You cannot defeat me!

[Asperion]

Every gamer who has been gaming for some time will possess stories of this foe who could not be defeated. This could be simply because said foe was so much greater than the team or that the foe is for some reason is to numerous to fight. These foes will always possess some achiele's heal, either hidden or obvious. So please tell me about these memorable moments and how the team eventually stopped the menace.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: You cannot defeat me!

 

My personal favorite moment of this kind was from a Champions campaign about, oh, nine years ago, under Fourth Edition. That used a lot of the material from the Champs sourcebook Champions In 3-D, dealing with the Dreamzone. For those of you not familiar with that book, the Dreamzone is the dimension where people's consciousness goes when they dream. It reshapes itself in appearance and physical properties according to the dreamer's desire. The Dreamzone is inhabited by Dreamshadows, beings who take on forms and abilities from the dreamer's imagination to act out the scenario from his dreams. One particularly powerful and malevolent Dreamshadow deliberately creates nightmare forms and scenes to terrify dreamers. He's known as the Bogeyman.

 

The adventure arc took place about six months (game time) after the PCs had bested Doctor Destroyer by hurling him into his prototype reality-warping device, apparently disintegrating him. One PC, then gradually all of them, started having vivid recurring nightmares about Doctor Destroyer conquering the world. Shortly after they discovered that they (and several NPCs) were sharing the same dream, they were visited by the Bogeyman, whom they had fought before. This time, though, the Bogeyman had come seeking their help. Dr. Destroyer's device had actually hurled him into the Dreamzone. In the intervening months Destroyer had virtually conquered the entire dimension and enslaved the Dreamshadows. He had reshaped them into an army of conquest, and was currently working to open a physical portal into the waking world through which he would lead them. In the meantime the Doctor was creating dreams of his conquest to sap the resistance of humans in preparation for his coming.

 

As you might imagine, the PCs decided to journey to the Dreamzone to overthrow Destroyer before he could complete his plan. They found that the Doctor had used his powerful mind and sophisticated technology to reshape the dimension into a totalitarian horror: endless cities of featureless grey geometric buildings and arrow-straight streets; grotesque robots and automated vehicles marching along the thoroughfares; armed Dreamshadow troopers herding cowering crowds of their fellows. Destroyer's image was everywhere, on billboards, statues, giant projection screens.

 

The heroes went through several scenarios of fighting Destroyer's minions and raising a rebellion among the Dreamshadows before finally leading an attack on the Doctor's citadel. When they finally confronted him, though, they discovered that DD had augmented his armor with technology crafted from and powered by the stuff of the Dreamzone itself. He laughed off the PCs' mightiest assaults while smashing them down with devastating attacks.

 

I had left clues for the players during the adventure as to several tactics they could try to defeat Destroyer. The one they chose was part of Destroyer's defenses: projectors which filled whole areas with a powerful psychic field which caused the victims to experience their deepest nightmares (aka big@$$ Mental Illusions) - this was for the classic "overcome your own fears" comic scenario. A couple of the players thought to commandeer one of these projectors and turn it on the Doctor himself point-blank. Dr. D was overcome with horror at what he saw (I dropped a couple of hints, but never told the players exactly what that was, heh heh), and fled the Dreamzone through his dimensional portal.

[Starwolf]

Re: You cannot defeat me!

 

MIne was in my very first AD&D campaign back in 1978. I was playing a mid to low level barbarian (basically a 5th level fighter, as the barbarian had not yet been created as a class). I somehow wound up in a cavern being chased by Orcus the Demonlord ot the Dead. Obviously I had no chance of defeating such a power. So I offered my soul to Asmodeus in exchange for his saving me... The DM had him appear and this epic battle began between the Prince of Lies and the Demonlord. While they fought I slunk away... and spent the rest of the campaign trying to outrun Asmodeus as he tried to collect on our bargain. Hows that for a hunted by

[JackValhalla]

Re: You cannot defeat me!

 

In D&D 2nd ed, my poor little elf was hunted by Pandemonium. You know, King of Hell kind of thing and all that. That started when the party snuck into the ninth hell in disguise, stole the Book Of Ultimate Evil (tm!) and then arranged a jailbreak in Hell to cover our tracks. My character was the only one dumb enough to get spotted, so I was the one that was in trouble. I eventually bought him off and got him off my back, but damn it was touch and go for a while there. That character eventually retired peacefully to open a chain of taverns and is very careful to give to charity and attend church. He does not want to take any chances, yo.

 

In the Vampire Live Action game... I was the unkillable enemy. Not an NPC, just a character who eventually grew so grossly overpowered and megalomaniacal that all the other PCs and NPC allies ganged up on me. Long story short, they knew about my Master Plan, and they all got kind of hung up on the part about genocide and conquest. So they decided to stop me first. But then they found out about the whole "strike me down and I become more powerful yadda yadda" thing. Heh. His power went from "staggering" to "primal and elemental". The Gamemaster asked me nicely to retire that character, with the understanding that he was out conquering other dimensions, and won't be bothering this one for many many years.

 

Ah, but Champions... well, the one that stands out for me was the first long-running game I played in. Omni was not that grossly overpowered in theory, but he was an excellent object lesson in how unbalancing it is to use Magic VPPs to create Triggered effects and Delayed Effect spells. Also, the true horror of Adjustment Powers with delayed return rates. He was about 300 pts on paper, but the GM used him to demonstrate every horrible muchkin trick that he ever dreamed up.

Totally unkillable, but he was a real challenge. One of those enemies that you love to hate.

[Thia Halmades]

Re: You cannot defeat me!

 

Vampire. Made his home in a church (irony). Stuck to the shadows. Party had found some highly polished diamonds, and were fighting fang-face in the day.

 

Shatter glass. Scatter diamonds. Dramatic refraction effect, and FOOMP, no more Vampire.

[TheQuestionMan]

Re: You cannot defeat me!

 

Recently our party found themselves on the Gods Plane. When confronted by Celestial Mice the party drew there weapons and prepared to die. Smiling I reached into my satchel a drew out a wheel of cheese I had just bought before we arrived. I offered them the cheese in exchange for their help.

 

Chance truely does favor the prepared.

 

QM

 

P.S.: In GURPS you do not challenge the Gods of ay sort.

[BoneDaddy]

Re: You cannot defeat me!

 

4th edition Champs, back in '92 or 3. The enemy was a measely 250 pointer named Wraith, who had darkness (no range), desolidification, and a drain Body that effected solid. Major pain in the ass. I defeated him by accident. I was running a horribly designed, overbroad character with plenty of fire special effects. Among those overbroad powers was Mental Illusions, only to cause appearance of surroundings ungulfed in flames, AOE (why? I don't know why. It seemed like a good idea at the time). It was the ONLY thing I could hit him with, so I did. And it matched his Psych Lim (total fear of light and fire) and he went away, thank god.

[Sean Waters]

Re: You cannot defeat me!

 

Haven't met an enemy yet we couldn't beat. Come close a few times

 

DnD again, for my little story. Low level characters, no magic weapons facing some pesky low level demon that required magic weapons to hurt.

 

We would up using the environment - party trick #4 on the edge of a cliff - you know, trickster A on all fours behind the victim, trickster B pushes him in the chest...

 

No idea if the fall killed him but that was not the point - we were long gone if he ever did climb back up out of the valley.

[Sean Waters]

Re: You cannot defeat me!

 

As a GM I have created several villains the PCs had no real chance of defeating by direct force, but who went down easily enough if you know the trick of it - vulnerability to substance A or circumstance B, or even just the right argument. It is good to remind characters occasionaly that not every problem should - or even can - be solved by force.

[transmetahuman]

Re: You cannot defeat me!

 

Recently our party found themselves on the Gods Plane. When confronted by Celestial Mice the party drew there weapons and prepared to die. Smiling I reached into my satchel a drew out a wheel of cheese I had just bought before we arrived. I offered them the cheese in exchange for their help.

 

Chance truely does favor the prepared.

 

QM

 

P.S.: In GURPS you do not challenge the Gods of ay sort.

 

Gizmo: Cheese wheel? Heh.

[Chessack]

Re: You cannot defeat me!

 

Every gamer who has been gaming for some time will possess stories of this foe who could not be defeated. This could be simply because said foe was so much greater than the team or that the foe is for some reason is to numerous to fight. These foes will always possess some achiele's heal' date=' either hidden or obvious. So please tell me about these memorable moments and how the team eventually stopped the menace.[/quote']

 

Mechanon's always a fun villain to use. We had a series of campaigns where Mechanon showed up. He started out as the robot to our first team, the Crusaders, and of course went mad and had to be defeated.

