This story takes place a few Campaigns ago but Is still one of the most memorable that I have DMd. Long story short the party had tracked the mcguffin to a rival Kingdom’s capital city and were looking for ways to infiltrate In order to steal back the much needed relic. Their party consisted of:
A Human barbarian: Whose excess in muscle was only rivalled by her deficits and intelligence. Only made worse by a dragon egg that she had saved from being used in an accult ritual and was granting her a buff to her strength at a cost of some intelligence.
A dragonborn monk: The roller of cursed dice would be amazing and unstoppable in battle but could not roll over a 7 in any Skill checks. Which led to situations where she was able to fend off a horde of goblins by throwing plates as improvised weapons. (And then fast forward to the part where she is running away to escape the final wave of goblins overunning the city, and she’s at the docks about to jump on the boat with the party’s hands outstretched reaching for her aaaaaaaaaand she trips on a rope at the end of the dock and land’s face 1st on the siding of the boat and almost drowns due to a nat 1.
A Gnome rogue: Literally only in this game to steal things even after I told the player he doesn’t actually get anything IRL. Says ” oh well guess i’ll be comic relief and some stabby stabby then”. He is exactly what you would expect of a gnome rogue…
They have pulled their resources together and have come up with a strategy that allows them to get within the building and also have the enemy Never see it coming.
Long story short they all get captured Thanks to some horrible dice rolls and bluffs along with choosing the sword over the pen so to speak, and attempting to bluff the guard captain they were the captains security detail.
Now each of them resides in their own individual cell in the dungeon of the castle with their needed bounty only 3 floors above them in the hands of the antagonist, the one that is going to shortly come down and oversee their executions.
Once the guard leaves The party shouts to the rogue to see if he has found a way out of his cell and if they can get freed. The rogue shouts out from his cell to the party ” they’ve got me in a kennel! A freaking animal kennel! Where’s the respect man!?”, ” the bars are too small and they took my lock picks and my secret backup lock pick
The dragonborn asks where he had the secondary lock pick and the rogue tells him to “mind your own business” .
There was a magic dampening field around the dungeon cells but luckily the barbarian remembered you can’t turn off strength.
With an strength check she attempted to pull the door loose but Alas the barbarian’s efforts were met in vain, The rogue chided at her from down the Hall that, “this dungeon was prepared for people such as you, stronger than the average bear.”
So the barbarian adds “then I’ll just be have to be smarter than the average bear wouldn’t I.”
“… I guesss so?” the rest of the party concludes.
By this time guard is making his rounds back to the bar barian side of the The prison cells and she uses this moment to attempt the guard over to her side. A performance check later and the guard stumbles over himself to get to the barbarian female that is giving him the ‘come hither’ through he cell door widow, & exposing her shoulder from under ther plate mail.
“Hey there, honey what have you gotten yourself into over here. I can :: cough cough, spits::, I can get you out of this cell, you see we can probably help each other in some way…,”
I tell the barbarians player: “he reaches into the cell window and holds a handful of hair and stiffs it.”
The player for the barbarian -who we will call Chris- says “I want to grab himbefore he can withdraw”.
“Slide of hand check”, and with a natural 19 her hand shoots out of the window faster than the guard can react. And she grabs on to the collar of his armor and helmet.
“OK now what?”, I say.
Chris: “i want to check if he has a key on him and so I can unlock myself so I want to bring him inside.”
Me: “OK so to clarify you reach through a small window cut out in the reinforced door of the cell so it’s just your arms that are fitting through at the moment.”
Chris “yeah I know”
Me”…So you want to pull him through the small window?, the Big guard, with the armor.”
Chris: “yes”
“I’m going to need a really good strength check to pull off this maneuver, hes wearing armour after all ” and I noted his general size despite being a medium creature still.
::dice roll::
My party yells out in victory.
Natural 20!
That is a full 25 str check.
I describe what happens next:
The barbarian wretches the guard off his feet and like a reverse hydrolic press, pulls the poor guard through the window in the door. his armor pealed off by its straps and buckles which couldn’t resist the prying force of the barbarians iron strength. The guard kicking and screaming as bones crack and lungs collapse.
Finally with the window cracked and now a bit wider, the barbarian looks over the now thinner dead guard she still held aloft by his neck.
The barbarian looks over the lifeless body realising that it’s just him and his britches on at this point. “huh well I have the guard but I can’t find the key…””
She peeks out the door window and sees the armour and belt w/cell key that was peeled off of the guard and was lying in a bloody pile outside the cell.
The rogue fashioned together a small is there a small wire and string to make a grappling hook and now was able to try without the fear of the guard coming across him. He mumbled to himself as he tried to hook the keys: “mom was always worried that I’d become a Hooker if I left to go on adventures, now look at me…”
Before too long the keys were in his hand and he was out of the cell freeing his companions. “Jeez”, the rogue said “what the crap happened to him?”
Barbarian: ” I don’t like being touched.”
The campaign went on for almost a year more until the party reached level 20, and was then able take on the BBEG which had a huge climax. Along with some epiloge that I would love to share as well.
And while there are still more stories from other campaigns I’d love to share the one I talk about most was that time Chris pulled a guard through a door.
[zombify_post]
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