Fucking Awesome DnD Moments/Campaigns

[TDK]

I'm running a DnD campaign that started off as a silly one-off thing, but has gotten to mid levels (They're at ten currently.) and has actually gotten pretty awesome.

The group is a human fighter, a human rogue/fighter/order of the bow initiate (he's an awesome archer), and a Warforged Artificer. There's also, introduced somewhat late, an NPC shaman, and an NPC red dragon wyrmling. They were all neutral at the start.

This group made a lot of enemies early on, from misunderstandings, and just things getting blown out of proportion. The enemy list included an entire goblin tribe, a northern human clan (Norse), the Druidic order (and Treants), The Holy Order (Clerics and Paladins), and a few smaller things like some specific groups of pirates.

The artificer, who is just fantastically over the top as a character, had a tower shield on which he eventually started carving the names of their enemies, crossing them off as they got rid of them.

Currently crossed off is One-Eyed Jim, The Beast, Greenskins (the goblins), McLeouds (the norsemen), and a couple others. Because of the druids and the McLeouds worshipping Thor, he also put Thor and Nature on his shield. He said he's going to retire the shield and hang it on the wall when he crosses them all off.

At one point, they went through a red dragon nest, and the artificer decides to take one of the eggs. At first, he just wants to pawn it or use it for spell components, but it actually grows on him and he decides to keep it. At some point, the mother of it gets killed, so farther down the road, it hatches and recognizes him as its mother. After a couple months, it was sentient, though it refused to learn common as it didn't want to debase itself. The artificer spoke draconic, though.

(We had a nature vs nurture debate that ended with nurture, so its not necessarily an evil creature, though it'd be easier to turn it to evil then it would be to turn a human of the same alignment.)

The dragon actually becomes a useful party member. After a few more months, its up to full Wyrmling status, giving it a CR of like, 6. Next time they levelled, it took a class level. Sorcerer. At this point they were at level 8, so it was only one behind them.



I really had to give them credit, as the party actually kind of outsmarted me as DM or did things I didn't plan on that had no reason not to work , so they fucked up my plans, but it was awesome and hilarious, so I had to allow it. This happened several times.


At one point, they decide to settle in a city and start an adventuring business. I give them the prices they find for the building and they say, you know what, screw that. They pool their money and the artificer makes a lyre of building, they hire a Bard.

They go on a small-ish adventure to help finance this, which ends up becoming bigger. Long story short, everyone gets a random magical effect at one point and the artificer, being a warforged, gets supercharged with magical energy. He uses this to manifest the materials to create their keep, as well as reverse the magical effects on everyone.

He doesn't have enough to reverse the changes to the shaman, however (he became a woman), so the shaman leaves to find someone to reverse it. He tells them he'll be back, asks if they want to come, etc, then leaves. So, they construct the keep, and with an excess of materials, end up building a larger wall around it and stuff inside.


Long story short...They end up creating a town better than the neighboring one, though smaller, and the corrupt mayor of that town gets ousted and they merge the two towns.

The city they have created is like a military state, they have mandatory military service for one member of each family for a certain amount of time.


So they built themselves an army. XD


At this point the artificer has made several homunculi, small creatures with varying purposes. This gives him an idea. One of the homunculi types is Dedicated Wright, a small creature with a hammer that can work on magical items in his place, working at the same pace and junk, as long as he spends an hour imbuing it with the spells and experience to create the items.

He makes like twenty of them, costing him a pretty penny, but no experience. Artificers have a Craft Reserve at each level, experience points just for making magic items. They can also drain magic items of half the experience used to create them.


He's stealing from the town, tax reserves, etc, to do this, but he starts up a venture in secret. He creates an elixir which would seem to be pretty awesome, but as it turns out is extremely addictive (on purpose). He makes a deal with an Arcane (magical planeshifting traders) and over the proceeding months, this spreads to half the multiverse, and he's making pretty obscene amounts of money.

He uses the money to construct a magical forge which lowers the necessary caster level for creating magical items and stuff.

With that and his artificer bonus, he can use manuals of golem creation. He buys them as he goes, a deal worked out with the Arcane, and starts making iron golems in a secret laboratory away from the town. They notice him acting funny and being extremely reclusive, but don't look too much into it.

The fighter and archer are training the military and going on occasional quests, etc, but mostly in the proceeding months, they work on the town.


At a certain point, they both (though not the artificer) start hearing voices in their dreams, telling them all they love is coming to an end and they're too weak to stop it. Tempts them with powers, expounds upon their weaknesses, etc, power behind the words.

It tells the archer (who is obsessed with being the perfect archer) about how he missed this one guy he missed before and let him get away, which led to bad stuff, and offers him unerring accuracy, etc. He fails the save and wakes up feeling more dexterous. His arrows also do more damage now.

The fighter, who always wanted to rule, and is loving his job as general, is told the soldiers question his ability to lead because of a point where dozens of them died in a faulty battle maneuver. Says they guard them while they sleep, etc, does he really want them to turn on him. Offers for men to bow to his will and power. He wakes up and they obey him better and without a second thought, and he feels stronger.

