided fight for all the wrong reasons.
We were investigating a city that had been taken over by a foreign army, and we got ambushed in a back alley by a gang of goblins. The foreign army was pretty lawful, with no tolerance for violence in the city, plus we had a goblin in our own party, so we were going in for unarmed attacks and intimidation attempts to try and get them to give up. The bard used an upcast Chromatic Orb to try and knock one unconscious in a single round (they were statted higher than default goblin enemies, so on its own that wasn't overkill). However, he landed a crit and rolled extremely high on damage, targeting a goblin sorcerer with the least HP of the entire gang, dealing well more than double his target's total HP and just exploding him. The rest of the goblins scattered, but the guards weren't too happy to see a dead goblin, even if he was a criminal and the bard didn't try to talk his way out of his arrest, figuring he might learn something from the other prisoners.
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!
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!
I have the opposite problem. I roll really well for some reason, so I have to hold back sometimes. For example, my level 3 party was fighting some goblins, one of whom had 3 levels of battlemaster. One goblin landed a crit on the bard, then the battlemaster hit and rolled high on damage. Had I used a manuever, this would have knocked out the bard, and with no other healers in the party that could well have been it for the character. I chose to hold back and save the manuever, leaving the bard at 1hp
Dungeon of the Mad Mage. One combat, as level 6 characters, they took on 40 goblinoids at once, completely obliterated their battlefield. A later one had 10 Hook Horrors as a level 10 battle. They struggled against the hook horrors, surprisingly. They repeatedly took double or triple the book's amount of monsters in an encounter to make it more interesting.
A later combat, when they were level 15, I put in 1 Roc, 1 Warlord, 1 Diviner, and 1 Alhoon along with around 100 minion creatures, like gargoyles, spies, bugbears, intellect devourers, and archers. They also had a lot of siege weapons, around 12 ballistae and 6 alchemical-fire cannons. This combat took forever, but eventually ended with the party's monk having their brain replaced by an intellect devourer and teleported off of Skull Island with the Diviner and Alhoon. The party Wizard nearly died 3 times in the combat and ended the battle with only 2 second level spell slots left, the paladin fell from 200 feet up in the air after being caught by the Roc, which the wizard turned into a statue with Flesh to Stone, so they fell midair. The Warlord died after much fighting, the Roc was permanently turned into stone, the party leader, the paladin, dropped down to 0 hp twice, and the Artificer only took 12 damage in the whole combat (he was targeted by more attacks than most of the other characters, but his AC was so high, nothing could hit).
So, moral of the story: Balanced fights are hard. I thought they could take the battle, but they severely lost. They eventually got revenge and resurrected their monk, but the monk retired from too much PTSD from dying 3 times (disintegrated by xanathar, fireballed 5 times in a fight, and then his brain replaced by this intellect devourer).
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Two sessions ago, my group was agonizing over an encounter we were getting ready to fight. We'd fought both of the NPCs previously. One (a death cleric) kicked our faces in, and the other we'd defeated and captured after a tough battle....with some assistance. We were extremely low on party resources. Our barbarian|rogue was out of rages, the paladin|cleric was out of spell slots, my bard|warlock had one spell slot and 2 healing light dice left. The wizard hoarded his spell slots so he was GTG, but we were pretty nervous. The DM wanted us to take a rest, but we pushed back because it didn't make narrative sense. We expected a TPK.
What we DID have was a necklace of fireballs with three beads left on it. The plan was, I would hold the necklace up, and the barb would take a bead and throw it. Then the pala would take a bead and throw it. Then I'd throw the last one, and the wizard would slow. After the second bead, the DM allowed the death cleric to teleport out. The melee was nearly dead so I saved that last bead and just eldritch blasted him. The wizard then levitated him, and we proceeded to use him for target practice, I don't think I got a second round of attacks in.
The climactic encounter that the DM had been prepping for, that we agonized over...was over in two rounds and the DM never got to make a single attack. If the cleric had stuck around, I'd have thrown the last bead and probably completed the one-round.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
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Do you have any stories about combat encounters that were so curb-stomp that it was a bit funny? Not the standard Kill Five Dire Rats encounters, but actual battles that should be climatic but ended with either the players or the NPCs wiping the floor with the opposition with no trouble?
We managed to annoy a drow matron mother/ vampire, so she and her army marched up up to our party's town. On our side were four level 12 pc and a small handful of npc, while on the drow's side we had the matron mother, a drow inquisitor (also a vampire) a drow wizard, a blue dracolich and abouta dozen drow (also all vampires). As expected, we TPKed.
Hombrew: Way of Wresting, Circle of Sacrifice
Just happened a couple days ago. Playing ToA and our level 5 party runs into an actual Tyrannosaur in the jungle, 900ft off and mad as all get out. It charges at us, and we take it down in 5 rounds without so much as a scratch, rolling at disadvantage the entire time because of distance to the target.
That was the day we learned that Bless + Haste on the ranger and the fighter is downright ugly.
