Divine Intervention 3: Wrath of God
Those of you who were paying attention may have noticed the magnifying glass in Friday’s comic. Nice to see it making a return appearance. And even nicer to see the Herald of Lady Celestial showing off all that divine might he’s worked so hard to attain.
I don’t know about you guys, but I love the shit out of these moments. You wade through months worth of reading. You ride hard across mountain trails with Pippin to that final ridge overlooking the Pelennor. You manage not to puncture your own eardrums listening to Jar-Jar for most of the moive. You put up with a novel’s worth of Harrowhark’s whining. Then it happens. The charge of the Roharrim. The Duel of the Fates. Gideon picks up her two-hander (and also starts sassing God and everybody).
It’s the big payoff at the end of the long character arc, and I am very much here for it.
So for today’s discussion, why don’t we celebrate the rise of our old pal Herald by sharing our own Wrath of God moments? What was the big climax at the end of your story? Who fought? Who died? And what did the pyrotechnics look like? Give us you very finest auto-fangirl story time down in the comments! And then, if you’re up for it, give us a brand new tale from Handbook-World in our latest contest!
COMIC STRIP OF HEROES DIY COMIC CONTEST! We’ve been threatening to do this contest for YEARS. Now that we have these badass [mystery prize redacted] to give away, it’s finally time to make it happen. Introducing the COMIC STRIP OF HEROES DIY COMIC CONTEST! Your job is to take any previous Handbook of Heroes comics you like. Cut ’em up. Splice ’em together. Keep ’em SFW. Then rewrite the dialogue and paste the result into a comic strip. Enter as many times as you like by posting your work to our social channels. The plan is to ask our Quest Givers over on Patreon to choose the two grand prize winners, then those lucky so-and-sos will get the goods. Deadline to enter is Christmas, and we’ll announce the winners on New Year’s. So get out there and get to remixing!
My Kobold Orbital Strike Warlock conjured a Hammer of Dawn that held Tiamat’s demons away from the portal’s edge until Bahamut could close it
Fuck yeah.
A convention game, Powered by the Apocalypse system where we played heroic gothic horror monsters. Me, a Frankenstein’s Monster. The villain, a mad scientist ghost mutant thing. As the lab was about to explode I grabbed the villain, as I had an ability that stopped him from going intangible and escaping. I also had an ability that allows me to take no damage from a single attack, which an exploding building would count as.
But due to a roll, I would only be able to use one of these abilities. So I had to make a choice of letting the villain go to save myself or to see this till the end.
And so, as the building was exploding around me, the villain trying to break free and screeching how I was a pathetic creature, I fumbled my badass one-liner “No, you are the creature. Me, I AM A MAN!” as the lab was destroyed, my teammates and the people they rescued watching from safety.
I AM A MAN! XD
I know some trans-masc gamers that would pump a fist so hard they’d break their knuckles.
. I was GMing.
The climatic battle occurred in ancient dwarven tunnels beneath the town the PC’s lived in.
The party had just defeated the Big Bad Blue Thrallherd and his children, spilling the blues’ blood on the sacrificial altar in the process. Unfortunately, that left them facing down a horde of formerly mind-controlled goblins who were being transformed into fiendish creatures as they watched. Behind them, a massive plug of dwarven make sealed off the river.
The PCs were wracking their brains for ideas. Except for Anastazy, the dwarven farmer/woodsman whose player was normally half-checked out. He played more to hang out with us, as opposed a passion for the game. Normally a go with the flow type of player.
Not this time.
Anastazy quietly walked over to the plug, pulled out the explosives he’d looted from the alchemist’s tower months before, placed them along the seal, shouted “Take Cover!”, and, lacking a means of creating fire, struck it with his hammer.
The explosion killed Anastazy, blew the plug open, and sent a torrent of freezing water rushing through the tunnels. The party frantically used an ice version of Burning Hands to create an ice raft they desperately clung to and made skill checks to navigate the tunnels from memory and rode it to safety.
The fiendish goblin horde perished in the flood. The town was saved. Anastazy was immortalized as a hero by the town, and the town started to grapple with their discriminatory views of dwarves.
(Or that would have happened, had the rest of the party not immediately started paying attention when he shouted, and explained that one of them actually had a fire spell that could set the explosives off at a distance, and he should join them in cover before they set it off, and then they could all survive. And the player decided that yeah, surviving was better than dying.
Definitely one of those times where sharing the storytelling too widely caused the narrative to suffer, IMO.)
I like the imaginary version as well. That esprit d’escalier is an incorporeal dickbag!
I thought you were supposed to throw a punch when going “I AM A MAN!” (Terrible Superman comic reference, “Superman At Earth’s End” if I recall.)
I had a similar event as in the comic happen in an AP. We were in a place filled with dozens of vampires, lead by one particularly nasty vampire monster.
My character was a Rogue, however before that fight they bought a very specific item that happened to be perfect for that situation – A helm of Reclamation, which has a number of gems to cast spells with (much like a Helm of Brilliance), all of which specific for undead-slaying. Winning initiative, my first action was to cast Sunburst on the whole lot of them, frying them with sunlight in spell form.