Several will saves later, the fighter is turning toward evil and accepting it, willingly toward the end, and the archer resists. The shaman comes back, a man again, tells them how the holy order helped him (he wasn't with them when they made enemies of the Order.). The archer and shaman run off to the Order, to a building they went to before. They go to kill the archer because of his slight demonic appearance due to the taint, but the shaman talks them down and they give him a crystal with magic circle against evil on it. With that, he fights it off easily and goes back to the town, the order promising to send paladins to deal with the whole demonic thing.

The archer comes back and shakes hands with the fighter in greeting, the crystal up his sleeve. The fighter makes his save and doesn't recoil as the crystal touches him.

At this point, though, the fighter is pretty far gone. He has horns growing out of his head and a demonic fear aura, as well as red eyes and wings. He can suppress all but the eyes, but they aren't that noticeable.


The archer notices something funny is going on and starts following the figher, without his knowledge. The fighter notices, though he doesn't show it. Calls together the soldiers in secret, where the archer can't follow, and tells them that the archer has turned, is going for the downfall of them all, is going to try and kill him. They're outraged and want his blood, ask the fighter what they should do. They make a plan, they're going to burst into the archer's room while he sleeps and gut him.

The archer can't hear it, but he is aware there's whispering going on in there.


He's been talking to the clerics in the temple about this, and they've had the dreams but shook them off rather easily, and they've felt foreboding in the town, etc. The shaman is in the temple at this point, helping out. The archer alerts him to the figher's activities and runs for the woods. No one sees him. The soldiers burst into the archer's room to kill him, don't find him, the fighter puts everyone on alert, makes search parties, and tells them to find the shaman. They try to detain the shaman, but he guts two the soldiers and flees. The fighter takes to the sky with his demonic wings and heads him off just outside the town walls, the soldiers surrounding him. He gets nearly killed before turning invisible and running away. The fighter orders everyone back in and shuts the gate, the shaman hitting him with a lightning bolt just before they close.

The archer saw this skirmish from the woods, and sneaks back into the keep through the back, hiding in the fighter's room and waiting. They're scouring the town for him and keeping on alert, they do it all through the night. The shaman sneaks into the fighter's room at one point to lay a trap, but the archer tells him no, don't, just bring me food and water and I can take care of it.

So the soldiers start scouring the keep itself as well. Several of them burst into the fighter's room, with the fighter. The archer remains hidden until he can get a shot at the fighter, at which point he jumps out and hits him with two sneak attack arrows. His bow is like +2, along with a fire and lightning enchantment, and he gets greater damage at close range because of an order of the bow ability. So each arrow is like 4d6+2d8+6.

He doesn't roll great, but the fighter takes about 53 points of damage. In two attacks, though, so no massive damage.

At this point the artificer comes out to see what all the ruckus is. He sees the fighter wounded, and soldiers going into the room, though he can't see the archer. So he comes over and heals the fighter, unaware.

At this point, the artificer has gotten half the realms addicted to a substance for his own gain, as well as created an army of iron golems, so his alignment changed to evil a while ago, as did the fighter's with the whole demonic thing. But the artificer has no reason to hurt the archer.

The red dragon wyrmling (the artificer named him Custer. As in Custer's Revenge. XD) contacts the artificer magically and tells him paladins are coming, a lot of them. The fighter watching, and no one aware of the army he built, he tells Custer "Mobilize the army."

Custer turned evil along with the artificer, by the way. He was already somewhat inclined toward it, being a red dragon, but the evil him and the artificer are is more of an "I don't care if people die" evil, not Roar I kill you all die die Evil.

At this point, the shaman, with two paladins, comes running in. The paladins charge the artificer (whom, by the way, is completely decked out with magic items and has absurd AC because of his warforged feat selection and magic items.) and his iron defender (robot attack dog homunculus, basically). They get into a melee, the shaman running past to attack the fighter and the soldiers.

The soldiers surround the archer and start wailing on him. He shoots several of them (order of the bow feat, no attack of opportunity for ranged attacks in a threatened square) before the fighter comes in a hits him twice, knocking into single digits, then gores him with his horns, killing him. First player character that's died for me. XD During this melee, the shaman shot several lightning bolts into the room, killing a couple soldiers, but the fighter kept him back before he could save the archer.

The soldiers come out and surround the shaman and the paladins, the fighter and artificer also helping, though the artificer isn't trying to kill the shaman.

The paladins and shaman end up dead. They hear ruckus outside and all run down to see fourty iron golems battling a crapload of paladins and clerics. The golems are winning. Hard.

The order is finished off (well, this group, anyway) and Custer (and his new half-construct limb), as is his triumphant habit, raises his head to the sky and breathes a massive gout of flames skyward as the golems fall back into line and salute the artificer standing up on the balcony. A small portion of the city is wrecked, two characters turned evil, the other died, and there's a large army controlled by the now evil characters.


The demonic possession thing was a one and a half page thing I wrote for the archer and fighter to do before we began the quest I wrote, as the artificer's player hadn't gotten here yet. It ended up in an epic confrontation between the characters, and a massive battle between an army of golems and the holy order.


I love this game.


...Wow, that was a lot more than I meant to write.


Share your own awesome moments, or if the whole campaign was awesome, share that too!