Crowning Moment of Awesome

So, I've been running my Rifts-like RPG - the second session was this past weekend. Having acquired their giant mysterious robot suits, the players were in for a VR training session. The cockpits of the robots were re-wired for simulations and we kicked things off.

The 'training session' adventure served the dual purpose of helping me and the players get used to the mecha rules, too.

The first scenario - a black and white battle against Godzilla - went off as planned, but unbeknowst to the players/characters, the second VR scenario was pre-empted by something like a shared hallucination of as-of-yet undetermined origin. They found themselves in an Earthlike but unfamiliar landscape, battling large bio-robotic alien things.

Now, these things were Power Level 17, and the mecha they were piloting were calibrated around PL 15. So the first one they took out was a little tough. Then they tried taking on two at once. It was a good fight for a while, but Eric's mecha took a damaging hit that forced him to make piloting checks to keep the thing moving, and then Veronica's took a disabling hit. Both creatures were still active, though both had some injuries and one was pretty badly off.

Eric got his crowning moment of awesome, though. He makes a piloting check, attacks the least damaged alien thing using Power Attack, and manages to get a critical hit - the creature fails its toughness save by enough to go down. Then the badly damaged remaining alien attacks, disabling Eric's mecha.

At this point in the narrative, I should take a moment to describe Eric's character.

Eric's character is loosely based on Apollo from the Star Trek episode 'Who Mourns for Adonais' and Goku from Dragonball Z. On his homeworld, the character was a powerful champion who ruled over vast numbers of 'ordinary' folk. His abilities were diminished when he came to Earth (since I have them at Power Level 8) but he is the kind of guy who used to wrestle dragons for a living.

So, instead of letting what they thought was a simulation end, Eric's character pops the hatch on his mecha (which would not have worked had they still actually been in a simulation) and gets out, engaging the PL 17 ginormous alien in hand to hand combat.

And wins.

The thing was on it's last legs, so the penalties to its toughness save actually made it a relatively even chance for him, but it was still surprising when it blew its toughness save and dropped into unconsciousness. With power attack, he had just enough damage to overcome the impervious rating on the creature's toughness.

Very cool little session.