Unfortunately, a vast majority of them both had evasion and made their saves (items tends to have poor DCs), so they were largely unharmed, but a few of the mooks did get poof’d outright.
Vampires out here dodging literal sunlight like https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/dodgy
In one of my many fantasies of DMing a story, one scenario that cropped up in my head is a quest to effectively cause the events of todays comic.
The story would be that a bunch of vampires or other sunlight-vulnerable baddies captured or imprisoned a powerful celestial for some nefarious or corrupting purpose. The undead forces are far too numerous or OP to fight head on, so the party is encouraged to be subtle about their approach and focus on freeing this celestial.
Once the celestial is released (by breaking their magic chains keeping them helpless whilst the undead attempt to stop them in a frantic panic), said celestial would proceed to obliterate all the the sunlight-vulnerable enemies with a high-level cast of sunburst, effectively ending the undead threat instantly.
Fuck yeah.
The character tag for Paladin/Divine Herald appears to be missing. 😀
Eat me.
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I meant “thanks for the reminder.” But to be fair those keys are like, right next to each other.
G-1 Steading of the Hill Giant Chief states the following quite clearly in its introduction:
“All wood in the place is very damp. Magical fires will have only an 8% chance per round of burning or setting the place afire. If the party should manage to set the upper works of the Steading aflame, they will be forced to wait a week before trying to discover a way into the lower (dungeon) level, for hot embers will prevent entry before this period of time. Note also that ALL loot from the upper works will be lost in such a fire, but all giants from location 11 of the upper level will escape to safety in the lower level, going to location 26.”
My druid with a Ring of Elemental Command had the grand plan (after stealthily sneaking into the Steading as a squirrel and observing the meeting in the great room, area #11) to partially encircle the firepit at the center of the chamber with a Wall of Fire, then cast Pyrotechnics to fill the great hall with choking smoke while simultaneously extinguishing their council fire. In theory, the giants would all come pouring down the main hallway, where the PCs could command the choke point (no pun intended) and pick them off with ranged attacks.
In theory.
My first mistake was in missing the part of the briefing that said we were supposed to find out who was behind the coordinated giant attacks. The many parts that said “punish the giants” I heard just fine. I also missed that part that said our ONLY reward would be any loot we recover.
My second mistake was in assuming that Wall of Fire was shapeable–instead of a horseshoe to herd the giants down the hall, I got a 35′ radius circle that prevented any of the giants from reaching an exit, all while my smoke cloud debilitated and disoriented them.
It also turns out that a DC 19 chance to “burn this mutha down” isn’t so unattainable if you have “concentration +15 rounds” to achieve it, in fact, it’s almost guaranteed.
No giants ever came down the hallway. As it turns out, no giants ever made it to area #26, either.
Consequently, with no information to share and no loot left intact, no PCs got paid, either. Given the two-week literal “cool-down” period, once the embers were cold, the trail of the giants was, too. Our DM rolled his eyes instead of his dice and reached for a different module.
However, my “new Mother Nature taking over” Druid did find a way to clear a module in two rounds. (Somewhere, a fire deity goes to the abacus and slides one bead.)
Oh shit! It’s an oldschool Jay story. Reading…
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Fuck yeah. I feel like Mother Nature Taking Over Druid and Sorcerer would be friends.
The most recent one from our table came at the hands of Nicholas Gille.
Mr. Gille is an agent of the Dominion of Arcacia and all throughout our Age of Sail game has been the straight man and the patriot on our crew of ruffians, scaliwags, and pirates.
A mixture of Mr. Mercer from PoC and Garak from DS9, Mr Gille represented the interests of a clandestine clock-themed secret police called “The Thirteen Hands” who decided that if they couldn’t stop this group of ne’er do wells it was better to have one of their number imbedded to help steer them.
The end of the campaign drew nigh, the plot threads were wrapping up, and the party was struggling without how to deal with a Cthulhu-esque demity that was slowly usurping the powers and planes of the resident deities of the setting.
Mr. Gille was the plain man in a group of mystical miscreants. He eschewed magic and the supernatural in favor of gunpowder and clock-work gadgetry. All save for one thing . . .
At the edge of reality, in an encounter with a remnant spirit from the creation of the world, Mr. Gille made a trade. He traded his pocket watch that he had kept oiled, wound, and in working order across 3 irl years of gaming. The symbol of his Order and his belief in Law, broken by his own hands and shattered upon the edge of the world. In return he got a dagger, made of the broken hand of a clock. Nobody in the party knew what this item was. Mr. Gille was simply told to use it at the right time.
In the final battle, when all was hanging in the balance, Mr. Gille managed a backstab on the eldritch entity with this very special dagger. It turned out to be a sliver of condensed TIME. In stabbing the entity, he enforced TIME onto a being for whom it no longer had any meaning, and thus suspended it in a single moment, so long as the the dagger remained stuck fast.
