Fake War Stories

I was playing as a Half-Elf Ranger a long time ago, and got really lucky whilst rolling the character. Stats up to here, lemme tell you.

Despite this, I had absolutely terrible luck rolling during combat. How bad? Our party trusted the currently spell-less wizard to hold a critical hallway over me. It was bad.

Anyhow, despite my ineptitude, we managed to bust through this evil temple, defeat the crazed mummy at the end, and recover the enchanted, legendary bastard sword that was hanging on the wall. (Well, a +1 bastard sword, but it was so far the first magic weapon in the campaign.) Being the only one in the party who really USED swords of that type, it went to me.

And with it, my luck changed too.

Rolling twenties came as naturally to me as breathing. During one fight, I killed four goblins before the rest of the party had even rounded the corner. The difference was night and day.

My character had always been a bit aloof, but now grew positively stuck up. I was a whirling death machine! I was a god!

Arguments ensued. The provenance of my skill came under question. Until finally, it came out: “Without that sword, you’d be just as useless as you’ve ALWAYS been!”

In a fit of pique, I threw the sword away. It landed in the bottom of a river, and everyone stared at me. In particular the DM. “You’re… You’re sure you’re just going to leave that there? It’s a MAGIC SWORD.”

But I was determined. What good was being impressive in combat when your fellow party members saw you as nothing more than effectively a scarecrow that allowed a fancy magical sword to swing about and be awesome?

So we left the sword and carried on. As it turns out, my rolls didn’t switch back to being as terrible as before, and I proved to continue to be a competent fighter for the rest of the campaign.

But the DM took me aside a few months later, and let me know just exactly what I’d thrown away. Turns out that the sword I had was actually a legendary artifact that grew as it killed, gaining XP along with me, and growing in bonuses, up to +5, inflicting fiery damage, and granting magical abilities.

Still more importantly, it would grow in intelligence as well, eventually to the point where it WOULD have taken me over entirely, and I WOULD have been nothing but a scarecrow allowing the sword to enact its will.

He had an entire plot set up for this, whole cities full of NPCs to betray and win back the trust of, and had planned on taking me aside a few weeks into the transformation to let me know how the changes were altering my character, and had confidence that a) I could have pulled it off without the other players noticing until it was too late and b) it was going to be awesome.

And yet instead of the accusations and redemption happening over a few month’s time, it happened in an afternoon. The first afternoon. Probably forty-five minutes after first acquiring the sword.

I still imagine that sword down there some times, at the bottom of that river… Just conscious enough to realize how close it had come to being released, but not powerful enough to really do anything about it…

(submitted by Imperfect via MeFi)

A few weeks ago I was part of a fantasy based LARP event. My first day there someone gave me a bunch of advice and a tour.

The first bit of advice was “follow zombie apocalypse rules: never go anywhere alone or too dark to see.”

There were some other bits but I cant really remember them :P

When the tour came about they pointed down one of the roads that lead to some hidden section of woods and told me that that was called “Death Alley”.

For good reason apparently.

The first day went by and we encountered some bad things. Like bad to the point where I couldn’t even hurt them or they took too long to kill. The next morning I decided I wanted to go exploring. So i grabbed one of the other (more heavily armed and armored) noobs and we decided to take a walk down Death Alley, not even considering the consequences.

We reach the end of Death Alley (still alive) and we find this really cool building! We go exploring for a bit and leave. I step out of the doorway and go to say something to the other noob and the conforsation goes something like this:

Me: ::notices about 8 baddies:: We have a slight problem. Run.

Noob: What’s the problem? ::looks around::

Me: ::Runs::

Noob: ::notices the baddies and also runs::

We ran all the way down Death Alley, rallied the town, and survived the encounter. But that was only my first race of the event! The second one took place later that day before the feast.

Shortly after the first race we ate lunch and got some quests assigned to us. One of which is to find a mysterious blink plant. I went out with about 3 different search parties and searched the entire camp. The final search party—a wild elf ranger, a wild elf swordsman, and I—found a portal that we supposedly had to close.

The ranger got curious and shot an arrow into it. After a trip to LC and back we found out that a really bad baddie came out of the portal.

