What's your favorite single moment in a game?

[SangoProduction]

For me, we were using computer-generated character sheets for 4e, and I eventually saw "Unarmed Ranged Attack" on there.

"I use Unarmed Ranged Attack!"

And the DM, after cocking his head, and asking for my character sheet, rolled with it. "OK, you go flying at the Duergar, superman-style completely catching him off guard. He is considered flanked by everyone until the next turn. Now mark that off your character sheet."

[Tiri]

My first D&D character was a goblin sorcerer. Up until fifth level, his most impressive moment in combat was the killing of a single rat.

At fifth level, the party got into a fight with a Young Red Dragon which he managed to lure it into the sky and shoot down.

That probably ties for Favourite Moment with another scenario involving that character, when he convinced the goblins in the Sunless Citadel to rebel against their leaders and make him their prince.

[snowman87]

Playing a Changeling Bard/Rogue in an evil party set in Eberron, he was the brains of the outfit and was always even tempered...unless you betrayed him. This guy double crossed the gang and showed up with a bunch of guards to arrest them. Not one to flee without some kind of retribution, Ghost (my character) uses Suggestion to convince the dirty double crosser that he needs to look at something on the horizon through the telescope just off the side of the bridge they were all on...which Ghost had Minor Illusioned into existence just a moment before. The guy fails all his saves to resist and disbelieve and so steps off the bridge. Then the gang flees. Ghost was always honorable, just never lie to him.

[johnnnrussel]

I dont have :/

[lylsyly]

When, being chased by the Town Watch, the Half Orc Barbarian/Thug Fighter tried to throw my Gnome Rogue from one roof top to another. His Strength Check is a Natural One and all my Damage Dice came up Five or Six (it was a forty foot drop). Needless to say, my level 2 Rogue died."But he has 20 Str and it was only a ten foot gap!" We laughed about that one for a couple of years. The Stinkers even started calling all my characters "Splat."

[Grand Poobah]

The surprised look on my fellow players' faces when their do-gooder PCs, who'd come to my wizard's tower to demand the return of the stolen paladin's Holy Avenger, were confronted by their clones.

The confused look on those same faces when their PCs magic items and spells didn't work (the clones were surrounded with anti-magic).

The forlorn look on those same faces when the clones beat several shades of crap out of the PCs (that eventually required DM intervention to rescue).

[FaerieGodfather]

Very strange game, using the Dresden Files rules. Infinite magical house, travels through time and space: during the day, all day, it's fixed in one spot, then at night it exists in a formless void until it finds a new spot.

My character is not the first human being. He's the father of the first human being, the literal father of humanity, mystically empowered to protect his tribe.

(Supernatural Toughness with the Catch that I only take full damage if I'm attacked by someone I'm responsible for.)

Another member of our party is the last surviving member of the species, having been picked up by the House a couple of weeks after the last other remnants of humanity had succumbed to the plague that had swept across all of human civilization, from star to star to star.

Third or fourth session, I had grabbed a very small eldritch abomination with my bare hands... and it was biting me, right through my protection, so I bit its head off to subdue it and this tiny rat-sized thing starts gushing gallons of this toxic, infection goo out of its neck. In a desperate bid to save the House, it opened a window (at night) and just pitched the entire damned thing out.

The last survivor of humanity, who had seen everyone he knew and loved succumb to that same toxic goo... recognized it immediately. However thousands of years into my future, the father of humanity had smothered all of his own children in the crib. He was pretty depressed about that for a long time. Luckily... being the last surviving member of his species had made my best friend... philosophical.

That's not the best moment, though.

The best moment was, many sessions later after we had barely saved the House from a witch's attack ("got your totems, bitch!" I had shouted, as I'd employed a blood-soaked, stolen ceramic lawn gnome as a ranged weapon) the House came to rest... on the Survivor's home planet. We launched an expedition for supplies, and the Survivor determined that the Plague had burned itself out, without life to feed on, decades earlier. An entire, uninhabited planet with a ready-built civilization for people to come and occupy.

The Legions started it, of course, but soon... thousands of people had stepped out of the House for a fresh start at life.

And given such a second chance, what could the father of humanity do... but stay behind to protect his children? No lie, I might have stepped into another room to finish my next character so the others didn't see me crying.

[FaerieGodfather]

Another close second was when my friends finally convinced me to get into Rolemaster. (4th edition) Took a long time to create a character, because I just didn't get it, but after an hour and a half... I had my lizardman fighter.

My friends warned me, combat wasn't like D&D, so I went along and we avoided getting into any fights for the first couple of hours before we were ambushed by orcs.

I pantsed my initiative roll, so I got to go dead last. By the time my turn rolled around, I was bleeding pretty seriously and my right arm was broken, and I'm being pinned to the ground by 3-4 burly orcs.

So I exercised my only real defensive option, and rolled a bite attack.

Now, everything in Rolemaster is d%, where if you roll 01-05 you have to reroll and subtract (Open-Ended Low) and if you roll 96-00 you get to reroll and add (Open-Ended High). And it's a system notorious for its critical hits and fumbles.

Naturally... my first attack roll with my first character in my first game is OE Low. People have a little laugh at my expense.

