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super dark33
2010-07-12, 05:52 PM
not like rolling a natural 1 with an attack, but rolling a natural 1 and killing a friend!

put all that stuff here!

Skeletor
2010-07-12, 05:54 PM
tried to seduce a stone pillar.

Stompy
2010-07-12, 05:58 PM
played a monk...

...which then tumbled past 3 colossal elementals, ran a football field, jumped over a blade barrier, and then grappled the BBEG. And by BBEG I mean illusion of the BBEG. The BBEG killed me with destruction next turn. :smallannoyed:

awa
2010-07-12, 06:06 PM
managed to burn to death a bunch of commoners i was trying to save

super dark33
2010-07-12, 06:08 PM
a guy who was in my group played a monk and acttuly lost in a fist fight to a drunk idiot in the tavern

gallagher
2010-07-12, 06:22 PM
we were trying to save a white dragon that was tied up on top of a frozen lake. the agressors were a group of giants, who were camped on top of the lake. we decided to try and set the ropes holding down the dragon on fire to weaken them to set the dragon free.

we figured it was the best way to not get into a combat where we would be seriously outmatched, we had a couple of silences and invisibilities on us, and figured the white dragon, who didnt even look that bloodied up, would be able to take a little fire damage (it was at least huge sized, its a dragon, and i thought it was the best plan i could come up with)

well, seeing as we were on top of a frozen lake, and giants apparently cant plan a camp site on top of a frozen lake worth anything. the ropes, which set on fire, set the giants tents/gear/sleds/everything/also them on fire. it weakened the ice and compromised its ability to hold everything up. the lake implodes, the dragon was still tangled and drowned, all potential loot in the event the dragon decided to kill some of the giants sunk, and we almost TPKd because half of the party had a 20 ft land speed.

EvilJoe15
2010-07-12, 06:24 PM
This happened just recently. The party(A Kobold Artificer, a Pseudodragon, a Human Wizard(Me), and an Elf Rogue) was just captured by slavers. While standing on deck, in chains, and facing foes way higher level, my wizard started mouthing off at them. Basically he said they where all incompetent, and in the end he ended up getting tied to the mast for the entire trip.

Math_Mage
2010-07-12, 06:26 PM
we were trying to save a white dragon that was tied up on top of a frozen lake. the agressors were a group of giants, who were camped on top of the lake. we decided to try and set the ropes holding down the dragon on fire to weaken them to set the dragon free.

:smallconfused: No weapons that deal slashing damage and/or sneakers good enough to get by frost giants?

Acero
2010-07-12, 06:32 PM
I was in a group and we had just infiltrated a ogre camp to recover a tome. And by infiltrated i mean slaughtered. On our way out we saw a group of ogres who apparently did nothing during our 'infiltration'. the enitre group wanted to go kill them, except for me. (playing a monk by the way. RP'd that he always tried to avoid conflict if possible. had to make it fair because I had extreemly good stat rolls) So everyone else charged the group while i started heading out of the camp.

I was the only one who left alive

PId6
2010-07-12, 06:32 PM
Long, epic mushroom-related fail below:

I was in a low level campaign a few months back. We were a party of four, with me as the "rogue" (eventually rogue 1/swordsage 1/swashbuckler 1), along with a barbarian/cleric, a shapeshifter druid healbot, and a bard. We were at the end of a dungeon, and we had two puzzle rooms to complete before reaching the final boss chamber.

The first puzzle room had a table with a chair and a stone block on top. The block obviously contained the key that we needed from the room. Whenever a person sits at the chair, a mushroom appears before them. Eating the mushroom causes them to roll a Fort save for ability damage, and afterward they turn incorporeal for a minute. A mushroom appears only if the previous one is no longer in existence.

The other puzzle was a pit full of maggots. Whenever anyone goes near it, they have to make a Will save. If they fail, they're so disgusted by it that they cannot force themselves to go in. The key was in a tunnel within the pit, but none of us were willing to go into it. We tried burning the maggots, but more kept appearing. The real solution was just to jump in, since the maggots don't actually do anything, but we didn't know that and weren't willing to risk it.

