Day 10: Craziest Thing I’ve Witnessed
I’m starting to think the 30-Day D&D Challenge overestimates how detailed my memory is. I started playing D&D in the late 6th grade or early 7th grade. I’m 45, and I was pretty much always a year younger than most of my same-grade-level peers. I’ll let you do the math for how long I’ve been gaming. So, with my spotty memory in mind, this might not actually be the craziest thing I’ve witnessed happen during a game.
Way back when I was still in high school (graduated 1985), we were hanging out at Big Greg’s apartment, playing 1E. I was running Lord Korbok. Fred was running Blake, his magic-user/thief (who I think was still an elf at this time). Another Mark was running a ranger, if I recall correctly, probably his (in)famous Count de Monet. Our PCs had just low-crawled through a tunnel to reach a ledge that overlooked a large cavern. Below us, a group of giant two-headed trolls milled about, doing trolly things. We’d never encountered giant two-headed trolls before. They may have even been a relatively new monster in 1E at the time.
“What are those?” said Blake.
“Kinda look like trolls, but more gianty and with two heads,” said Korbok.
“I wonder if they’re ‘giant-class’ monsters,” said Count de Monet. “If they are, I do more damage against them.”
“Well, there’s one way find out,” said Korbok, who then shoved Count de Monet as hard as he could from behind, toppling the ranger off the ledge.
“Count de Monet falls thirty feet, taking three die six points of damage,” said the DM.
“Nuh uh. He’s wearing a ring of feather falling.”
“Oh, that’s right,” said the DM. “In the case, he floats gently down into the middle of the giant two-headed trolls. Roll for initiative.”
It turned out that, yes, Count de Monet did get bonus damage against giant two-headed trolls. After the first round of combat, Lord Korbok, not wanting to be left out of the carnage, executed a belly flop down into the combat, no ring of feather falling required.
Ah, good times.
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