This was in Rise of the the Runelords, a module designed for Pathfinder that we converted to 5e. In book 1, there is a Goblin leader of something, I don't really remember because it was a while ago and they died in the first round as the two level 3 assassin's got surprise and took them out at the top of the first round. I feel like this was supposed to be a big combat or roleplay encounter. At the end of the day, I will likely never know
I exist, and I guess so does this
We were in the Vault of Reflection in the Dungeon of the Nine Gods, when we got to the “Boss” for that level, an invisible beholder named Belchorzh the Unseen. Our first attacker hit him with Faerie Fire, then the second hit him with Hold Monster and he couldn’t pass his Save for 3 tries in a row and we just teeed off on him, destroying it without it even getting a shot off at any of us.
The first fight in my campaign. Although they were meant to win, the thug was meant to survive. But our barb killed him in one hit. He was the whole plot hook.
'The Cleverness of mushrooms always surprises me!' - Ivern Bramblefoot.
I'll worldbuild for your DnD games!
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A shambling mound. My lvl. 4 players killed it in 3 rounds while taking only minor damage.
There is no dawn after eternal night.
Homebrew: Magic items, Subclasses
Saw one for first-time-playing Level 1 campaigners where the BBEG was a lone Druid - for whom the DM chose spells that he didn't realize were all Somatic. (Rogue is already hidden. First in initiative. Crit grapple check. BBEG bound. Encounter over.
Saw a 3rd level campaign where the DM decided an Owlbear. the BBEG, was "Beast"-like enough for Animal Friendship. Owlbear appears. Druid PC is first in Initiative. Owlbear fumbles save. Encounter over.
Granted, both times were the DM's fault. (Owlbear's a monstrosity, not a Beast. A Druid has mostly Somatic spells - 7 nonsomatic spells in total within PHB, EEPC, and XGtE.) ...but as the DM stated, "Sod it. It's fun."
Note: "Fumble" in old people terms means natural 1, critical 1, or critical fail in youngster speak. While not RAW for crits and fumbles on checks and saves despite being an extremely popular house rule, a dirty 1 or 20 wouldn't have changed the outcomes of the two encounters anyway.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I love the thought of just befriending the final boss.
"Hey, Owlbear, we know you've been terrorizing the local villagers and stuff, but do you wanna grab some brews and play some skeeball?"
Hombrew: Way of Wresting, Circle of Sacrifice
My story was from the last session, when the party entered castle ravenloft (at lv. 4) for the first time. One of the players had requested his character died, and I was prepared to oblige. After a nice dinner with Strahd and his court, the sorlock (who wanted to die) went up to Strahd and blasted him in the face.
Strahd blocked the attack easily (15 to attack against 16 AC) and proceeded to beat the sorlock to death with his one action
The event was illustrated into a spell card by one of the audience. The spell card has the actual conversation that took place. (The DM makes them RP their attempts.)
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Just yesterday, myself and the rest of my fourth-level party encountered a mimic, which would have been an interesting fight, because this was no normal mimic, it was the dreaded HOMEBREW. My char, a rogue 1 warlock 3, cast darkness. The rest of the party used only save spells and AOEs, all of which I saved if I was caught in them. I, having the devil's sight invocation, rolled with advantage every single turn. Within two rounds of combat, it was dead. My dm is going to be super wary of putting sight- reliant creatures in front of us now.
May all of your spells roll the best things for the situation on the wild magic table and all your checks to seduce dragons roll nat 20's
My first char (and namesake) Lili Scheppen!
Proud member of the cult of grammar! (grand inquisitor)
we were once cornered by the servant of an eldritch god. we were supposed to die, have our souls stolen, and be forced to unlock a portal from the gods realm to another world (it was a normal, earthly world, it's just a little hard to trick a bunch of people to destroy their own world). we don't know what god was on our side that day, but the servant rolled 5 critical failures in a row, while we had almost nothing but nat 20s. that's the story of how 5 1st levels beat Cthulhus' right hand man.
I look out of my brain and I can understand it perfectly, I look into my brain and it's like an alien planet.
Just saying, grappling doesn't prevent somatic. If it doesn't impede attacks, it doesn't impede casting
I exist, and I guess so does this
Our party had been hired by an adventurers guild to investigate & deal with a colony of kobolds that had turned a nearby mine into their home.
Now...our DM had warned us that the stereotypical tropes of D&D may not apply in this campaign setting...
So our Level 2 adventurers got to the kobold colony, scouting it out. Our morally-questionable Warlock enchants some "Magic Stones" and gives them to our party members, and like a team of skilled snipers, we begin to pick off some kobold sentries with the thrown rocks.
We kill one, and injure another...a third kobold sees this happen, and tries to drag his wounded ally into the cave, calling out for help in Draconic...
Our party descends on the cave entrance as reinforcements arrive...our warlock keeps giving us "Magic Rocks", and we keep chucking them...we kill two more kobolds, and they begin to retreat into the mine.
At this point, we begin to sense something is...off. These kobolds don't seem to be putting up much of a fight; just mainly trying to run away.
That doesn't stop our warlock from throwing another rock...which hits the wounded kobold and finally kills them, dying in their friends arms.
The remaining kobolds look devastated, and our Fighter has had enough; he demands the remaining kobolds surrender.
They throw down their meagre weapons, and our group orders that they all exit the mine.