Well, after a bit of experimenting, we solved the first puzzle pretty easily, popping a mushroom, then swiping the key from the block. However, the barbarian found out that more mushrooms appear even after it's solved, so he and the bard started playing with them, cutting them into pieces, throwing them around, etc. The DM was getting bored of the module's listed value of what the mushrooms did, so he started using the "Random Page" button of Wikipedia to figure out what happens (we didn't know this until afterward). Uh oh.

After a few explosions happening and the bard failing his Fort save for HIV, they had the brilliant idea of throwing mushrooms into the maggot pit and seeing what happens. Soon, a tree grew in the pit, blocking off access to it. The druid proceeded to adopt that tree as her resting place, not letting anyone come close to it. I tried to cut it down, she snarled at me, and I eventually decided not to disturb her rest.

The bard and barbarian were still doing crazy things with mushrooms, and then trying to get us to try them. I got sick of it, and threw my piece to the ground, stepping on it with my boot. Right afterward, my boots vanished and were replaced with Boots of Elvenkind. The bard ate the mushroom and got a cool +3 mace. The barbarian got a pretty necklace. Weird, I thought, since our DM isn't really known for being generous (AD&D veteran), but I didn't think too much of it.

Unknown to us, the DM had switched from wikipedia to rolling on the cursed item page. The results were as disastrous as they were inevitable.

Well, the barbarian decided to try on his necklace. As soon as he did, it tried to strangle him, dealing damage each round until he died unless we got a Limited Wish, a Wish, or a Miracle. Since we were a level 3 party and I didn't think our DM would care much for Pazuzu, we used the next best thing: a mushroom. Stuffing a mushroom at the necklace, all of us ran for cover and waited to see what happened. Apparently, our DM rolled for mercy and had the mushroom explode, taking away most of the barbarian's hit points but also blowing off the necklace.

As the druid was healing up the barbarian, the bard made a will save, and upon failing, immediately turned Chaotic Evil and started attacking the barbarian. Apparently his new mace was evil and demanded blood. Knocking out the barbarian, he and the druid started dueling while I kept trying to stabilize the barbarian. Eventually, the druid killed the bard, the barbarian was stable, and I took advantage of the fighting to cut down the tree, jump into the pit, and come out with the key.

By that time, it was almost midnight (real time), and we just wanted to get things over with. We popped the keys, opened the portal, waited a day to regain spells and heal up, then jumped through. The boss was apparently some kind of wizard-spider thing on a giant mechanical throne construct. The throne provided cover for the wizard and was a pretty strong tank/meatshield as well, but if the wizard went off of the throne, it got disabled.

Well, our first thoughts were to jump onto throne and start smacking the wizard. I had the best Jump check by far, and I planned to get on top, go next to the wizard, and throw him off using Mighty Throw. As I started running to it, I started dancing. As in Otto's Irresistible Dance dancing. Despite the other two getting cursed items, I had forgotten about my boots, much to my chagrin. They were Boots of Dancing.

Unable to do anything, I watched as the druid and barbarian failed their Jump checks to get on the throne, decided to swipe feebly at the construct instead, and within a few rounds we were all dead. TPK.

If only I didn't have those boots, I could have jumped on board and thrown the wizard off. To date, this is the only TPK I've ever had caused by magic mushrooms. Somehow, I get the feeling it won't be the only one though.

ScionoftheVoid
2010-07-12, 06:46 PM
Context: Party was mostly in a boat, except for me and the Cleric's horse. I was pushing the boat along at large size (Sorcadin) and the Cleric was levitating his horse, which was tied to the boat to provide horizontal movement. This happened because the party contained members of vastly differing strength and only one of us had even a single rank in Profession: Sailor, so we couldn't row properly.* Which meant that I had to get out and push because our only other strong party member was a Dwarf in Half-Plate. Our Cleric was levitating the horse because we were headed across a lake a mile or two across and didn't want to tire it out.

