How Dave found out that Mountain Beats God.

A high level campaign hook ends abruptly with a players clever use of a Wish spell, and why Dave can't cast Wish anymore.


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Hello everyone. I'm here to share with everyone one of my all-time favorite D&D stories. This is from a campaign that occurred nearly 20 years ago, and was one of the longest running games I've ever had the privilege to play in. This campaign actually began in AD&D but ended up transitioning to 3rd Edition when it came out. The events I'm describing happened during the 5th (and final) year of this campaign.

So set the scene, we had a very large group. We had our DM, and a cast of 7 players. Our group was full of working adults with often flexible work schedules so we frequently had times where a player or two would miss a session but we had so many that it wasn't an issue. Most of the party won't be relevant here, so I won't go into further details.

The one main detail of note was that we were all -VERY HIGH LEVEL-. We had been using the epic level rules since they'd been published and most of the characters were around level 40. We were the undisputed masters of our respected crafts, and most of us had our personal plots tying in with various gods at this point. We were having fun and our DM was extremely creative to keep us challenged despite our overwhelming powers. A lot of time was spent on worldbuilding and our various personal pursuits, but we still would 'suit up' once every few sessions to do some old-fashioned butt-kicking.

In this particular instance, our Wizard (played by Dave) had gotten a request from his good friend the god of magic. Apparently someone was attempting a massive ritual that would usurp the god of magic's power, and we were asked to go stop them. Fairly standard procedure for us at this point, so off we went.

When we arrived, we found the ritual was still in progress. The person casting it had layered incredible defenses around the area they were conducting it in and it took us a little bit to work through them. As the ritual was nearing completion we managed to finally break through and interrupt the ritual. Our DM had apparently decided to let the dice decide what would happen if it got interrupted, and had written out a chart of possible outcomes. He rolled, and looked up from behind his screen with a smile.

Turns out the ritual warped instead of just failing, and turned the caster into this immense magic-sucking proto-deity. Our entire party was suddenly on the back foot because a vast majority of our party's offensive ability came from magic and magic items, all of which were now useless against this thing. Our wizard's first action had been to throw a Hellball (for those unaware, an Epic Level fire/acid/cold/electric fireball type spell) just to see what would happen. The proto-deity essentially ate it and then spat it back at us twice as powerful. A few more smaller test spells confirmed this to be the standard response to any offensive magic And said proto-deity also had a very high damage reduction that could only be overcome with magical weapons… but if our weapons got within about 20 feet of him, they temporarily lost their magical properties.

This fight was ROUGH. Our Fighter barely did anything because a lot of his power came from his gear which wasn't functioning, the only person in our group who was able to do much at all was our Psion, and even he was spending most of his time and energy keeping the rest of the party buffed and alive. And the whole time, Dave had been strangely silent, riffling through a series of D&D books he carried with him to each game. Multiple rounds had gone by and each time he'd simply waved us off, telling us he was passing his turn, and after about 30 rounds, we had just assumed he wasn't participating. Our Cleric finally got some good hits in by using a Miracle spell to essentially 'wish' that the next spell he would cast wouldn't be absorbed by the proto-deity, and then cast a Storm of Vengeance to try and distract him. It worked for a bit and we got some breathing room.

As we neared what would become the 40th round of combat, Dave finally spoke up. "I'd like to take my turn." The rest of us looked up in surprise. We had been gaming for nearly five hours and he hadn't said a thing. "Okay," the DM said, "What do you want to do?" "First I have a question." Dave asked. "How much unworked granite can I get for 25,000 gold?" The rest of us sat there in silence for several moments as we stared at him. "What?" The DM asked. "How much granite can I get for 25,000 gold?" Dave responded, a smile forming. What followed was a weird flurry of activity as more D&D books were brought out and we ended up looking through some books focused on Siege Warfare on how to price it out. Finally the DM gave him the figure, it was a LOT. To the order of nearly 10,000 TONS of it.

"Okay." Dave responded, closing his last book and lifting up the notepad. "In that case, can you tell me what the wind speed is and in which direction it's moving?" The DM offhandedly gave him some values, unsure why it mattered. Dave simply nodded, wrote down a few notes, and then slid the notebook across the table to the DM. "In that case, on my turn, I cast wish, and wish for 25,000 gold pieces worth of granite to appear exactly here in relation to the proto-deity." He handed over a note pad where he had done all the math, and had already figured out exactly how much granite he could get and factored that in to his equation, and had essentially set it up so that way the immense amoutn of stone would fall directly on our foe.

More silence as we all digested what was happening. The DM paused for several moments, and then closed his own notebook with an audible snap. "First off, you're never allowed to do this again. Second, here's how it goes." The DM went on to describe how as Dave completed his wish, we saw the tip of the nearest mountain vanish, and then reappear a heartbeat later in the air above the proto-deity. Thankfully we'd all been staying clear of him because of the storm of vengeance, because it took up a lot of space. And with all the power of a hammer from god, the mountain top fell and crushed the proto-deity into paste.

Dave had single-handedly won the day with a single spell after standing in character doing nothing for nearly 4 continuous minutes of combat, and we couldn't have been more pleased with the outcome. To this day we still give him shit any time he wants to play a spellcaster and tell him he's not allowed to ever have access to a wish spell.

I have a lot of other stories from this particular campaign, but by and large this one will forever be my favorite.


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