But then my next roll is Open-Ended High, and people are surprisingly sympathetic.

And then my next roll of Open-Ended High. The DM trades dice with me.

Open-Ended High.

Someone else trades dice with me... suggests I blow on them for luck.

Open. Ended. HIGH.

My fifth roll, luckily, is only in the seventies, so my streak of bad luck ends in the negative mid-400s.

That means that I scored an F Bite Critical on myself. Roll another d%, consult the chart...

... and my very first Rolemaster character, in my very first Rolemaster game, on my very first attack roll, bit his own head off.

[BowStreetRunner]

Favorite moment as a player is a tossup between:

• Party paladin is extorted by a devil who threatens some innocents if he doesn't do an evil act. The paladin gives in and signs a contract with the devil, who then tries the same technique on my rogue. Rogue tells the devil that it's on him if he chooses to harm an innocent, but if he does the rogue will dedicate his life to hunting down all of the devil's followers and thwarting all of the devils plans. Or the devil can just ask nicely and we can discuss an appropriate fee. The devil agrees and I get paid while the paladin loses his powers.
• The DM recruits me to help put an end to constant PvP within the party. I go through a series of characters who all get killed by the other PCs. Then my obviously evil cleric of Nerull manages to get one up on the rest of the party, put them naked in a pit with bars on top, dump in a bunch of oil and light it. The PCs survive due to divine intervention, but the DM makes my cleric an NPC and the party becomes so obsessed with hunting him down that the infighting actually stops.

As a DM though I loved it when the party wizard saved the life of the king. The ranger, who had been obsessed with doing something to earn a knighthood, had to stand by and watch the scholarly wizard (whose greatest goal was to have his book on the flora and fauna of the local area published) become a knight of the realm. While the ranger eventually earned his knighthood, having to call the wizard 'Sir' all the time really bugged him.

[thorr-kan]

My favorite single gaming moment is "that moment"; the moment when the players go off the rails. It keeps happening. It's awesome.

I DM an intermittent 2ED Al-Qadim game. We module, we railroad. We're all old, we're all tired, there's just not *time* for anything else. We have fun, but when my players go off the reservation, it's *awesome.* Some examples of "that moment":

Facing a dao they need to go through and expecting either grovelling and a hook for a later favor or a long, hard fight. Instead, the priest *evangelizes.* Some roleplaying and good rolls later, he's got a convert. This continues, and now the dao have a cult...

Wielding an ancient genie-bane scimitar, surrounded by hostile efreeti, and with no choice but to run, the fighter says "I climb the nearest efreet and threaten his gonads..." One Dex check and some intimidation later, she's got a new name, "Flamequencher" and our heroes are free!

A djinn meant as comic relief, a walking plot impediment, and general nuisance attaches himself to the wizard. Rather than get mad, the wizard makes a *project* of him and so gains a loyal follower. The djinn's still bumbling, but he's well meaning and takes direction. And the wizard's player has the mind of a lawyer...

Knock down, drag out fight with the BBEG? No way! The thief/priest fulls off an epic sneak and back stab. The BBEG got of one spell that iced the other priest, but goes down for good.

The lady fighter's player makes an impromptu with that the above priest hadn't died. The entire table goes silent. Do they have an unused with available? Nope. But I ask if the player wants to call upon Fate (an Al-Qadim divine intervention). Them bones are rolled, and the priest takes a ragged breath. The table goes wild!

The giant-kin fighter decides he's going to practice "dynamic entry" instead of skulking around the bad guys lair. The door comes off its hinges, smashes a few cultists waiting in ambush, and continues to be an improvise weapons throughout the adventure. The giant-kin knows a good thing when he sees it. He has shtick now; that's how the sport of "door surfing" got started...

I love my players and their surprises. I'm gifted in that they're good DMs, too, so I even get to play...

[Vizzerdrix]

In a rifts game, the group liked the banter and style of a duo of supervillians (supposed to be sort of a mini boss) so much we sort of stole them from the DM! We managed to prevent and turn to our favor every attempt to backstab us for a month until finally the gm just let us keep the npcs as cohorts. It was awesome! We even managed to convince the bbeg that they had been double agents the entire time.

[Seharvepernfan]

I was DMing a game in my freshman year of high school with a group of friends, one of whom was very intelligent but also very dour and sarcastic. That one was playing a dwarf fighter. The group was traveling down a road in teh forest when a wounded commoner came towards them from the other direction. He was holding his side, which was bleeding, and he seemed on the verge of collapse. He gets close enough to talk and says "Please, help, I need healing!"

Dwarf fighter says "Heal this, bandit!" and pantomimes and axe stroke to my head (I was sitting next to him).

[FelineArchmage]

It was the very beginning of our campaign and my brother (And thus his character) missed a session. Our group ended up getting captured by a gang and tortured a bit for trying to get some information we weren't supposed to. Because of this, we got permanently banned at a "club" where we left the book with the copied information we stole.

Next session when my brother/his character returned, we told him that he had to retrieve the book since he was the only one not banned. To blend in at the "club" we gave him a vial of Dreamlily (basically opium). OOC, we never told him what dreamlily was, and he failed all of his common sense checks IC. In character, we all played it off that yeah - DUH - of course that vial was drugs. How did you not notice??

