What Was Your Most Anti-Climatic Fight?

To some extent, this post could be categorized under Savage Worlds, because they system is a little notorious for anti-climatic boss fights. In fact, the very story I’m about to tell is an illustration of this problem.

I’ll also preface this story by saying that climatic boss fights are a staple of many, but not all games. Sometimes, the expectation really is that even the big bad can’t take a bullet to the brain-pan. But, this story is from Slipstream, so a climatic battle is part of the genre.

There my players were. They’d fought bird men and solved challenges. They’d made it all the way to the prince who they must defeat. The prince had minions. The prince had weapons. The prince had a mobile arena with spike traps. This last bit was pretty awesome, as the whole arena did different things based on the prince’s initiative card.

All in all, this was shaping up to be a dramatic fight. The players entered the arena. The prince gave his lengthy monolog about how he was going to destroy them. He stepped out into the arena, raised his weapons and…

…the party leader pulled out a laser gun, aced on his damage a few times, and dropped the prince before he could even act.

Sure, I ran the rest of the fight, and it was alright, but the drama of the scene had already been shot. Literally.

These days I know a bit more about the game, so I could probably come up with a boss with more staying power that didn’t frustrate the players, but there is always that chance. Many threads have discussed this challenge, but I think that’s a topic for another day.

Now Your Turn:  What Was Your Most Anti-Climatic Fight?

Leave your story in the comments, and next week we’ll post the best story.  If you have any questions you’d like us to answer in a future Behind the Bar, let us know.

Last Week’s Winner Is:  Cripple X

The best “loot” I’ve ever received was from a Fantasy Campaign I played using the Hero system, and it was The Holy Sword of Saint Anslem. To understand its significance requires a little background, despite the length below its the digest version:

In most fantasy games people play epic heroes powerful mages, devout priests, tough warriors, and cunning rogues. Our group had it all, and I wanted to break the mold, so I decided to make a down to earth, run of the mill stable boy who happened to be lucky from time to time. His name was Berilo. Berilo was from a country, Mesal, that had been conquered by a second country which was slowly dismantling its culture and replacing it with their own. He got inadvertently mixed up with the adventuring group that comes to his town and for most of the campaign he’s content with running around with those guys playing “Adventurer” while trying to keep up with his job at the stables. At one point in the campaign though he does something pretty heroic to save the adventurer’s lives and barely scrapes by, nearly getting killed in the process. Apparently the GM was impressed, because he threw me a screwball at that point. Poor Berilo who was up until this point a happy-go-lucky stable boy keeps having dreams of this sword and a strange booming voice. Eventually the stable boy discovers the sword is one that is supposed to have belonged to the founder of Mesal, Saint Anslem. Berilo visits his tomb, which the public is banned from thanks to the oppressive regime of the conquering country. Berilo finds his way into the tomb and eventually comes upon the sarcophagus of Saint Anslem, which opens on its own and a skeletal warrior with glowing eyes rises from it wielding a plain looking sword. At this point Berilo is sure he’s done for, but instead of attacking him the skeletal warrior forces him to his knees, knights him, and hands him the sword before collapsing back into is sarcophagus.

The sword, despite its plain appearance, was a fairly powerful item which burst into holy flame in the presence of demons. Much of the rest of the campaign for Berilo was spent coming to terms with the fact he had been picked to use the sword to protect Mesal (against demons no less), make them aware of their culture which was being lost and that despite all his doubts about himself, he could, in fact, do it. It was just so interesting to try and roleplay that change from happy-go-lucky-kid to someone who was confident enough to believe he could do something so monumental and then do it. The sword of Saint Anslem was a catalyst for that change in Berilo, and that’s why it was my best loot ever. The Holy flames smiting deal, wasn’t half bad either though.

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  • http://twitter.com/Dhraakellian Nick Tryon

    An hour around the table; hours, perhaps a day or more in character; a game of cat-and-mice against Blackbeard's man-o-war, cannonballs pinging against hulls without effect. Finally, the PC with dead shot gets a joker, the flagship is lined up to take the shot, the dice ace, and ace, and ace again until, with damage doubled, a 72-point cannonball rips through Blackbeard's hull, ricochets around, and homes in on the powder stores. The man-o-war goes up with more explosions than the gunner's dice. Alas, the flagship is critically damaged by the ballistic fiery debris and begins sinking as the PCs offload as many of its valuables and upgrades to the sister ship as possible before it slips beneath the surface. High fives all around, and a magnificent story for the ages.

    All well and good. Fast forward several years and a couple campaigns; cross over from Caribdus to the Sundered Skies.

    The crew in their elven frigate, damaged in an act of sabotage as it was captured from the elves, happens upon a cloudskiff listing aimlessly through the void, its captain an orcish courier bearing a warning that could save the largest food supply in all the islands of the skies. Just as the bedraggled pilot is being dragged aboard, the crewman on watch spies a vague and menacing ship approaching out of the voidglow—the pirates who crippled the courier's skiff have returned! The PCs rush to undock and get ready for battle and evasion, the ghastly pirates bear down upon our unprepared heroes, the GM cackles slightly as he double-checks the chase and maneuver rules—

    and the player with the damage-doubling adventure card gets a Joker in the first round, aces a couple times on damage, and destroys the oh-so-terrifying pursuers in a single shot. Crisis averted.

    . . .

    That's it, Steve, you're no longer allowed anywhere near big guns when you have a Joker.

  • Hillary Crenshaw

    I think Paul should tell us about the time he sweet-talked the Devil himself into serving us tea instead of murdering us all. Actually, that pretty much was the story right there.

  • http://vizionstudios.blogspot.com UTSquishy

    The End of Zombie Run. I had Minifigs all over my Kitchen Table (Both Leaves In). I had a Wall constructed, and some towers, and 100 Zombies, a little scenery, my paper Buses.

    This was my first attempt to use the Savage Worlds Mass Combat Rules. I attempted to modify the rules a bit, since they seemed to point toward an anti-climatic ending. I had a way of placing some PC action between rounds.

    First the Buses full of zombies attempted to Ram the gates, and were taken out by the PCs' clever use of tactical nuke mines—only a hand full of the zombies survived, and they were on the outside of the gate where the “villainous” NPCs were located. Then the first mass combat roll, after 15 minutes of discussion about how the rule worked, I forgot to let each of the PCs take an action as I had planned and rolled the second round of Mass Combat.

    Multiple Aces from the PCs decimated the opposing force and triggered the one action that would cause them to turn tail.

    I chose to ignore the turning of tail and moved from mass combat rules to standard combat rules and it was still over in the next round.

    So Much for an explosive action packed evening as planned—wanna play some Guitar Hero or Rock Band?

  • http://twitter.com/entonfire Andrew Linstrom

    Edited in favor of more recent reply. Silly Disqus had me confused.

  • http://twitter.com/entonfire Andrew Linstrom

    d20 Modern's low massive damage threshold seems to invite anticlimaxes.

    As our Urban Arcana party descended into the basement of the belligerent suburban church to confront its manipulative mind flayer pastor, the boss had but to dip its squid face into frame for our Fast Hero to win initiative, raise his PSG1, and blow its brains out with a single critical hit.

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