The Epic Failure: The duration on Levitate ran out. The postions of the horse and myself had not been specified so the DM assumed we were both behind the boat (which did make sense). This meant that a horse fell on me from ten feet in the air and sent me under the water as I was repaid for breaking it's fall by flailing hooves to the face. Everyone in the boat started to panic, except for the Dwarf. The Dwarf with an Urgrosh which granted him water breathing. The idiot jumped overboard and walked across the bottom of the lake (meeting us on the other side, but not my Sorcadin because he was arrested and hanged after falling. Long story, for another time. I had a Bard as my next character, who did meet the Dwarf). He was a Dwarf in heavy armour so this understandably shook the boat. A lot. The DM was going with critical successes and failures on all rolls (not sure if he realised it was a houserule), this is a fairly important note. Because every party member still in the boat got a natural one on their Balance check to stay in the boat. They all fell overboard, capsizing the rather pathetic vessel and leading to us attempting to get a new boat.

Which sort of worked in that we got across but lead to my Sorcadin-in-training's death and no way of returning from our trip. It is of note that this was due to either a player honestly not understanding that 1gp=10sp=100cp and not managing to cominicate that within about ten minutes, or his LG Cleric (with the horse) trying to decieve a merchant with a lie so outlandish as to be unbeliveable (1gp=100sp=10000cp). I have pity for the guy, two other players are always at least joking about killing his character because he's annoying out-of-character (even to me and especially to the DM, who takes speech whilst unconcious... poorly) but not getting out "I'm sorry but I actually thought it was that, could we go over that again? Or could my character have a Wis check or something to stop him from saying something so stupid?" (asking for a Wis check is actually necessary with this DM, and other DM's in the area who have presumably gotten it from him. One made me ask for a Spot check to notice that there wasn't a chair where I was about to sit. I didn't even get one passively :smallfurious:) in ten minutes whilst the rest of the party tried to convince the person selling the boat that the Cleric was foriegn before eventually giving up and heading to the sherrif is stretching it a bit much.



*We had to give the newest player the ranks, which I accidentally put under Perform: Sailor. Our DM has a file which automatically calculates some statistics and has room for everything needed on a sheet (at least at low levels), and just prints the result to be used as a character sheet. It works quite well bar the occasional 3.0 skill and the fact that the "default" sheet (which leaves spaces for more specialised skills) has Perform but not Profession. Despite only three Core classes having it as a class skill and almost everything having Profession.

Yukitsu
2010-07-12, 07:30 PM
"Fort save."
"14?"
"You fail, and take 12 points of strength damage."
"I fall over. Great, I'm going to get killed by a Hag."
"What's your charisma?"
"21."
"Well, she might not kill you yet."
:smalleek:

Strangely, a lot of my male characters have this problem. However, it's usually relatively attractive women (and guys), and not Hags.

I think my DM ruled once that I was failing so hard the universe unironically collapsed. This was when my critical weakness was success, and my critical strength was failure, and I was spontaneously getting arbitrarily stronger.

Reynard
2010-07-12, 07:32 PM
Failed a DC 5 jump check, fell 100 feet onto spikes.

~Nye~
2010-07-12, 07:37 PM
hehe
This was the first D&D campaign I played, I was a tricky halfling rogue/wizard
anyway, we had managed to sneak into a lair of kobolds and I was trying to track down a leader of their warband who was some badass sorcerer guy.
We had ambushed a group of kobolds and I had thrown a thunderstone deafening them, we leaped in and I had one of them prone and I had a dagger to his throat, I was shouting at him in loads of differant languages trying to get some info, he was just squealing. not really making any sense, I slit his throat and then got up. the cleric in our party patted me on the shoulder and said "You do realise he was deaf right...?" I felt so small, I shrank to diminutive right there on the table.

drengnikrafe
2010-07-12, 07:42 PM
This one wasn't mine (because I don't know that I have any epic fails), but it's still a good one.

The party was traveling through the wilderness, guarding about 200 peasents who were walking in a tight marching order. Wolves attack and all the peasents pass out from fear (better than spending an hour deciding how the peasents move around, I suppose). The wolves start attacking peasents, but generally go away after one is killed, to feast on it's human meat. The barbarians go into a rage and decide it is a good idea to charge strait at the wolves. At this point, the barbarian is on the other side of the pack of peasents, so he charges through them, killing about 10 of them... on the first charge.

