Aratsym's Big Heist

Here we are, arrived in some town or another for the night.  Everyone's got lodging at the local inn[1], and we're looking for ways to kill time.  Kink's already passed out and locked in his room (can't hold his beer, yknow), and Aratsym is getting bored, and looking to prove his skill as a thief.  So he gathers up his tools, hops out his window, and goes looking for a nice mansion to rob, which isn't hard.  So he's standing in this square outside the place, trying to figure out how to get past the shuttered windows, when a couple of guards walk into the same square.

Guard: Halt!  What are you doing out at this hour?
Aratsym: Uh...walking!  Yes, that's it!  Taking a walk!
Guard: I see.  And why are you stopped outside of this very large and impressive mansion?
Aratsym: (spots a handy well nearby) Uh, I was thirsty.  Very thirsty.
Guard: I see.  Don't they have water at your inn?
Aratsym: Well, certainly.  But I wasn't thirsty when I started the walk, see.
Guard: Ah.
Kink: (has somehow escaped, and comes wandering into the square singing sea shanties at the top of his lungs)
Everyone: (turns to stare)
Aratsym: Uh, hi Kink.  I think we need to be getting you back to the inn.
Guard: Good idea.

So we all left and went to bed.  Aratsym decided to not pull any more jobs after that.

[1] - Though beforehand, Aratsym loudly proclaimed that he wasn't going to pay any stinking inn fees, and he was going to camp like a real ma...elf.  Whereupon he was set upon in his sleep by a very large rat, which proceeded to almost kill him.  He bought a room in the inn.

Some Very Dangerous Bugbears

We're on the road at some point, maybe about level two or three.  Somehow or another, we're fighting these bugbears.  Vicious suckers.  And the six or seven of us in the fight are getting absolutely rocked by these things, never mind the presence of a couple of decent fighters in the crowd.  And here's Tron, kicked back on a rock, watching the whole thing.

Everyone: Tron!  Help!  We're getting slaughtered by bugbears!
Tron: Nah.  You're all doing fine.
(somebody goes down)
Everyone: No, really!
Tron: Nah.  You'll be ok.
(somebody else goes down)
Everyone: Dammit, help!
Tron: Well, ok.  I suppose.  (dispatches bugbears in short order)

The Flametongue

Tron, at one point fairly early in the game, picked up a flametongue longsword.  And he loved that thing to pieces.  Used it every chance he got, for everything.  It started the campfires.  It heated the tea.  It heated the bathwater, even.  Every so often, it actually killed somebody.  But it had one rather spectacular use...

We were in this tower, looking for something pretty much like a palantir, except Sauron wasn't going to drive you mad if you used the thing.  At any rate, our efforts were being thwarted by the presence of a pair of Necrophidius golems, nasty little bone suckers which among other things paralyze.  But we had a plan: Dump a LOT of oil and such on the things, and set it off with the flametongue.  Sounded good.  Was going great, right up until the time came for Tron to set the fireworks off, and the golems paralyzed him.  The rest of us were bloody, beat up, and about to get seriously killed.  So Aratsym runs up, has to strength check Tron's arm into position, and...FWOOMP!  No more golems.  And there was much rejoicing.

Praying to Ao

We were on an in-character roleplaying kick, for some reason.  So at one point, we're like "Kink!  Kink!  Get down and pray!"  So Randy falls down the floor clutching his leg and screaming "Ow!  Ow!  Charlie horse!"  Realize that in the Forgotten Realms there's a certain overlord of the gods named Ao...

Elk?

We're at the very end of the campaign.  Everyone has decided they'd rather be playing FR, and dad agreed, so we decided to send our characters to nice deaths.  So we're holed up in this abandoned fort...

DM: You see some large shapes moving behind the treeline.
Kink: (hopeful little grin) Elk?
DM: No.  No no no.

Ettins and elk are at least similar, in one small little way.  Goblins and wargs, not so much.  The hobgoblins that Aratsym took on singlehandedly and lost to, not so much either.  But a few of us managed to go out in a blaze of glory...

Tron: Right.  I'm loading up my hat with everything.  Greek fire, lamp oil, oil of fiery burning, you name it.  And then I'm throwing it at that ettin there.
DM:  Uh...BOOM!

We moved on to FR after that.

