So this is a genuine DND story about the most heroic ducks a game has ever seen, who managed to turn the tide of a battle with a quackers plam
For context, we were playing “the siege of castle rend”, as our DM wanted to try out the army battling mechanics. There were 5 of us, and this was a bit of a filling game this group was doing to get through quarantine. The basics of the plot is that we are trying to get the rightful ruler of the region safely back in charge. This all leads to a siege of a run down castle where we found the rightful heir.
At First, we had a heavy balance of 4 monks, a tortle barbarian and a githyanki wizard. The characters were all good, but weren't very good at meshing. 3 of the monks had issues with the gith and all were strong willed and wouldn't change. Eventually, the party split up, with the monks leaving the story and the gith and tortle carrying on so the 4 of us rolled up new characters. One of us was a paladin, the other became a fighter that was basically captain America, and then also a fighter archers.
And then there was me. Honestly, at this point, I wasn't feeling the game too much so made the most meme I could make. An Orc named Daffodil, or daffy for short. 3 levels in barbarian, totem of the duck (a matt mercer subclass). 3 levels in beast master ranger, getting a beast of the air in the form of… a duck.
I convinced the DM to allow me to make my own background, student of the animal, basically picking an animal, getting an item to summon local beings of your chosen species, being able to communicate with that species as if it were a language, and double proficiency with persuasion and animal handling when you are dealing with said animal. The animal I chose was, in case you havent been able to work this out yet, of course, a duck.
So he enters in and I accidentally play him as a bit too stupid and struggle to get him right. I was meming the heck out of this, for example, ranger beast of the air, named wisequack, would often act on his own and demand daffy ask people if they have got any grapes. Also the one time someone used talk to animals to hear daffy and wisequacks conversation they had in duck, they were just offending everyone in the game, using the most racist terms I could find for species.
when the group was sent to go around time and try to recruit people to help, daffy went to “duck island” on the river and got some insane persuasion rolls, so ended up with an army of 14 ducks. The people in charge were not pleased with that… but they would eat those doubts soon enough
Due to the initial playing of the character daffy became rather unliked. Both by players and characters. I tried to fix this but the damage was already done.
Until, the day before the siege would begin. Daffy sent the remaining 13 ducks out (one got eaten by one of the monks that had left the story) to scan the perimeter. And saw when the army as nearby. Namely less than an hours flight away. Once we got them back, daffy sent wisequack out, with beast sense cast on him to be able to scope out the army. We realised that the army were summoning some monsters, such as vrock and hazrou.
the wizard theorised that if we could break the concentration of the summoners, they may lose control of the beasts and they would run wild. But how to do that? A ground force couldn't attack, the summoners would be detected and they notice us coming. If only we had ariel strikers.
Enter… the ducks.
We had been making a few “bombs” in preparation for the battle as well as daffy working on a surprise tactic. The bombs had things like broken glass, pepper, sawdust, things like that. Designed for massive discomfort, able to hook around a ducks legs or bills and drop.
There were 3 duck “units”, being guided by daffy s companion, wisequack and each rolled stealth. All 3 units got higher than 18 stealth. So they then started their attack, dropping the “bombs” a nat 20 leads one of the summoners to lose concentration and control of a hazrou, which went on a rampage. The ducks, still not noticed, use this to round for another wave of “bombs” this time, getting good enough to break up the rituals to summon more monsters (a balor was going to be next to come out)
the enemy was now in complete dissaray, with attacks from an unknown source, a monster on the loose and their summoning failed. The ducks STILL hadn't been seen. So they do one last run, unleashing their secret weapons.
They pooped on the army.
Daffy had spent days training them this and fed them berries that acted as a laxative. And now, all 13 ducks emptied their bowels onto the enemy camp. And the rolls were great. A 12, a 25 and then a nat 20 for 26! It was agreed that that nat 20 instantly caused a fail on a summoners concentration, as one duck pood in their mouth. So they then lost control of a vrock.
Unfortunately, that was the moment they were discovered, so they fled. In the retreat, 7 ducks didnt make it.
The wizard cast create food and made grapes for the heroic ducks, as they honoured the names of the fallen.
moby duck, andcover, quackpot, the duck knight, Howard, goose and Ducklann gave their lives, but we managed to take out a quarter of their military force, release 2 of their 6 monsters and prevent summoning any more. The balance was heavily balanced against us, but operation duck poo made it winnable, and suddenly daffy had managed to prove his worth at long last.
Furthermore during the siege, the main action was going on inside the castle, but 2 vrock managed to get through the mostly ground based defences. The first one, my orc used a cool item he got to wildshape, so turned into a giant duck-eagle hybrid (basically an eagle statblock for a giant duck), flew over to one, and essentially mounted it, attacking it from its back, while wisequack flew to its front, flanking and attacking, before nestling back on daffys back, meaning the usual between turn situation was a vrock, mounted by a giant duck, mounted by a duck in mid air.
But what were my other ducks doing, I hear you ask? Well, they were going to help our archer, who after a few bad shots, was stuck in close combat with the other vrock. He held his own, but eventually, the ducks came in and pecked the vrock to death.
The duck is mightier than the vrock and no longer will I accept any other opinions. And your meme picks are not useless if you try to use them as well as you can.
[zombify_post]
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