D&D 3.X Combat Stories

[Mulsiphix]

Maelstrom shared a wonderful encounter here. Anybody else have any awesome combat stories from your 3.X campaigns? Players and DM accounts welcome

[MortonStromgal]

The game I met my wife in she was playing a druid and I was a bard. The DM watched too much LOTRs and put down the smack with a Balor or whatever they are called. We somehow got the initiative (i think he was being nice) this was when we were level 3ish and I used ghost sound. The poor DM followed that up with double 1s rolled (His crit failure rule, we all had to roll in the middle of the table so everyone could see). My wife then followed it up with 3, 20s on her to hit (DMs rules for instant kill)... we gained a lot of levels that day.

[Mulsiphix]

The DM watched too much LOTRs and put down the smack with a Balor or whatever they are called.

That would be a Balrog

[MortonStromgal]

Nope Balor
http://www.systemreferencedocuments....ml#balor-demon
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/un...lery/Balor.jpg
I knew what Tolkien called them, I couldn't remember what D&D called them

[Riftwalker]

As would this:

[Mulsiphix]

Looks like the same thing to me, aesthetically at least. Where in LOTR was there a Balor?

Balrog was awesome in Street Fighter 2

[Drohem]

Where in LOTR was there a Balor?

It doesn't exist in Lord of the Rings. There was a Balrog in LotR.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balrog

In Dungeons & Dragons, a Balor is a powerful type of demon from the Abyss.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balor_%...%26_Dragons%29

[MortonStromgal]

What he said, they look similar though thus my comment about the DM watching to much LOTRs because he chose to stick a Balor up against a 3rd level party.

[Mulsiphix]

Fair enough. Now MORE BALROG!!

[upidstay]

I had a DM with a thing for Terrasques. He ran us up against one. We were playing some older characters, all fairly high level. It made paste of the local army guard sent to fight it. We put a Daerns Instant Fortress into an Otilukes Telekinetic Sphere, and then proceeded to whack the thing on the snout with it. It snapped at it, got it in it's mouth, and then we activated the fortress. Instant 100' Iron tower in it's mouth. Still didn't kill it, but it allowed us to finish it off.

[upidstay]

A Balrog versus a 3rd level party? Did any of you make it to the 3rd round of combat?

[nijineko]

check out this journal of one of my characters:

Excerpts from the Journals of Talaelowar Ki'yik



and in other news, i once managed to defeat an adult blue dragon (almost) single-handedly. (i was certainly the only character in combat with the dragon!) here is an excerpt from that character's first adventure:

one of the first d&d adventures i ever played was B2:Keep on the Borderlands. i made up a fighter character, and with an 18:59 STR, i thought i was doing pretty well. he rolled lucky on the random psionic tables too, had a few powers on the side. As we are going along, he manages to find some full plate, sans helmet, and he has a decent sword to boot. we enter this one room, (a storeroom? a kitchen?) and he inspects some jars, only to be attacked by a giant centipede.

oh, i should probably mention that the dm had a house rule that whomever fought a monster got first pick of it's loot, if any. also whomever explored any give area, likewise got first pick. so this led to some interesting party dynamics. as in the theif did not always get to search a place first. hehehe.

i kept finding treasure i couldn't use! grrr. =( like the scrolls of fireball.... that prompted me to talk to the dm and request to multi-class into fighter-mage. which request he granted. ^^ (yea!) so the adventure progressed, we beat the ogre, cleared out some orcs, and the skeletons too i think. eventually, i was a 4/3 fighter-mage. hero/thaumaturge? and then it happened.

we find our way into a chapel lined with coffins and this nasty blood-covered alter. checking the coffins caused a nice "discussion" concerning treasure found, respect for the deceased, and alignment. ^^ fortunately, my oh so very lucky discovery of a wight in it's coffin of treasure, helped settle the argument. and the rest of the party even helped me out once the dm reminded them about the only-combatants-get-the-loot rule. cheh. i wound up carrying most of the treasure anyhow, due to my STR. at last i had finally found something i could use! too bad that the helmet i found in the wight's horde was a Cursed Helm of Alignment Change. poor former lawful-good fighter me.

the dm takes me aside and explains the situation to me. i reluctantly go along with it. it isn't long before my inept attempts at evil are met with outrage and threats from the rest of the party. finally, one of the party has had enough and actually attacks me. something to do with tossing a cruse of oil followed by a torch into the room where the thief was trying to search. on the thief. i'm surprised that they let me get away with as much as they did. anyhow i actually managed to do enough damage to the party that they were in fear of thier lives. they kept missing me. almost cleaved the cleric's arm off.... anyhow, someone finally manages to sneak up behind me and clobbers me, knocking me out. and blessed be whoever it was that made the connection between the helmet and my changed behavior, and checked it for magic.