Famous Phrases

"Dungeons and Orcs" : A campaign where there are a lot of orcs.  A whole lot of orcs.  Entire sessions of nothing but orcs.  Well, there was the beholder that one time, but he had a lot of orc flunkies.  Orcs, orcs, and more orcs.  That's what we were in for.

[1] - The beholder fight was...interesting.  We're down in this huge cavern, scouting the place.  And here comes a whole bunch of orcs, led by a beholder.  Hell, we're level 5, we've never seen a beholder before.  So, we're trying to figure out what to do, and we're like "Well, we can kill it.  I think."  So we hide in some rocks, the beholder comes by, and sure enough, between Jason's characters knives and my acidball, the beholder doesn't even have time to be surprised.  The army of orcs, on the other hand, took a while.  I mean, they couldn't hit us, and I could only kill ten or twenty in a single acidball spell (I had a lot of acidballs).  But the orcs eventually got tired of the whole show, and ran away, whereupon we, being us, jumped on horses and rode off down this underground tunnel after them.  Right into an orcish fireball spell.  Most of us go flying and get charred.  Jason, though, had this sword which projected a 2' antimagic field, so he was fine, and the horse got charred, and he and the non-charred bit of horse went flying with a somewhat surprised look on his face.

"Bob's Magic Items" : Of which the forementioned antimagic sword was one, Clyos' later axes were too, and Kink's vorpal trident was another.  You can blame the Encyclopedia Magica books.  We sure as hell did.  Why Bob's?  Because all of the munchkin, underpriced, overpowered items in the books had some guy's name tacked on.  And of course, we were all unrepentant munchkins, back in the day.  This ended up becoming a serious problem in our second FR game, but that antimagic sword was the start of things.

This is about where it all went wrong.  I mean, Skills and Powers was out, and we were using it.  And anybody who's ever played Skills and Powers knows what a rediculous munchfest it was.  To compound the problem, I was freely allowing Bob's items all over the place.  The antimagic sword came back.  Clyos had a pair of absolutely ridiculous axes.  Kink had a trident that autokilled on natural 20s.  Very bad.  These people were running around with 10th-level kinds of power at more like 5th level.  But paradoxically, this was one of the best campaigns we ever played.

Jaws and the Blue Dragon

Two separate fights, two different times.  But both showcase the whole munchkinism thing.  So first there's Jaws.  They're all on a boat, heading down to Amn.  So I decide to toss in this giant shark, because, well, that's the thing to do.  So I whip up this >100 hp shark, really respectable attacks, damage, the whole bit.

Clyos takes it down on the first round.

Well, shit.  That won't do.  So I fake it 300 more hp, and we keep going.  Jaws makes it all of three rounds before going down.  It was very disheartening.

So they go for this blue dragon.  It had, as I recall, the thing they needed to make the antimagic sword work again.  So they walk in, wake it up, it fries the living crap out of half the party.  Jason wanders off for the treasure hoard, leaving Kink of all people to fight the dragon all by himself.  I'm thinking "Ah-ha!  Got them now!"  So what happens?  Those of you guessing "He rolled a nat 20 on the attack roll, thus instantly slaying the dragon and getting all kinds of max experience" are absolutely correct.  Frightening bunch of characters.  Truly frightening.

Koth

We're in what we'd later recognize is, if not the single best session we've ever had, pretty close to it.  The party's mission, should they choose to accept it, and they did, is to infiltrate a city under seige by an entire army of humanoids (Sythillis for those of you who know FR canon, known as Syphilis to us), and rescue the sage they need to talk to.  And I'm ad-libbing this gigantic war with nothing more than a tiny little note sheet and a map, and it's going great.  They actually do rescue the sage and infiltrate the city, and they're recuperating in the main castle about the time the enemy works up enough magic to open portals into the castle.  Troops are pouring in, the party's fighting like hell, and they eventually break into the great hall.  A huge portal opens, and a bunch of knights come charging out, along with this big bad cleric dude.  Koth was his name.  So we're here at the most climactic battle of the entire campaign, cavalry bearing down on the wounded party, and Koth decides to go for a flamestrike.

I shit you not, I rolled all 1s and 2s on that flamestrike.  The most it did to anybody was like 5 damage.  Absolutely humiliating.  So Koth got the hell out of Dodge, and the party cleaned up handily.

