Our party is in a magical city floating in the sky, seperated from the rest of civilazation, and filled to the brim with spell casters. We are a 4-man group who consists of a male asamare redemption paladin, a currently missing female human divine soul sorcerer, a tiefling eldrtich knight named Zakiel, and myself, a hafling male forge cleric. I only name Zakiel becuase he's the star of this tale and our missing socerer is a whole nother story, far too big to add to this one. Zakiel is currently partcipating in a undergroud tournament that allows and all sorts of spellcasting in the fights. His first few opponents he beat mercilessly with his combination of melee and spellcasting prowess. But his next and final opponent is making even him quite nervous. The funny thing is, even he didn't realize til after the session just how terrifying his opponent really was.
This is the championship round in the tournament and the opponent zakiel is against seems like it will be a diffucult fight. His opponent is a female war cleric who one-sidingly beat all her opponents up to this point. Before the fight starts Zakiel comes up to me and asks me something strange. He asks "the holy symbol you use for casting spells, can it be destroyed?". I respond "well it's not considered a magical item, so with enough force it can be, what are you planning?" he simply responds "i am thinking i'm going to destroy it." While i definfinitely thought that was a good idea, that would be far more diffcult than it seemed. When you aim for a spefic bodypart/object on the opponent, they get a +5 to their AC. Not to mention this war cleric was in full plate with a shield. Add onto the fact that war clerics have specific buffs that can add to their AC even further. Zakiel and the cleric enter the arena on opposite sides, and this is not just an empty pit. This arena was made in mind for all sorts of spell users, with large pieces of rubble scattered across the field meant for cover.
The fight starts and Zakiel immediately gets out of line of sight of the cleric by hiding behind one of these peices of rubble and turns invisible. This surprises us because usually Zakiel is a Leeroy Jenkins, charging in thoughtlessly into hoards of enemies without so much of a thought. He carefully takes a wide arc to flank the cleric from the side. I would've thought that would difficult due to the heavy plate demon armor that he has on, but becuase it's a large arena thats packed with a screaming and roaring audience, the DM gives zakiel advantage on stealth checks. The cleric starts swinging her radiant glowing mace and cautiously approaches the spot she saw zakiel hide behind, expecting an ambush, not realizing he was invisible. He readies his +2 greatsword and attempts to sneak up close enough to the cleric to get a clear enough of a view of the symbol arround her neck. Thanks to the advantage, he succeeds the stealth roll and sees that the symbol is in clear view. He takes a deep breath and takes a swing at the symbol and roles a 28 to hit. He manages to hit the chain necklace holding the symbol and it falls to the ground.
It was good but the symbol was undamaged and lying right in front of the cleric. The cleric who was on edge uses her held action to make two weapon attack and magaes to hit zakiel once, thanks to her channel divinity that grants +10 to hit. I knew once zakiel finished his attack, the cleric would see her symbol on the ground and go for it above all else. Thats when zakiel did the unthinkable, he used his action surge to cast the spell shatter. For those who dont know, shatter is a 2nd level thunder spell destroys anything within a 15ft cube that is not a magical item and not currently equipped. So any nonmagical equiptment on the cleric would not get destroyed, including the symbol. But the symbol wasn't on her person, it was on the ground. The cleric with her head looking down in pain from zakiels blows watched in horror as her only means of casting spells was destroyed. She was now a cleric without a single spell to her name.
The fight was pretty much over after that, with zakiel simply far more melee prowess than the cleric. The cleric still put up a good fight with her class abilities, but with zakiels high AC and his displacer cloak, she had diadvantage on her weapon attacks, she could barely do anything. With the final blow, Zakiel launched her swinging mace straight up in the air and sliced her calve with his greatsword, causing her to get on one knee and unable to move. The mace came down onto her head, knocking her out cold. The audience roared with thunderous applause at the absolute smackdown that zackiel provided. He comes to me and tosses back the ring of spell storing i had lent him and says "i dont think i will be needing this anymore".
After the session, the player who played zakiel asked the DM on just how strong the opponent he just beat was. Turns out, it was a 9th level spell caster with challenge rating of 9, who could've easily healed half her total hp and had spells like counter spell and antimagic field. Supposedly she was something called a war priest which was something very similar to the war cleric class but with some powerful additions. With close to double the health pool that Zakiel had and 20 AC with a shield, its a miracle zakiel was able to hit the symbol. Had he not done that, he would have had no possible way of beating the cleric. Normally, it would've taken our entire party working together to take on someone like her. After that, every npc or characters talked to in the city, zakiel just had to bring up that he won the underground arena tournament.
These images are pictures of the exact equiptment that zakiel was wearing, the greatsword is just a +2. The cleric had platemail, a shield, and a radiant glowing mace.
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