Lord Vukodlak
2010-07-12, 08:13 PM
"Fort save."
"14?"
"You fail, and take 12 points of strength damage."
"I fall over. Great, I'm going to get killed by a Hag."
"What's your charisma?"
"21."
"Well, she might not kill you yet."
:smalleek:

Strangely, a lot of my male characters have this problem. However, it's usually relatively attractive women (and guys), and not Hags.

I think my DM ruled once that I was failing so hard the universe unironically collapsed. This was when my critical weakness was success, and my critical strength was failure, and I was spontaneously getting arbitrarily stronger.

Similar story with a 2nd edition character,
My elven ranger by poisoned arrows by Brownies.[a kind of fey not baked goods]. He later misses a battle while trying to get dressed in his armor during the night. He slips on the muddy ground when he finally emerges from the tent.
During the adventure he has several other cases of badluck and failure, pit traps, glued to a wall. I failed so badly I never even entered any of the combats. Finally while crawling through a tunnel he's knocked out from behind and captured... by amazon women.

The party manages to track me down and the party thief is trying to negotiate my release. The amazons say they only plan to keep me for a few years. My so called ally then says "Why a few years he's an elf you could keep him for centuries" Causing me to remark "Hey whose side are you one"

My two success in that adventure were first negotiating my stay until only ONE amazon was pregnant. Which my character had to do while he was tied down with his head in the lap of a foxy amazon's lap who was playing with his hair. His second success was of course scoring with a foxy amazon.

Starfols
2010-07-12, 09:13 PM
I have played through entire (7+ hour long) sessions without rolling above a 10 :smallfrown:

Lord Vukodlak
2010-07-12, 09:21 PM
I have played through entire (7+ hour long) sessions without rolling above a 10 :smallfrown:

I had that happen once when DMing really good day for the party.

Beelzebub1111
2010-07-12, 09:28 PM
Not me, but: Throwing a Hammer of T-Bolts at a Great Wyrm Black Dragon while falling to the ground from a 100yd drop (feather-falling)...and still being within stun range.

FUN!

Jarveiyan
2010-07-12, 09:39 PM
About 5 or so years ago I'm playing a 3.5 game being run by another player from that group(we were switching out GM's because our usual GM was getting burned out). We had a low level group(5? I think) - a LG elven paladin, CG 1/2 elven cleric(me) of ehlonna, a NG? human wizard, a CG? human rogue, and a CG? human bard. Almost everyone but the bard was engaged with multiple minotaurs in cramped confines, the bard decides to rush past all the other minotaurs to attack the one in the back(eliciting AoO's from the other minotaurs as he rushes past them). After we finish off the opposition our paladin decides to make a heal check to see if the bard had survived(rolls low)

Paladin - "He's still alive".
Me - "Alive?(rolled high enough) How could someone lose that much blood(points at spreading pool) and still live? He's dead."

Needless to say after that I was asked to make any future checks for life from bodies on the battlefield.

TurtleKing
2010-07-12, 09:43 PM
My most epic fail caused my character to win. My character is diety who gives up his divinity to restore a lot of other dieties who had fallen back to power. After dieing twice in the first session he becomes an immortal embodiement of failure. He along with another pc roleplay our way into becoming deities at level five!:smallbiggrin:

Traveler
2010-07-12, 09:50 PM
Two epic fails.
3.5
I had a fighter who had a great strength and a great sword. It seemed like a good idea to take power attack so I did. During the campagin we hired a cleric to come with us to be the walking band aid. Well, we found our selves in combat, and things wern't going the best. The fighter used power attack with -/+5 ratio. Well, I rolled a one. My DM rolled a die and said that the great sword might hit the cleric behind me on the back swing and allowed to roll a to hit with a penalty because he was behind me. So it was like 1d20+4str+2(base attack)-5-4(penatly). Rolled a nat 20. Rolled max damage. Cut the cleric in half on the back swing.

