Tales from the Table: My Favorite Dungeons and Dragons Stories

El Pumpo

After a year, the party had finally acquired the Sword of Kas. This was in part due to the help received from a commoner in town, whom just so happened to know a legend of where the sword was buried. He offered this location to the party and as payment asked for the other item buried with it: an hour glass that could supposedly turn back time. The party scoffed at the idea of such a game breaking item, but when they discovered an hourglass along with the sword, they were not about to hand it over to a commoner whom they could much easier kill. The commoner alerted the guards that the party was responsible for the deaths of 2 townspeople (this was true, however not unjustified). More than half the city guard circled the party in the middle of town with spears pointed down at them. When accused of their crimes, the party wizard casts suggestion, and then proceeds to make a bluff check. 20, of course, otherwise this wouldn't be a story worth telling. The wizard then shouts "Wait, you've got the wrong person! It was El Pumpo!" The guards look around, confused.
The captain finally speaks up, "Who!?"
The wizard then proceeds to point to the commoner that had originally alerted the guards, "It's him! It's El Pumpo!" He shouts. The guards proceed to turn their spears on the poor man, and he is later executed for murdering 2 townsfolk and trying to frame the heroes of the city for it. Despicable man, that El Pumpo.

Overkill

The party had spent all night doing a rather typical dungeon crawl. We had worked our way through the city sewers in search of a man with a scroll. The sewers had been set up almost like a maze and we had been mapping out our course from the start. Finally, we reached a point we knew had to be the final room. There was simply no place left unchecked. The party prepared at the door for the biggest fight of the night. The rogue notched a fire arrow, the sorcerer readied his best spell, and the barbarian pulled out an oversized minatour axe that he had been known to hurl occasionally. The DM gives us a surprise round because we are so well readied. The barbarian puts his massive foot to the door, and it breaks open with ease. The robed man inside is sitting on a chair trying to pull of some evil mastermind ambiance. He begins in with "I've been expect-" but before he can finish the barbarian throws this massive axe at him, hurling end over end, it strikes him square in the chest. The Rogue then steps up and fires an arrow right between the mans ribs, and finally the sorcerer hurls a fireball that engulfs the man and half of the room. When the smoke clears, the man, the scroll, and even the axe have been incinerated. So much for our objective.

101 Orcs

This one goes back to our early days of D&D, before we really understood the game mechanics and basically treated it like a video game on pen and paper. The party had come across an encampment of orcs. These orcs had nothing to do with the quest at hand, but of course being an all good alignment party, we couldn't let them get away with the crime of... well being orcs. Naturally, our group of 4 would take the entire company of orcs on. The wizard casts mage armor on the fighter, boosting his armor class to 24. He then proceeds to walk into the camp of sleeping orcs, kicking their tents and telling them to come atone for their sins. The orcs all begin pouring out of their tent telling the fighter to leave at once or they'll kill him. The fighter provokes them into fighting him. Unfortunately, the orcs only have a +4 attack, so in order to hit him, they need to roll a 20. The fighter proceeds to hack his way through the orcs as they step up and try to hit him. Thanks to cleave, and great cleave, he's slaying 3-4 of them every round. After an hour of real time, the fighter has slaughtered 101 orcs. An entire encampment on his own. As he stands triumphant of the hordes of evil orcs, the DM says, "Oh look, it says here they were willing to try diplomacy."