And that's how we got my brother's character addicted to drugs for a short period of time.

[Hiro Quester]

Playing a bard/sublime chord, who had just hit 13th level, and had learned to cast Irresistible Dance.

A couple of other party members had been making jokes about how bards and their singing have limited utility in combat (though they loved getting bonuses to hit and damage from Inspire courage).

DM sends a very angry red dragon to attack the party (our ranger was wearing armor made from that dragon's child's hide).

Using greater blink as a defense, I got up next to the dragon and scored the touch attack to make it dance. And DM rolled a 4 on the d4+1 for duration, making it do nothing but dance for 5 rounds.

The DM was slightly frustrated that his plans for a long drawn out dragon-battle were going to pieces. But he got hilariously into the spirit of the scene, acting out the dragon's cavorting and dancing (eventually limping, then writhing on the ground trying to do a feeble "caterpillar" breakdance), while my bard sang a very silly improvised song about how "you just gotta dance" as he and the rest of the party used our turns and plenty of attacks of opportunity to cut, shoot, stab, and blast the vengeful dragon to pieces.

[Goaty14]

We were a party of 6 (one guy had double characters) trying to infiltrate a castle while the old good king mysteriously disappeared, consisting of

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-Half-Elf Ranger 5/Druid 1 (Me, had a hawk and a heavy horse companion)
-Human Bard 7 (The guy that did something else when it wasn't his turn -- also we were using xp penalties)
-Human Ranger 5/Barbarian 1 (Never raged because it gave him -2 AC)
-Elf Wizard 5/Cleric 1 (Insisted he multiclass into cleric b/c we needed a healer)
-Elf Rogue 7 (Sister of the other elf; Insisted we needed a rogue . Also never sneak attacked because he didn't know about it)
-DMPC __ Warlock 7 (Existed to backstab us later on)

So basically we're at the bottom of the outer wall, and the wizard is dishing out Spider Climb for us to get over. I'm at the table being all sneaky about what I was going to do...
Wizard: "I cast Spider Climb on the druid"
Me: "So you cast the spell?"
Wizard: "Yes?"
Me: "I use Share Spells on my horse!"
DM: "Okaaay then, I guess you can ride your horse up the wall..."
Me: "Yay!"
DM: rolls listen check (18)

So we had to murder a bunch of guards and not get into the castle. The party barbarian kept swearing he'd murder to horse one day...

[Chronikoce]

Wizard: "I cast Spider Climb on the druid"
Me: "So you cast the spell?"
Wizard: "Yes?"
Me: "I use Share Spells on my horse!"
DM: "Okaaay then, I guess you can ride your horse up the wall..."
Me: "Yay!"
DM: rolls listen check (18)

So we had to murder a bunch of guards and not get into the castle. The party barbarian kept swearing he'd murder to horse one day...

Wait, if the wizard cast the spell, how did you share it? Share spell only works on spells cast by the druid.

[Goaty14]

Wait, if the wizard cast the spell, how did you share it? Share spell only works on spells cast by the druid.

Oh. Most of us were newbies, and if the DM knew (idk), he might've passed it on the rule of cool.

[Chronikoce]

Oh. Most of us were newbies, and if the DM knew (idk), he might've passed it on the rule of cool.

Fair enough. I've let stuff slide as a DM because it was a cool idea

[SangoProduction]

Yeah. In my original IRL group, basically no one played mages, except the occasional cleric healbot. We were playing in some bull**** half-deities and epic level campaign. I was already known as the guy who brings in 'the crazy ship'...so I was only allowed to bring in a level 18 character, that's otherwise normal.

"Eh. Know what? Let's prove I'm no threat to the game. I'll play a half-orc wizard who only knows Magic Missile, as a true Force Missile Mage. I won't even buy items. I don't like them anyway." Then through a mix of trying to make that viable in an epic campaign through metamagic, no understanding of what the difference between a spell slot and the spell level was, and believing that flat bonuses to damage applied to each and every missile...I was doing about 2000 damage in a single round, which could repeat in the next. The DM had the same interpretation, because no one ever used metamagics.

If it was alive, and looked at us wrong, it wouldn't be for long. Well. The group banned metamagic feats, lol.

Games can get weird when the god of the world doesn't understand the rules.

[lufenbarak]

About 15 years ago, I was playing a human rogue/wizard 4/1. The DM was generous and somehow I got a counterspell ring and kept it (the elf wiz of the party learned counterspell, so no big deal). The DM forgot about the ring

We were running from some drows, but they followed us to a village. At night, something like 10 drows attacked us, we were having a bad time. The group leader, Nefertina, was a ranger, and somehow had a wand of cone of cold, pointed to us and said: THIS END NOW.

I´d had won the initiative, but hold it to get a best position to sneak attack.

Readied Action. Ring of Counterspell. Use Magic Device. A 16 dice roll. A nice counterspell.

My answer to her: Not tonight.

After that she focused on me and used all her 5 attacks per turn to make me a pulp of rogue. My AC was 15 =....(