After some magically-enhanced translation, we discover that this group of kobolds are actually very peaceful...they even trade with a nearby town for goods.
Our adventuring guild had apparently been hired by someone who wanted access to the mines the kobolds were living in, and to deal with the kobolds.
And we...had just started massacring them without a second thought.
We tell the surviving kobolds to leave, and they do so without question...taking their children with them.
We inspect the mine, and there really isn't anything there...my paladin found a stuffed kobold doll, however, which must had belonged to one of the kobold children.
My paladin keeps it with them, as a reminder of the horrible deed they performed, emotionally-traumatized and seriously considering taking an "Oath of Redemption" to atone for what they did.
After the session, our DM said that there were checks we could have performed to determine the good-nature of the kobolds, but our group just chose to initiate combat.
It was one of our groups most morally-devastating moments.
Next session, my paladin confronted our patron about how the kobolds living there were peaceful, and the patron said that it was common knowledge (not common to our party, however).
My paladin SLUGGED the patron with their fist, knocking them on their ass.
So yeah...it was a one-sided fight for all the wrong reasons.
We were investigating a city that had been taken over by a foreign army, and we got ambushed in a back alley by a gang of goblins. The foreign army was pretty lawful, with no tolerance for violence in the city, plus we had a goblin in our own party, so we were going in for unarmed attacks and intimidation attempts to try and get them to give up. The bard used an upcast Chromatic Orb to try and knock one unconscious in a single round (they were statted higher than default goblin enemies, so on its own that wasn't overkill). However, he landed a crit and rolled extremely high on damage, targeting a goblin sorcerer with the least HP of the entire gang, dealing well more than double his target's total HP and just exploding him. The rest of the goblins scattered, but the guards weren't too happy to see a dead goblin, even if he was a criminal and the bard didn't try to talk his way out of his arrest, figuring he might learn something from the other prisoners.
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InsiderThe 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!
Find me on Twitter: @OboeLauren
I have the opposite problem. I roll really well for some reason, so I have to hold back sometimes. For example, my level 3 party was fighting some goblins, one of whom had 3 levels of battlemaster. One goblin landed a crit on the bard, then the battlemaster hit and rolled high on damage. Had I used a manuever, this would have knocked out the bard, and with no other healers in the party that could well have been it for the character. I chose to hold back and save the manuever, leaving the bard at 1hp
I exist, and I guess so does this
Dungeon of the Mad Mage. One combat, as level 6 characters, they took on 40 goblinoids at once, completely obliterated their battlefield. A later one had 10 Hook Horrors as a level 10 battle. They struggled against the hook horrors, surprisingly. They repeatedly took double or triple the book's amount of monsters in an encounter to make it more interesting.
A later combat, when they were level 15, I put in 1 Roc, 1 Warlord, 1 Diviner, and 1 Alhoon along with around 100 minion creatures, like gargoyles, spies, bugbears, intellect devourers, and archers. They also had a lot of siege weapons, around 12 ballistae and 6 alchemical-fire cannons. This combat took forever, but eventually ended with the party's monk having their brain replaced by an intellect devourer and teleported off of Skull Island with the Diviner and Alhoon. The party Wizard nearly died 3 times in the combat and ended the battle with only 2 second level spell slots left, the paladin fell from 200 feet up in the air after being caught by the Roc, which the wizard turned into a statue with Flesh to Stone, so they fell midair. The Warlord died after much fighting, the Roc was permanently turned into stone, the party leader, the paladin, dropped down to 0 hp twice, and the Artificer only took 12 damage in the whole combat (he was targeted by more attacks than most of the other characters, but his AC was so high, nothing could hit).
So, moral of the story: Balanced fights are hard. I thought they could take the battle, but they severely lost. They eventually got revenge and resurrected their monk, but the monk retired from too much PTSD from dying 3 times (disintegrated by xanathar, fireballed 5 times in a fight, and then his brain replaced by this intellect devourer).
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
Two sessions ago, my group was agonizing over an encounter we were getting ready to fight. We'd fought both of the NPCs previously. One (a death cleric) kicked our faces in, and the other we'd defeated and captured after a tough battle....with some assistance. We were extremely low on party resources. Our barbarian|rogue was out of rages, the paladin|cleric was out of spell slots, my bard|warlock had one spell slot and 2 healing light dice left. The wizard hoarded his spell slots so he was GTG, but we were pretty nervous. The DM wanted us to take a rest, but we pushed back because it didn't make narrative sense. We expected a TPK.
What we DID have was a necklace of fireballs with three beads left on it. The plan was, I would hold the necklace up, and the barb would take a bead and throw it. Then the pala would take a bead and throw it. Then I'd throw the last one, and the wizard would slow. After the second bead, the DM allowed the death cleric to teleport out. The melee was nearly dead so I saved that last bead and just eldritch blasted him. The wizard then levitated him, and we proceeded to use him for target practice, I don't think I got a second round of attacks in.
The climactic encounter that the DM had been prepping for, that we agonized over...was over in two rounds and the DM never got to make a single attack. If the cleric had stuck around, I'd have thrown the last bead and probably completed the one-round.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha