Story: I ran one of those encounters people say never to run violating lots of good advice, and the players loved it — a single PC challenged the Queen to a duel /u/Ghostly-Owl DnD: Roll for Initiative!

This is a story post. Its not advice, and I’d not generally recommend what I did unless you know your table and think they’d love it too.

So, when I first started my campaign, I went around and wrote up a bunch of the big named NPC’s of major factions. It was partially an excuse for me to learn what a high level character looked like in DnDBeyond, since prior to that I’d only run 2nd/3.5/pathfinder. This included the Queen of the Elves, who I wrote up as Bladesinger 18/Warlock 2, with having had access to all the resources a several thousand year old monarchy could accumulate. (IE, stat books which reset every hundred years were things the monarchy accumulated and used repeatedly – so 26 in any stat she cared about.) She was described as the “The Witch Queen” and rumored to be almost untouchable in combat.

Fast forward to 3 years in to a campaign, the players characters go to the Elven city for the first time at 9th level. They had this entire charade they were doing with Sorcerer pretending to be a mercenary company Captain, and entering the “mooks” of his company in a pit fighting tourney and just smoking them — used a bunch of perform and deception and tricks to basically sell himself as the heaver hitter of company and probably mid-teens level power. Like the type a Queen might want to engage for a big problem. He then went around and did a grass roots campaign in the city, making it so everyone was talking about him. He handed out little flags with an R on it. He got himself featured in the equivalent of the local newspaper for the merchant & noble class. He went all out making himself famous in a number of creative ways. So the captain got invited by the Queen’s Hand to challenge the Queen during the annual monarchy festival to a friendly duel.

Mind you the Captain is a ftr1/sor8. And while he typically does melee (relying on quickened green-flame-blade for a second swing), he’s pretty much always overshadowed by the paladin and the rogue.

To add drama, at the festival, when the Queen asked if there were any wished to challenge her, I had an anti-monarchist step forward as well as the Captain. The anti-monarchist said she was a horrible queen and he wanted to challenge her for the throne. The anti-monarchist went first and was beheaded in round 2 by the Queen’s vorpal sword. And it let them see her fight — she was clearly using every magic buff a max level bladesinger with an equally high level cleric backing her could have while in top tier gear. So the party realized they could throw everything at buffing their Captain and it’d be considered fair, and did so. (They’d done some prep in advance, but weren’t sure if it’d be considered cheating.)

The players loved it. The party paladin/sor, who is usually the big “heavy melee fighter” loved it because she got to go and figure out how much she could buff the sorcerer. Everyone in the party went digging through spell lists and random consumables to figure out how they could support the Captain. They summoned a celestial who had a buff spell and paid it to watch the fight while concentrating. I think he had 4 different people/summons concentrating on spell effects on him as well as a potion of haste.

So the fight itself started with a bunch of banter. The banter was fun, so she drew a rapier instead of the vorpal weapon. After the first round, it was clear that he could only hit her on a nat 20 and he was rolling with disadvantage. She never missed him (foresight+elven_accuracy) – but he was counterspelling her cantrip, so he was only taking about 50 damage per round (1 sword hit for 25, crown of stars for 25 but it missed about half the time improbably). But they’d buffed him with temp hit points, warding bond with the paladin meant he was taking half damage, used an upcast aid, etc.

So we got to round 7 of the fight. He still hadn’t hit her. He was clearly on his last legs – so much so he didn’t attack and instead cast a defensive spell. She was like “this has been fun – lets give him a chance” and cast “Antimagic Shell”. So he’s at 10hp and no longer halving damage taken when her average damage is over 20, but he’s also finally not rolling at disadvantage.

And he rolls a natural 20. Hits the Queen, salutes her, and then takes a knee. The cheering around the table was overly loud for how late at night it was (sorry upstairs folk). The crowd went wild. The Queen was super impressed – both that he hit her and that he ended the fight with style and grace. He got to have a nice congratulations conversation with the Queen. He’s famous throughout the Elven Kingdom now – which will probably have side effects, but it is solidly something he chased.

But it was perfect. Yeah I got lucky with that die roll, but the banter with Queen around her doing that made it clear he’d already “won” what he was seeking to win in this duel. But the dice gods smiled on him, and it made it extra good. Now I just need to figure out what the extra reward should be since he actually hit her.

Even if he’d never hit, he got to show off and last longer than anyone had in decades. (They’d looked up her fight record in advance.) So he knew he had bragging rights already. He knew this was an encounter that was won on style and bragging rights and not something he could actually defeat.

But yeah, I took a “DM PC” built npc with items I’d never give a PC, used PC rules for building an NPC, used it in a 1:1 fight against a PC where I was clearly over powered, and that the other PCs had to watch — and despite violating many pieces of good advice, it turned in to a great encounter.

And I can tell he loved hit, because I caught him telling it as a story days later to other folks who don’t even game. 🙂 And one of my harder to impress players commented after session how she really liked that encounter and I did good. And she’s a hard one to get praise from.