 

Later, our third or fourth team, faced a re-built version of him, Mechanon II, and defeated him.

 

A year or so later we made up a new team but, instead of being set in the early 1990s (wow, that was a long time ago!), it was set in the year 2019. Since it was far in the future I postulated that several more Mechies would have appeared and been beaten, so Mechanon VII showed up to fight the new team.

 

This version of Mechanon was very powerful. He also looked and acted like a human (think Commander Data from ST:TNG). He was the most powerful Mechanon yet, but the team was starting heroes. They tried to fight him but he mopped the floor with them, and captured them.

 

However, it was an age of internet and computers. One of the characters had a secret ID as a computer security expert -- his job was building virus-busting software. At the start of the adventure, his lab had been hacked by a very nasty computer virus that wiped out pretty much any operating system it touched. He had managed to isolate it, and comment out a key line in the virus, and had it stored on his networked hard drive for further study.

 

After the heroes managed to escape from Mechanon VII's prison, this intrepid hero got the idea to use the computer virus against Mechanon's computers. They had also seen that Mechanon communicated with his base's computers by plugging his hands into a socket (like R2-D2 communicates with the computers in Star Wars). So, they snuck into the main computer facility and downloaded the virus, and uncommented out that line. The virus turned on and started to wipe out Mechanon VII's computers -- his plans, his schemes, his missile launch codes. Mechanon, in a panic, plugged himself into the comptuer to try to stop the destruction of his data... caught the virus... and had his brain formatted. He became nothing more than a fancy statue. The team managed to beat him without firing a shot.

 

C

[Insaniac99]

Re: You cannot defeat me!

 

Mechanon's always a fun villain to use. We had a series of campaigns where Mechanon showed up. He started out as the robot to our first team, the Crusaders, and of course went mad and had to be defeated.

 

Later, our third or fourth team, faced a re-built version of him, Mechanon II, and defeated him.

 

A year or so later we made up a new team but, instead of being set in the early 1990s (wow, that was a long time ago!), it was set in the year 2019. Since it was far in the future I postulated that several more Mechies would have appeared and been beaten, so Mechanon VII showed up to fight the new team.

 

This version of Mechanon was very powerful. He also looked and acted like a human (think Commander Data from ST:TNG). He was the most powerful Mechanon yet, but the team was starting heroes. They tried to fight him but he mopped the floor with them, and captured them.

 

However, it was an age of internet and computers. One of the characters had a secret ID as a computer security expert -- his job was building virus-busting software. At the start of the adventure, his lab had been hacked by a very nasty computer virus that wiped out pretty much any operating system it touched. He had managed to isolate it, and comment out a key line in the virus, and had it stored on his networked hard drive for further study.

 

After the heroes managed to escape from Mechanon VII's prison, this intrepid hero got the idea to use the computer virus against Mechanon's computers. They had also seen that Mechanon communicated with his base's computers by plugging his hands into a socket (like R2-D2 communicates with the computers in Star Wars). So, they snuck into the main computer facility and downloaded the virus, and uncommented out that line. The virus turned on and started to wipe out Mechanon VII's computers -- his plans, his schemes, his missile launch codes. Mechanon, in a panic, plugged himself into the comptuer to try to stop the destruction of his data... caught the virus... and had his brain formatted. He became nothing more than a fancy statue. The team managed to beat him without firing a shot.

 

C

 

now that's cool

[Chessack]

Re: You cannot defeat me!

 

Heheh. Yeah, it was cool. The player thought of it. I had expected them to just escape, since Mechie was so powerful, and figured they'd fight him again another day. But they ended up wiping his memory core (and, of course, ultimately paving the way for Mechanon VIII, who showed up months later, when the heroes were far more powerful, heheh).

 

Mechanon was one of the more popular villains we had. Several GMs used him. When he showed up, often someone in the group would shout, "Oh yay! Mechanon!"

 

Mechie also had a rep for being kind of "smart but stupid." His plans usually were great but had some obvious achilles heel -- obvious to a human but not to a computer.

 

C