DO NOT REMOVE THE DAGGER
Holy crap, that’s amazing.
The same Exalted-influenced setting mentioned in the comments to the previous strip. Short version, the creatures from beyond (Fair Folk, Excrucians, that sort of thing) were performing a great ritual of unmaking against the world to reduce everything back to primordial chaos. And rather than simply spoil the ritual, the heroes decided that “tonight we are *hijacking* the apocalypse”.
In a deal done with two of the Elders I’ve mentioned previously — the Mistress of Storms and the Bones of the Earth — they redirected the unsurvivably-cataclysmic energies through the Elders… the upshot of which is that the borders of reality massively expanded as chaos was turned into order in a manner not seen since the original creation.
EAT THAT YOU WHIMSICAL BASTARDS!
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Sorry. I’ve had run-ins with fey. So much nonsense… ugh.
Yeah, that’s why I also mentioned Excrucians from Nobilis… or perhaps the Chaos powers of Amber or the Rakshasa of Lord of Light (Zelazny wrote much worthy of stealing).
While that setting was very Exalted inspired (that, and Malazan) and I wanted the concept of Creation as an island of order in an infinite sea of chaos, the Fair Folk weren’t what I wanted for the face of that chaos… I love them as an idea, but they’re too human for my purposes.
I think you’ve touched on the subject of “portraying the inhuman” before in comments… it’s hard to do, but it came up a lot in that setting. Gods aren’t too bad… they’re mostly ascended humans with a lot of power and immortality. But the Elders and their chaotic kin… some of them can hold a conversation or even manifest a human form, but you’re not talking to a person… you’re talking to an aspect of reality, and doing a lot of anthropomorphizing to map things into your own human head.
At the end of our Warhammer fantasy norscan campaing, one of our guys hit his mutation limit. game master allowed him to roll if he got the 00 from percentile roll he would become deamon prince instead of a spawn, lucky bugger got it and behold almost all of us have to roll on willpower, those who failed and fled the deamon slayed, those who survived were led to a massive invasion to southlands. and curtains. The end was due to campaing havibg been a lobg run ine and couple who joined abput half way in felt like they were lagging too much behind, never mind the two longest running characters were a mess of mutations whuch boosted and hampered them but made them in overall more powerfull than a unmutated character of same level.
My drow Paladin of Selune (basically a golden retriever with pointy ears and gray skin) got his Big Damned Moment in the climax of Dragon Heist:
We had just chased a devil halfway across the city trying to get the mcguffin back and finally caught up to it in an abandoned windmill where it was trying to reverse-summoning-circle itself out with the thing. We get to the first floor and the big bad devil shed his disguise and summoned his minions and set fire to the windmill. My boy pulled out his Badge of the Watch in one hand and his Holy Symbol in the other. “[BBEG], by order of The Waterdeep City Watch, you are charged with conspiracy against a noble house, arson, murder, and jaywalking!” and then channeled divinity to turn all the minions, leaving the fight a 1v4 while our tabaxti rogue got the zoomies and zipped out of scene at 160ft a round.
My minotaur wizard got swallowed by the Tarrasque and then fired off a Prismatic Spray from INSIDE ITS STOMACH. I advocated that it should be hit by EVERY color of the rays since I was inside of it. This was allowed and took down a huge chunk of it’s health and made it throw it’s head back and roar in pain, making it also vomit prismatic rainbow up into the sky. Then the rogue finished it off and I crawled out of it’s mouth.
The biggest combat moment of my TTRPG career happened in a 4e game. We were helping defend a castle that was under siege. The opposing faction had a much greater force, but they didn’t have a team of high level adventurers.
The enemy did some magical shenanigans to blow a giant hole in a wall that went over a river, we had to guard both banks. I was on my own guarding one of the banks, with the rest of the party taking the other side. Now, for those of you unfamiliar, 4e has an enemy type called “Minions”. Minions have 1 HP and generally deal low damage, but also are usually seen in large numbers. Most of the sieging forces were made up of Minions. I was playing a very funny class feature that caused things that miss me to take damage equal to my intelligence modifier. And with my excellent defenses… well, I’m sure you can see where this is going. The rest of the party, on the other bank, were having a life or death battle. Me? The sieging forces broke against me, entire squads of soldiers and archers falling dead from me simply deflecting their attacks. After a few rounds, the enemy side fled screaming about some kind of demon summoned by the defenders.
My character was a small kobold with a tiny pseudodragon familiar. Both of us had just been knocked off the deck of our flying ship, and were plummeting to our deaths. I had the ability to cast Enlarge, and I also had a special homebrew potion that allowed the drinker to grow in size – but, crucially (after asking the GM “wouldn’t it be really cool though”), did NOT count as the same as the Enlarge spell for the purpose of “no stacking buffs.”
I imagine that the faces of my enemies when I soared back up to the deck on the back of my suddenly enlarged familiar were a sight to see.
Your are D&Ding correctly. 😀