so they take me back to the castle where a wandering sage (thanks, dm!) was able to cast remove curse. happy me, the helmet gave me the ability to levitate at will, silence up to 15' radius, adjustable, also at will, and up to 3 magic missles a day! =D unfortunately, the party deemed this sufficent reason for me not to get any other treasure for a while. =P next we find a dragon's lair, (i think here was where we wandered off the 'official' map down that section marked 'caves of the unknown'. so our dm started making up stuff.) after arguing wether a party of about 8 or 9 6-8th level pc's could take on a mature dragon, (and wonders be) wisdom actually prevailed, so we moved on.

next, we find this passageway that is blocked off by rubble, and the cleric has been finding these potions of gaseous form, so we use one and check out the far side of the passage. turns out that it opens into a room with six doors. who could resist? so we move enough rubble to crawl through. on the far side we start opening doors. after some experimentation, it is figured out that the rooms behind the doors are switching places every time a door is opened and closed. the only way to 'pin' a room down is to wedge the door open.

after getting hit by the same dart trap closet a few times we learn to stand clear of the door once it is opened. we also find a room with an erie greenish glow, with a pool in the middle. the pool appears to be water, but the bottom of the pool is this glowing green something. so, of course a few of the party jumps in for a swim. the two rouges and the ranger, if i recall correctly. and at least one of them goes down to the bottom to touch the glowey whatever-it-is.

another room/hall we find has these ranks of red and black candles on either side, which light upon opening the door, and something towards the very back of the area. we didn't get too good of a look. flashbacks of too many saturday morning kung fu specials running through my head, i'm freaking out and insisting that we run from this room, and fast. amazingly everyone agreed. and then the fateful room was discovered.

this room had three walls of different colors. red, blue and green. plus the stone wall in which the door was. someone touched the blue wall and promptly got sucked in. more experiments led to more sucking (haha). finally the cleric and i tossed a rope into the corner of two walls and the cleric got sucked into the green wall, while i managed to let go. so left all alone, i figured, 'what the hey,' and touched the red wall. *slurp*

we woke up an unknown (dm slipped up and mentioned something about an hour, heheh.) amount of time later and found that we had been altered. the cleric's potions of gaseous form were missing, but he could now turn into gaseous form a couple of times a week. some of the others could now generate lightning sparks at a short range for a moderate amount of damage, but couldn't wear anything metal. and my armor and helm were missing! (cry) or so i thought, until i tried to get up. and promptly fell over with a clatter. the armor had been fused with my skin. so i look normal, but my skin has most of the properties of my armor. fortunately the magic abilities of the helm still worked, so i used the silence ability to avoid clanking. i figured i could deal with the deafness.

sadly, we never continued much further from that point, as the rest of the group wound up getting interested in what remained of scout camp.... ^^ needless to say, that while i didn't get many merit badges that year, d&d forever after became a part of my life. =D

here is chapter two of his tale:

i am happy to report that the character's story continued even if that adventure did not. years later i decided to stop just fondly reminising about him, and brought him back. this time he shows up in rifts, having just been sucked through a random rift. struggling to adapt, he eventually finds his way into an order of mindknights. the nifty psiblade goes nicely with his armor-skin condition. he adventures for a few levels, going through the a.r.c.h.i.e. adventure and some other randomness.

then another completely unrelated character from rifts gets sucked into a d&d world, (gotta love random unstable rifts), he's a mind melter with a glitterboy that he picked up somewhere... unfortunately some elemental possibly cross-planar entity takes a liking to his suit and takes it from him. he's not real big into death, so he lets the exceedingly powerful being have it, if somewhat begrudgingly. after some assorted minor adventures we find a deck of many things, and low and behold he draws the 'gain a fighter ally' type card. guess who?

yup, good old fighter-mage, now mindknight, back from rifts! very happy to be back as well. again that particular adventure dies out a short time after that.... but now having established his return from rifts, he continues his adventures by wandering the world and finally into an oriental-type part of the world. he is following the road towards a town when overhead a blue dragon flys by, spooking his horse. heading right towards the town. a wounded blue dragon.... a town famous for it's healing spring.... did i mention that he happens to have a dragon-slaying sword keyed to blue dragons? next chapter: "how to take on a really big dragon 'single-handedly' and live to tell the tale!"

