So, today is going to be quick since I'm a bit busier at work than normal which is where I usually get the chance to write these. Also, today I want this to be about you guys more than me. So fresh off of yesterday's topic on "wasting" your combat round, I want to ask you guys to share the stories of your favorite combat experiences you've ever had in game.
It doesn't matter if you were the GM, the Player, or just an observer that got to control an NPC. Lets hear the stories!
For me, I have two.
The first I mentioned yesterday, playing my rich boy ship captain William Hydesmythe III. The ship was under attack and no less than 3 people were all trying to take William down as the crew defended the ship. Faced with three opponents (and needing to look good) William just couldn't figure out how to deal with all three people at once so...he took a step back, lowered his sword tip to the ground and brought his other hand to his chin going. "Hold up a second, I need to figure out how I want to kill you three." Two rounds later, all three were dead and William didn't have a scratch on him. Everyone was really amused by that action too which was awesome.
The second is from a Dark Heresy game I am in. The three PCs (there are 4 of us, but one is rarely at table due to having to run the store) are a Psyker named Atellus, an Arbiter named Saris, and a Scum named Derrick (my character). In a fight with 18 special operations mercenaries instead of tactics we all just waltzed in. The highlights being Saris simply standing there, bouncing shots off his armor/toughness bonus while slowly killing people, which quickly became a Crowning Moment of Awesome when someone tried to unload a shotgun into his back. Saris looked over his shoulder and said "No!" the GM rolled 100 and the gun jammed.
The other highlight of the fight was the Psyker grinning at a man as he slowly reloaded his meat hammer (triple barrel shotgun). 2 rounds of loading later, someone else gets shot, the Psyker resumes to grin at a man frozen in fear and begins to slowly load shells in again.
So what about you? What are your favorite moments gaming has given you over the combat table?
Since so much of my career has been 'behind the GM Screen', some of my favorite combat moments have actually been my players'. One of the most memorable to me was the Star Wars mission that would later be referred to (in hushed tones) as "M13". Essentially, the party (a team of Rebel special operations guys) went to a remote facility (Station M13) to rescue a contact of theirs who had been captured by the Empire. Unfortunately, the whole thing was a trap, set up by a minor Sith Lord (Stromm). As the party realized what was going on, they tried to escape the base, only to run into Stromm and his small army, which included an AT-AT walker. I had expected the party to make a run for it. Instead? They attacked (with the thought of escaping THROUGH the bad guys). There were heroics on all sides, but the high-point for me was when one character aimed a landspeeder at the walker and another (a Force user) spent a force point to use his telekinesis as a kind of 'ramp'. Both bailed out as the Landspeeder lept into the air and crashed right into the head of the Walker, crippling it. And that seemed to set the stage for all of the group's future encounters with Stromm. Between their ingenuity (and sometimes outright insanity) and my bad dice rolling for the bad guys (seriously, Stromm was cursed), the Sith Lord could NEVER catch a break.
ReplyDeleteOne of mine is Katana's finest hour, from Katana: Sword Against Evil, the adventures of a renegade ninja who has set out to destroy the evil that spawned him. This incident was back in the 80s.
ReplyDeleteLocation: a small room several floors up in a block of flats (apartment block).
Situation: a damsel in distress.
The immediate problem: Sumo- whose bulk and powers in that confined space deprived Katana of the advantages of his superhuman agility and of his deadly martial arts; and Sai- whose twin blades were a lethal threat. Defeating the pair looked very unlikely- long and bloody for sure, and there was a wounded innocent to consider.
So Katana grabbed the woman under one arm and promptly fodsbury flopped backwards out of the window. Falling backwards out of the window Katana parried a spray of shuriken from Sumo's ally who was wallcrawling on the building (yes, you've guessed it- Shuriken), bounced off the telephone wires he'd noted in his stakeout, and parried a second spray of shuriken before somersaulting to land below.
Then he sprinted into the night to deliver the woman- a hapless occultist, to hospital.
(There was a bit more to it than that, but that was the moment that made Katana's 'finest hour'.) ;)
Both of those sound awesome. I like the Katana one, sounds like an interesting set up. As far as Star Wars go, I love star wars in any way i can get it. Anyone else got stories?
ReplyDeleteMine happened about a year ago in my first PnPRPG. I'm actually still in the campaign. We were just starting off in DnD 4e Eberron setting. We were in this sky scraper in Sharn on an upper floor on the upper levels, guarding a rare piece of machinery when we heard people on the opposite side of the door leading into our room. One of my companions, Verias (a fighter), decided to stay beside the machine for better or for worse until the men who hired us to guard it came back. I decided to stay beside him as did the rogue of the party. (BTW my character is an infernal pact warlock) The other three party members decided to check out the noise. As we expected a battle was imminent as soon as the door was open and we managed to bring it into the room with us. But there were more down the hall and our party was impatient. Four ran out to the battle leaving myself and Verias to guard the machine, but I decided to leave when I heard cries of help from the party. Verias was stubborn but when he realized we could not handle the battle without him he decided he could leave to finish this fight. Two rounds later an airship blasted a hole in the room the machine was in and Verias ran back as quickly as possible. We managed to hold the enemy back enough to recover and I ran after Verias to help save the machine, but it was too late. I saw him pulling at the device, playing tug-o-war with an airship that had six ropes tied to it. That's when I stepped in and decided to burn the ropes! Flames of Phlegethos to the rescue!! Until I rolled a nat1 and drained Verias of his remaining hit points leaving him unconscious and on fire. The machine was being dragged out of the room with him stuck to it so I decided to use one of my powers to grab him and bring him back into the room (this was before I realized that I didn't HAVE to apply damage to all my attacks). We were no more than four sessions into the campaign and I killed one of the PCs. It was a great session.
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