This is a story post. Its not advice, and I’d not generally recommend what I did unless you know your table and think they’d love it too.

So, when I first started my campaign, I went around and wrote up a bunch of the big named NPC’s of major factions. It was partially an excuse for me to learn what a high level character looked like in DnDBeyond, since prior to that I’d only run 2nd/3.5/pathfinder. This included the Queen of the Elves, who I wrote up as Bladesinger 18/Warlock 2, with having had access to all the resources a several thousand year old monarchy could accumulate. (IE, stat books which reset every hundred years were things the monarchy accumulated and used repeatedly – so 26 in any stat she cared about.) She was described as the “The Witch Queen” and rumored to be almost untouchable in combat.

Fast forward to 3 years in to a campaign, the players characters go to the Elven city for the first time at 9th level. They had this entire charade they were doing with Sorcerer pretending to be a mercenary company Captain, and entering the “mooks” of his company in a pit fighting tourney and just smoking them — used a bunch of perform and deception and tricks to basically sell himself as the heaver hitter of company and probably mid-teens level power. Like the type a Queen might want to engage for a big problem. He then went around and did a grass roots campaign in the city, making it so everyone was talking about him. He handed out little flags with an R on it. He got himself featured in the equivalent of the local newspaper for the merchant & noble class. He went all out making himself famous in a number of creative ways. So the captain got invited by the Queen’s Hand to challenge the Queen during the annual monarchy festival to a friendly duel.

Mind you the Captain is a ftr1/sor8. And while he typically does melee (relying on quickened green-flame-blade for a second swing), he’s pretty much always overshadowed by the paladin and the rogue.

To add drama, at the festival, when the Queen asked if there were any wished to challenge her, I had an anti-monarchist step forward as well as the Captain. The anti-monarchist said she was a horrible queen and he wanted to challenge her for the throne. The anti-monarchist went first and was beheaded in round 2 by the Queen’s vorpal sword. And it let them see her fight — she was clearly using every magic buff a max level bladesinger with an equally high level cleric backing her could have while in top tier gear. So the party realized they could throw everything at buffing their Captain and it’d be considered fair, and did so. (They’d done some prep in advance, but weren’t sure if it’d be considered cheating.)

The players loved it. The party paladin/sor, who is usually the big “heavy melee fighter” loved it because she got to go and figure out how much she could buff the sorcerer. Everyone in the party went digging through spell lists and random consumables to figure out how they could support the Captain. They summoned a celestial who had a buff spell and paid it to watch the fight while concentrating. I think he had 4 different people/summons concentrating on spell effects on him as well as a potion of haste.

So the fight itself started with a bunch of banter. The banter was fun, so she drew a rapier instead of the vorpal weapon. After the first round, it was clear that he could only hit her on a nat 20 and he was rolling with disadvantage. She never missed him (foresight+elven_accuracy) – but he was counterspelling her cantrip, so he was only taking about 50 damage per round (1 sword hit for 25, crown of stars for 25 but it missed about half the time improbably). But they’d buffed him with temp hit points, warding bond with the paladin meant he was taking half damage, used an upcast aid, etc.

So we got to round 7 of the fight. He still hadn’t hit her. He was clearly on his last legs – so much so he didn’t attack and instead cast a defensive spell. She was like “this has been fun – lets give him a chance” and cast “Antimagic Shell”. So he’s at 10hp and no longer halving damage taken when her average damage is over 20, but he’s also finally not rolling at disadvantage.

And he rolls a natural 20. Hits the Queen, salutes her, and then takes a knee. The cheering around the table was overly loud for how late at night it was (sorry upstairs folk). The crowd went wild. The Queen was super impressed – both that he hit her and that he ended the fight with style and grace. He got to have a nice congratulations conversation with the Queen. He’s famous throughout the Elven Kingdom now – which will probably have side effects, but it is solidly something he chased.

But it was perfect. Yeah I got lucky with that die roll, but the banter with Queen around her doing that made it clear he’d already “won” what he was seeking to win in this duel. But the dice gods smiled on him, and it made it extra good. Now I just need to figure out what the extra reward should be since he actually hit her.

Even if he’d never hit, he got to show off and last longer than anyone had in decades. (They’d looked up her fight record in advance.) So he knew he had bragging rights already. He knew this was an encounter that was won on style and bragging rights and not something he could actually defeat.

But yeah, I took a “DM PC” built npc with items I’d never give a PC, used PC rules for building an NPC, used it in a 1:1 fight against a PC where I was clearly over powered, and that the other PCs had to watch — and despite violating many pieces of good advice, it turned in to a great encounter.

And I can tell he loved hit, because I caught him telling it as a story days later to other folks who don’t even game. 🙂 And one of my harder to impress players commented after session how she really liked that encounter and I did good. And she’s a hard one to get praise from.