chapter 3!

where were we in our interesting tale... oh, yes. having finally gotten his horse under control, the intrepid hero continues heading towards the town. arriving some hours later, he secures lodging for his horse and himself and begins sounding out the surronding town. his efforts, however, tip his hand and soon a rumor is sweeping the town that he is planning on saving the town from the dragon singlehandedly!! needless to say, this was not quite his intention when he began asking questions about the dragon and the town's defenses and likely response. soon a crowd gathers and accosts him, proclaiming him their savior, and pleading for help from the dragon. the rather pretty girl with the scornful look in her eyes and a demeanor most negitive (who also happened to be one of the two town mages) had nothing to do with his acquesience.

really.

honestly.

okay, maybe a little to do with it. (sheesh. give a guy a break. so he wanted to prove her wrong. =P)

discovering that the other town mage was her mother and that the two of them were very much on the outs with each other didn't help much. especially after it came to light that the town was pretty much divided between thier two opinions. (good grief, now i've gotta mend a family, sway the two differening camps of thought into something ressembling agreement, and save the town from the dragon. all in a weeks work. aiya!)

so after a rather public request, which he felt he couldn't refuse, (thanks dm! =P ) he accepted upon condition of assistance from the town. which assistance would not be made a point of in front of the dragon. of course. some of the town figured that tithing to the dragon would not be too bad and didn't want to make it angry and revengeful, the other group wanted to kick it out back where it came from. i negotiated a deal where i would appear to represent the minority who wished to fight the dragon, and would challenge it to single combat. making it clear to the dragon that the majority of the town was against this, and figured to get rid of me and my noisy 'bad' influence by sending me off to fight with the dragon.... this more or less appeased the 'kiss up to the dragon' group. and of course, made the 'kill the dragon' group happy. so with that i begin gathering my 'assistance'.

figuring that my story of a disgruntled reactionary villager would not fly with my non-oriental features, i first requested some appropriate garb, as well as a make-over to make me look as close as possible with disguise efforts. layering on top of that a disguise self, and some practice with the accent was the best i could do in the week or two i had. (did i mention the dragon's deadline for a tribute from the town as a gesture of good faith?)

to be continued in part two of "how to kill a dragon single-handedly (almost)!"

chapter 4....

so i begin wandering around town getting errands done. here's what my to-do list might have looked like.

1) hire the weaponsmith to attach an ~3' steel pole to the hilt of my dragonslaying sword (blue) +2, such that it will be balanced somewhat forward of the middle of the new length. should end up with something like a modified longspear.

2) buy and have fitted some clothing typical of the local townspeople.

3) speak to the owner of the largest herd of cattle, and acquire two of them, with a double-yoke included. nice fat cattle, not scrawny little ones.

4) keep that daughter away from the mother! good grief they can argue.... send her on a 'diplomatic' mission to find an old veteran that still lives in the town and arrange for a meeting. show suitable respect!

4 & 1/2) not a to-do item per se, but discovered that the mother is not, in fact, a mage, but a cleric. and not just any cleric, but the high priestess of the local religion. to whom the healing pool in question belonged. putting a whole religious spin on the little family quarrel. lovely.

5) follow up on the weaponsmith, and see how it is coming along. finding that he is already finished, i commission the next item- a wide mouthed bell-shaped piece to be attached to the sword, surrounding the original hilt, and open at the bottom.

6) buy about a pound of loose unwoven carded cotton from the weaver.

7) go talk to the herdowner in person and convince him that, yes, this is really necessary for the salvation of the town, and wouldn't he rather give up two cattle instead of his whole herd to the dragon?

8 ) meet with the aformentioned veteran, and indicate that my sword is not going to be available to me, and would he happen to have a sword whose honor demands that it be carried into combat against this foe on his behalf? and would he be pleased to train me in how to use it properly? begin meeting with him for several hours each morning and evening.

9) send the daughter off on another errand (my, but she's cute when she's angry, *erhm* she sure is angry an awful lot!) this time to find a child who owns a toy wagon, and who would be willing to give it up for the purpose of slaying the dragon. we hold a solemn ceremony to paint the wagon with it's new dragonslaying colors. daughter seems impressed with how well i get along with children.

10) visit the leather worker to commission a custom harness made of straps. pick up some wicks and tallow from a nearby candlery, and some common lamp oil.