The swordsman and myself ran and drew the baddie away from the ranger and toward Death Alley. It casually walked while following us. Upon reaching Death Alley it burst into a full run. We valued our lives so we did the same.

I made it all the way down Death Alley alive (again) and I decided that that was my LAST time running through that place.

(submitted by super-contributor mrevand6!)

Last weekend I attended Ghengis Con in Denver. During a game one of the other participants told me of his experience at a previous convention. He’d signed up as Gamemaster for a good old-fashioned dungeon crawl and drew the morning slot. Only one person showed up at the time of the game, but they decided to play anyway.

Talking to the player, the GM learned that the gentleman was unfamiliar with the game. In fact he’d never roleplayed before and had no idea what the hobby was about. He and his wife lived in one of the small mountain towns of the Rockies, and every few months they’d drive into Denver to see what was happening. He’d discovered the game convention while his wife was at a doll show and, thinking it sounded fun, decided to drop in.

The GM handed the player a character sheet for a stalwart Ranger, gave him a brief overview of play, and they were off. When the player ran into his first monster, the Gamemaster helpfully pointed out the Ranger’s skill in archery and swordplay.

“So what do you want to do?” the GM asked.

The player studied his character sheet. “It says I can do bird calls,” he noted.

“That’s right,” the GM replied, somewhat puzzled.

“OK. I do a bird call to distract the monster, and then sneak past him.”

The fellow rolled the dice and successfully evaded the monster. In fact, over the course of the game, the player cleverly avoided every monster in the dungeon, with nary an arrow fired or sword unsheathed.

(found on defective yeti)

Another time we were playing AD&D (2nd edition) and the characters were summoned before the infamous Lord of the North (whom the PCs had heard a lot about but had never met, he was a serious badass in our world’s meta-geopolitical game).

So as the Lord of the North is basically acknowledging that the PCs could be somewhat useful to him, our ranger decides to get lippy with him: 

Ranger: “Screw off you over-important prick, we will not work for you.”

Lord: “YOU WILL BOW TO ME AND SHOW YOUR RESPECT, MORTAL.”

Ranger: “Bite me.”

Lord: “DIE” ::casts Power Word: Kill::

Ranger: ::fails save, dies::

Rest of the group: “What the fuck were you thinking, Ranger?!”

Ranger: “Well, I didn’t think he was going to kill me! And besides I might have made my save…”

(submitted by Vindaloo via MeFi)

My Eldar Rangers crouched low in a ruined building, a relic of a past age. We had been hit hard by an Imperial Guard assault from the right while Orcs had rushed us from the left. With my main (if small) army locked in hand to hand combat, it was up to my two Camouflaged Rangers to do the dirty ranged work.

In the distance, an Imperial Sentinel Walker was hammering a squad of space marines as they tried their best to hold ground against a wall of laser fire. With little else to attack, I sent my orders in.

“Attack the Sentinel”.

My allies gave me a surprised look; one pointed out that I’d never hit the damn thing as it was too far away.

I ordered my commander into the relic when a haze—almost too light to be noticeable—surrounded the Rangers, granting them a steadier hand and a sharper eye.

I gave the nod and rolled two dice.

It was a 6. Got it first try. I’d landed a hit at the max range (almost the width of the entire map). The other flinched it and missed.

Next I had to get the shot to wound. Another six.

Finally the roll to see what my shot would do. Even with a six I could only get a normal explosion, not the ball of fire that killed everyone in the surrounding area that I wanted.

I rolled… and landed my 3^rd six in a row.

From across the map, my Ranger fired a shot that arced above the battlefield, over the heads of Orcs—Imperial and Marine alike—before hitting the Sentinel’s fuel tank dead on. It wasn’t enough to make it explode violently, but the tanks ruptured, melting the metal around it and sending the driver running off the battlefield with a slightly incinerated ass.

The Sentinel dropped to its mechanical knees in defeat and slouched to the floor where its body sat as cover for the rest of the match.

My allies and the enemy team stared at me, half with surprise and half with amazement, and I knew that down on the battlefield, my Ranger had just pulled out the Eldar equivalent of a Cuban, and was now sitting happily, smoking and admiring his fine, incredibly lucky, smouldering handy work.

(Submitted by penguin5465)