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Wood elf ranger with some pals fighting two orcs and two wolves in a stable. In the middle of the fight:
GM: The orc hits you (to the elf) and you're getting a D Krush critic.
Elf: Holy shit.
GM rolls the critic, a very high roll, 80 or 90something, the player knows that he is probably dead. The GM reads the critic.
GM: Don't worry, you just lose some extra hit points.
Elf: Phew, I'm alive after all.
GM: Oh wait, there's more below, are you wearing a helmet?
Elf: Nope.
GM: Then you're dead.
Everybody laughing out loud. Needless to say that player now refuses to play non-helmet-wearing characters.
The following is one of my favourite incidents from a campaign that I have been running over the last year or so. This is the first time the players have used the Rolemaster system and as a result the intrepid band of adventures ended up as a somewhat motley crew: A huge Highman fighter who can do little but hit things, a Half-Elf paladin that’s pretty good at running away, a human swashbuckler who’s good at lots and great at little, a human rogue who makes me wonder who is playing the bad guys sometimes and to cap it off a Dwarf dabbler called Squatch who has spent much of the campaign coming up with inventive ways of getting around his “shortcomings”.
Some way into the campaign the characters found themselves exploring a deserted town searching for clues to the location of an ancient temple. The characters had already survived an attack from a pack of Manticores and were making good progress into the centre of the town. Little did they know that the pack of Manticores they had previously dispatched were in fact just the female hunters and they were heading straight for the prides male contingent.
It was not long before the characters came to a plaza at the centre of the town which was flanked by rotting buildings and dominated by a large crumbling temple. Outside the temple several Manticore cubs were playing in the ruined fountain, a clear warning that the buildings were probably occupied by others of their kin. Of course, in the true wonder of players, the group completely ignored the warnings and piled in. Quite a few brutal rounds of combat later the characters had killed off the poor cubs and a couple of the male Manticores but almost all of them had taken some hefty criticals and were on the way out. Yet they still faced the mighty and almost unhurt alpha male Manticore, as big as a horse, and as tough as hell.
Throughout the battle Squatch had made little impression, having tried to take up an ambush position on the roof of the temple he had nearly fallen through the half destroyed roof and with a lack of offensive spells and little ob he had not achieved much. Now, whilst the fighter tried to retreat, nursing a broken arm, the paladin the swashbuckler and a retainer were busy forcing the final Manticore back into the temple with a hail of arrows. Meanwhile Squatch was busily rummaging through his pack for something of use.
In the lull that ensued it became obvious to the characters that not only was what they needed in the Temple but also none of them were in a fit state to carry on the fight. If they did not do something soon some of them were going to start dropping from their wounds and would be unable to fend off any further attacks from the beast. It was at this point that Squatch declared that he was going to use one of his precious scrolls and cast a cracks call spell at the temple roof.
Having already described the roof as being unsafe I reasoned that there was a good chance that the development of the existing cracks would be enough to bring down some of the roof. Squatch ruefully rolled the dice that had not been going his way all evening but which chose that moment to change from being regular lows for him to regular highs. Several dice later and not only had the dabbler collapsed a good chunk of the roof but he had also scored some hits on the Manticore. The whole group watched with baited breath as Squatch rolled the attacks – he got good rolls and scored a critical on the beast. Whilst I confidently opening up the large critical table feeling sure it would just result in some extra hits Squatch rolled again. To my horror it was an opened ended roll, not only did he bring the ceiling down but he managed to crush the spine of my poor beast to, killing it instantly. Needless to say the characters were delighted and I was left mourning the loss of a well crafted foe but applauding the ingenuity and luck of the little fella.
A few years ago when our Calgary roleplaying group was still going strong, our small party of fairly powerful characters were exploring a temple of great significance to an evil god's comeback plans. I believe the party consisted of a highly skilled warrior with minor spellcasting abilities and several magical swords, a druid with the usual nature magic abilities, a sorceror who specialized in directed fire spells, and my character, Cariah: a mystic who functioned as our jack-of-all-trades and scout. She also had the innate ability, due to her unusual race and the expenditure of multiple background points, to see into the magical spectrum.
Anyway, our GM was fond of elaborately-constructed puzzle dungeons. This particular temple had forcefields across each corridor that would fry anyone who tried to cross them without carrying the correct type of magical stone found at the temple entrance. Unfortunately the spells were too complex for Cariah's abilities to simply see the answer. Deciding that we had to gather some data by trial and error, we took turns picking up a stone and trying to cross certain forcefields. Most of us received only minimal damage, but I rolled high on my 'A' shock critical and Cariah ended up with burns on her face and neck and damaged vocal cords. We healed the hit point damage but none of our healing magic was sophisticated enough to heal her voice on the spot.
After finally deducing the required pattern, we got through the corridors and entered a huge, cavernous room that was dotted with skeletal corpses but otherwise empty. Apparently...
Only Cariah could see the immense dracolich gliding towards us; to her senses its invisibility spell acted like a beacon. Unfortunately she still couldn't speak, so she engaged in nearly fifteen seconds of charades: "Thin! Skull! Bone! Yes? Umm.... flying thing! Breath! Bad breath? Fire breath! Flying fire-breathing bony thing!"
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