Jordy

At one point or another, the sea voyage to Amn needed some help, so I added Jordy the first mate.  Your typical old salty sailor type, except that whenever the ship would get in a fight, the party would be hard-pressed somewhere, and I'd say something to the effect of "Oh, and Jordy's over there kicking some ass."  Pirates, sahuagin, you name it.  The legend of Jordy grew great amongst the party, and you'd swear that, if Jordy were there, he'd consume the enemy with lightning from his eyes, and fireballs from his arse, as it were.

Kazim's Last Moments, and the Kobold From Hell

At one point, we were playing with a critical hit system of my devising, which while simple, sometimes gave some pretty amazing results.  Hence why, when exploring a certain drow temple to rescue Jason's kidnapped master, Kazim the NPC bard suddenly looked very surprised as a drow shortsword, a not very powerful drow shortsword, suddenly did on the order of x9 damage and killed him instantly.

On the same note, a certain character of Cole's, in a totally separate FR game, was wandering through a kobold-infested dungeon, when lo and behold, some kobold actually gets in a hit.  And it's a crit.  And it's a BIG crit.  And your seventh level guy just dropped to a kobold, Cole.  Sorry about that.  This was, I believe, the character of the infamous left-forearm.  Every single time he got in a fight, it seemed as if some random enemy would get a minor critical on his left forearm, and nowhere else.  Just one of those things.

The Syphilis Castle Assault

I forget most of the actors in this one, but the story itself is something of a cautionary legend amongst the group.  The premise is that Cole's evil brother is leading a bunch of orcs for everybody's favorite ogre mage, Syphilis.  So the idea is to infiltrate the castle and kill the guy, then escape on the party's magic carpet.  Well, ok.  So they disguise themselves as hired mercenaries, walk up to the castle, and ask to go see the main evil dude.  Well, ok.  They get past the first bunch of guards.  The second bunch of guards, outside the main gate of the castle, ask a perfectly reasonable question: "What do you want to see him for?"  The party thinks about this for a moment, shrugs, and kills the guards.  In the ensuing fight, the main evil dude indeed dies, and they narrowly escape with their lives, because I was feeling benevolent.  The moral of the story is: Do not frontal assault the castle.  It doesn't work well.

The Dragon and the Carpet

Or, how to end a campaign in style.  Scattered recollections from a chaotic city battle the party was involved in, once again against the forces of Syphilis and Koth.

The party is fighting a group of giants down the street.

DM: Yeah, Cole.  Big flaming rock hits you.

"Oh, by the way, the giants are on fire" has become an oft-mentioned story amongst the group, too.

At any rate, they finally clean up the giants, and they end up facing down Koth, Koth's flunky, and a black dragon.  And they're losing pretty hard.  So Brian's looking in the DMG at the carpets, and he's like "You know, these things go pretty fast, if you think about it.  Hundred-odd feet in six seconds?  That's fast."  Yeah, we finally decided, that was probably pretty true.

So everyone leaps on the carpet, gets it going, and rams the dragon at full speed.  End of dragon.  End of characters.  End of campaign.

Kyle and John

Recently, we ran a one-shot Undermountain game.  Trouble was, nobody rolled up a rogue.  And in the ultimate dungeon, you need a rogue.  So Kyle's like "Erik.  Can't you just bring back John the NPC rogue?"  "Well, you sure about that?  I mean, if you'll remember, John was the guy who failed his first disarm check, and got fried dead by a fireball trap.  Do you REALLY want that sort of thing going on this time?"

They rolled a new rogue.

So, here we are.  It's the first night of the campaign.  Jenareth, the main evil general, has just ridden into town and started leveling the place.  We're evacuating pretty fast, with this prince in tow.  But not fast enough to not run into Jenareth.  But, you know, we're old hat at this power character game.  One round, and Jenareth is running like hell, and we're going the other way.  We get out of the city, and we're safe.  So what happens?  Kyle's like "I'm bored, and I hate my character.  I kill the Prince."  And he does.  And is then killed by everyone else in return.

Uh, yeah.  That changed the campaign a little bit.

We had some...quirky characters that time around.  Take Joe, the high-int rogue with a LOT of skill points.  It's now become fashionable to say "Well, I haven't got quite as many skill points as Joe, but I'm working on it."  Me, I liked Valerius.  He's the bard, mind you.  The bard who ALWAYS kicks the door down.  Sure, he gets possessed by a ghost the first time he does it, but that's ok.  The ghost went away.  So he does it again.  20th level barbarian/sorcerers are slightly harder to get rid of, we note.  You'd think I'd learn my lesson at that point.  But no.  But no.