11) meeting with the mother to reassure her that, yes, i really do have an idea for how to slay the dragon. discover that she, like most somewhat estranged parents just want what is best for her daughter, was disappointed that she did not follow in her footsteps into the clergy-but persued what seemed to be a waste of time back then studying arcane arts... but now she just wants to be able to talk to her daughter again; doesn't know how to overcome her pride, or how to take back all the previous years of angry arguments. oh, and by the way, does this town have an alchemist?

12) meeting with the rest of the town council to convince them of my sanity and viable plan. propose that an order of celebration fireworks is put into the town alchemist, and the word spread about confidence in victory. planning for a celebration is begun. (as in, distract the suits so i can work, already!)

13) follow up on the smith again, this time to commission a tube about four feet long, hollow and completly open at one end with a hole in the seam about two handspans from the end, and a bulb at the far end, one side of the bulb flattened at an odd angle. on this tube are welded some handhold-like metal pegs all along it's length. several thinly beaten layers are welded around the assemblely for strength before the pegs are added. noting the nice thinly beaten layers, i ask him to add a few triangular blades to my highly modified sword just about where the hilt and the bell join. this appears to be able to be done by just under the deadline. i'm actually helping him forge the thing, acting as a mostly unskilled apprentice. daughter's expectations of the haughty stuck-up won't get his hands dirty hero seem to have been somewhat shattered.

14) visit the alchemist and convince him to part with some of the fireworks, along with handling instructions and assurances that i'm not interested in the secrets of making the fireworks, i'm just trying to get the dragon.

15) finding a child who is willing to give up a toy wagon, to help slay the dragon.

and so at long last i have gathered all the tools i need to successfully (i hope) slay the dragon.

(to be continued next time in chapter three: "how to (maybe) kill a dragon with a mastercard commercial." )

(ps: bonus points to anyone who actually figures out how i did it with the above mentioned stuff before my next post. )

[Maelstrom]

Very interesting stories for that PC.

Ok, so he has a toy wagon, two work-capable cows with a yoke, a pound of cotton, a harness, lamp oil, candle wicks and tallow, and a veteran's sword.

In addition, a couple contraptions:
A dragonslayer sword mounted on a pole like a longspear. This has a bell shaped metal piece around the old hilt, and with a couple extra blades attached to it.

A hollow tube with metal pegs along its length.

From the above clues, I would guess that the sword/spear is going to be used like a lance. Because the cattle are considered sacrificial, I think they will be used as part of the attack. I further conjecture that the dragonslayer lance will be attached via the open tube and custom harness to the cattle.

I'm not sure about the rest... maybe the oil will be situated to douse the dragon as the lance skewers it, with the wicks set to the right length to be a fuse to start the oil on fire (being a blue, this dragon is not immune to fire).

Then cometh the mageknight to attempt to finish off the confused, burining, and heavily injured dragon.

Just a guess

[upidstay]

The spear will be in the tube, attached to the custom yoke. Cattle will be sent forth in a mini stampede, skewering the dragon. They will be towing the little wagon, which will have the lamp oil covered by the wool, soaked in a little oil, with a few candles set in it to act as a primitive fuse. Did it work?

[nijineko]

as promised, your commercial:

hiring a weaponsmith to make some radical modifications to your sword of (blue) dragonslaying +2: ~30gp.

traditional native garb with accompaning makeover: ~10gp 2sp.

a brace of cattle with yoke: ~35gp.

a pound of cotton: ~2gp.

hiring the leatherworker to make a custom leather harness: ~25gp.

tallow, wicks and some lamp oil: ~4gp.

hiring the smith to make a big hollow metal tube with a hole punched in the side a flat bottom and pegs welded to it: ~150gp.

buying some fireworks from the local alchemist: ~200gp.

training in how to walk, talk, act, and swordfight like a native: free, courtesy of fear of being eaten by a dragon.

the look on your dungeonmaster's face when: you open the fireworks, pour the almost all the powder down into the tube followed by the cotton, roll the leftover powder into the lampoil soaked wicks and coat them in tallow sealing the hole in the side with an improvised wick, placing the flat bottom on the child's wagon so that it will move freely with the oxen, attaching the tube with the leather harness to the yoke of oxen, having the local mage cast invisibility and the local cleric cast silence upon the whole contraption, and he suddenly realizes that you've managed to build a working cannon out of your dragonslaying sword right under his nose:

oh so very, very, priceless.


(next chapter in this tale, the recounting of the fight!)

(ps: to be fair, my character had been wandering the oriental setting for quite some time. i was surprised that my dm didn't twig to it when i started asking detailed questions about the setting, and availability of materials. and i happened to have just finished watching some post-apocalyptic dragon-slaying movie, which is what gave me the idea.)