I just had my best D&D session ever yesterday! My players cleared out this really long dungeon, and our Wizard almost died. She was slashed across the chest by a Bone Devil's tail... and yeah...

However she was saved so she ended up giving the final boss the final blow by rolling a natural 20 with the spell disintegrate... and since I play with Horde Rules, which means that when a creature is brought down to 0 Hit Points, the damage carries over to another creature. So you know... when you kill Two Bone Devils with only 2 HP, and you're doing 107 damage to each of them... whooooboy...

That's 210 damage carrying over to Violeta... the boss... and then the additional 107...

317 damage to a creature with maybe 108 HP left... the rest of that damage went over to the environment.

So already, this stone throne room has cracks from our Paladin casting a very powerful spell... I wanna say Divine Strike... so now the entire thing is gone... and all the iron candelabra are red hot from the fire.

Not too long afterward, my players returned to town, and I finally completed my Paladins character arch. She's an aasimar who never got to learn her destiny, and she was taken away from her family... who's noble.

I decided who the family was. One of her brothers was in the area to fight the cults, and while the players were out spelunking, this character, our Aasimars brother who is an Asshole sees a bunch of Cultists getting ready to attack the town... and they were attacking a woman and a small child.

His name is Stefan Frosthart, and he survived the murder mystery portion of the campaign, and he saw the party save a bunch of people from Fire Cultists. He thought Seraphine (our Paladin) was pretty cool.

So he gets mortally wounded and runs to the town, into the inn and warns everyone. He's carried off to the temple where the party goes to question him. There he's humming a song that Seraphina recognizes... the song her mother used to sing to her before she fell asleep.

After that, Seraphina walks up to him, and learns... holy crap he's her brother. Stefan is beyond healing, and he knows it. He starts attempting to heal himself so he can extend how long he'll be alive so he can talk to his sister.

The player playing Seraphina got really sad, on a scale of 1 - 10... a 10. She was a little teary eyed, she didn't want to cry in front of people.

The result was worth it, and that scene was really hard to DM. I was coughing a lot, and I was trying to sound chocked up, so I was tightening my throat and breathing heavily for effect. And I'm not good at making sound like I'm about to cry, and I almost pulled it off... but I was close.

Sooooo worth it... and even I felt a little sad when Stefan used his dying breath to give Seraphina the family signet ring... covered in his own blood.

I must say... the effect of the scene was quite lovely. I got some of the best role playing I've seen in my group from this player, she went out on her own to take care of some Earth Cultists, and she used her Divine Smite and I just stopped doing the math... that much carried over.

The way she described her character was amazing, and she even sounded angry. Then Marlos, leader of the Earth Cult comes out, and she grabs him by the neck and starts squeezing. But Marlos is a Medusa... and thankfully she rolled hight enough so she wasn't turned to stone.

My players turned him into a sloth and one of them suggested we torture him for information... so they tie him up and they bring him to the Black Smith. Seraphina heats up a dagger in the forge and gouges out his eyes. And after that she sits in a field and leaves the rest to the group.

This will then prompt yet another amazing piece of role player from our Drow Wizard who's narrowly escaped death. Her name is Blu. Blu joins Seraphina in the field, says she's sorry, and just has her character sit there is silence with her.

Two of my players had fun torturing Marlos and it resulted in our Barbarian Loesh along with an NPC going into the Alchemists Shop in the middle of the night, and one of them slamming the old lady who owns it up against a wall to get what they needed.

Now Marlos has a bad leg, and bad fingers from a dip in acid (which I guess pretty much just leaves bone) and he's being shipped off to a major city for trial... but... there still needs to be a boss fight with him...

I'm gonna break Blu's heart when they go against Aresi and next campaign... I shall shatter their very souls with emotion....