So the whole thing is that Ye Olde Goode Kingdome is getting screwed hard by the Forces of Evil, of whom Jenareth is like, Second Main Evil Badguy.  We're not sure who the main evil badguy is, but we know it's some sort of female supermage.  You'd be forgiven for thinking that we might connect that little fact with the fact that the daughter of the good king is not only in training to be a mage, she's conspicuously absent all the time.  

But no.  But no.  Instead, it gets revealed when she dramatically shows up to kick the hell out of us.  This leads to a particularly entertaining fight scene in which, after arguing about how the evildoers teleported into the teleport-proof room ("They, you know, teleported in outside and walked in maybe?") turned into a pretty complex melee, wherein Kyle was holding the door against an efreeti and the rest of us were trapped in the room.  So Brian gets the great idea that Joe is going to leap over Kyle's head and behind the efreeti.  "Uh, Brian, you do realize that's a six inch gap between Kyle and the top of the door, and Kyle's swinging a weapon?"  "I can make it!  I can make it!"  (cue half-hour argument on the physics of fitting people through door frames)  "Fine.  I can't make it."  At this point, Cole gets the idea that "Hey, I've got this badass throwing hammer!  I'll chuck it at the efreeti!"  "Uh, Kyle's in the way."  "That's ok.  Hey Kyle, duck!"  "Wha...<clonk>"  Well, the three of us dealt with the efreeti better than Kyle, anyway.

So we're at the ruins of this city, waiting for Jenareth to show up and attempt to claim some artifact or another.  And he does.  And Cole and I randomly go invis, wander into the city after him, and wander back after him, at which point the entire party springs an ambush that has us fighting a whole troop of a couple hundred enemies, plus some mages, plus Jenareth.  Nevertheless, we've almost got Jenareth down.  So his mage flunkies erect a wall of force to protect him.  Thinking quickly, I drop a confusion spell on the area.  His ONE mage makes the save, and teleports him out.  Argh.

The king, at one point, gave us some serious magic item access.  And I don't know if you've ever had +4 distance/returning arrows, but they're a lot of fun.  "Hey Jason.  You know that guy, clear out in the besieging army like a mile off?  Yeah.  I just shot him dead."

We picked up this elf king for a while.  Buff guy.  Had an uberspear and armor that acted like normal clothes, gave enormous sneak/hide bonus, and something like +20 constitution.  And we're sneaking through this dungeon, ripping the hell of out of assorted 20th level slaadi assassins and such as that.  And we run into this enslaved, evil, silver dragon mount of the evil princess.  Arright, no problem.  We're taking it down, we're taking it down, the dragon randomly kills the elf king with the one hit it gets in, we're tak...wait a sec.  And he just gave ME his armor and spear, thus giving me the most hit points of anyone in our fighter-dominated party?  Right then.  Anyway.  So the dragon gets deafened by Cole's hammer's thunderclap power, and dies.

Somewhere in there, we realized that that was a LOT of magic items.  And we ended the whole thing.

So, things progress, and we're chasing some evildoers who have some stolen thing we desperately want back, not to mention ALL MY MAGIC ITEMS.  Grrrrrrr.  So we're looking for directions.

Kyle: Hey, old peddler dude!  Seen any evildoers lately?

Peddler: Can't say as I have, sonny.

Kyle: Well, um.  Man, you're useless.  I think I'll kill you.

So he does.  And we're like "Uh, Kyle?  Aren't you supposed to be like Lawful Good or something?"  "Oh yeah."

As to the chariot thing...we're riding along, still chasing the evildoers.  And we get ambushed by a bunch of knight types.  Eerth Sulp ends up wrecking his chariot.  So he's on foot, BEHIND the chariot.  And the knights are charging him.  And we're all like "Jason.  Aren't the knights flipping on the chariot, breaking themselves and the horses?"  "No, not at all."  (cue argument) "Ok, ok.  The knights are flipping all over the place."  And we're thinking "This is TOO weird."

So, through a convoluted series of events, we all turn on poor Eerth Sulp, and are chasing him down while he attempts to doom civilization.  And it's down to the last battle.  We've caught him, and if we don't stop him in like three rounds, he's going to end the entire world.  And, well, I'm totally out of attack spells.  And I'm like "Shit!  What do I do?  What do I do?  Wait a sec..."  So I summoned a horse over his head.  The mount spell is your friend.

And the world was thusly saved.