AD&D
Hobbit thief this time. fighting a red dragon. Well, we were doing well, until it breathed, then we needed help. Now, I had the drop on it (literally, I was on the ceiling above it,) and could have taken it out. So on my turn I jumped down, going to spike it in the back of the neck. I had a great to hit bonus. I rolled a one. The DM described it the I jumped, swung my sword, and bounced off of it. The group dosn't let me forget hobbits bounce yet.

Grommen
2010-07-12, 09:56 PM
I have played through entire (7+ hour long) sessions without rolling above a 10 :smallfrown:

watched my buddy go 2 weeks rolling only 4's or lower :smallsmile: I actually began allowing him to take 10 on attack rolls.

Grommen
2010-07-12, 10:08 PM
So we are awoke to a strange noise in the night. The elf in the party looks out of his tent (why he was sleeping or in need of a tent is not the purpose of this narative here). He see dozens of "Red Beedie eyes". Somehow he intreperts this to be elves and their night vision glowing back at him.

He hops out of the tent, stands directly in front of the dieing campfire. This silhouettes him beautifully in the dark night light, and also shields the bright firelight from the orks who were taking aim to attack.

With flurrish our clueless elf bows and announces to the orks (whom he now fully believes are fellow elves), "How Brethern! I bid thee........"

I did mention that they were orks right? Ya dozens of arrows struck the elf (I gave them a +1 to hit bonus for the back lighting) dead. Very dead, do not pass go, head directly to your divine patron...and suck it.

Stompy
2010-07-12, 10:16 PM
Failed a DC 5 jump check, fell 100 feet onto spikes.

Knew someone who failed a DC 5 jump check twice, fortunately, my shapeshifting druid saved him twice in bird form.

And if I can vouch for someone else:
Cue hilarious DnD game. We're all having fun, throwing all the DnD memes around like the darkness, the gazebo, etc. One the players, holding the Monster Manual said this and I quote:

"Hey guys, I can't find the gazebo in here! It starts with a ga, right?"

Everyone cracked up.

ryzouken
2010-07-13, 12:43 AM
I played a monk in 3.5 exactly once.

I managed to get to 3rd level through sheer determination, then I charged a lion. A standard, CR 3 lion, and only from about 50 feet away. I ended up inflicting minor damage, saw two party members opt not to engage it in melee (and both were melee types) in favor of shooting ineffectually with their bows, then received a full attack that brought me from full to dead.

Of course, this was the same game where the DM told a player he couldn't make a composite bow while said character was in the woods due to a lack of materials. I quit after my monk died, no longer willing to put up with that group's crap. Good thing too, since a few sessions later the game dissolved after a TPK involving a minotaur that had swapped Alertness for Whirlwind Attack.

So yeah, I failed, but I take solace in the knowledge that my GM failed harder. Last monk I ever played, and every time I think "Hey, maybe a monk would be fun" I remember good old "Cat Chow" Saborouta.

Skeletor
2010-07-13, 12:50 AM
Composite bows are actually pretty difficult to make, I dunno about in D&D but i know in real life it does take some specialized tools to make a good composite bow.

From the wiki on composite bows


Constructing composite bows requires much more time and a greater variety of materials than self bows, and the animal glue traditionally used can lose strength in humid conditions and be quickly ruined by submersion. An authority suggests that a composite bow may take a week's work, excluding drying time (months) and gathering materials, while a self bow can be made in a day and dried in a week.

Thiyr
2010-07-13, 01:03 AM
Not d&d, but still fairly memorable (And the reason I swear by nWoD when we're playing WoD).

I'm playing an Assamite. I've managed to keep myself alive sofar, in spite of being fairly uninformed in-character. I've specialized my character in perception, so i've got a decently large dice pool, somewhere around 7ish. We walk into an apartment, which happens to be a murder scene, for the purpose of comandeering it and making it a haven. And positively covered in cocaine. My character doesn't like this, especially once we find the body of a contact in the bedroom, bloodily murdered. I search for hidden listening devices. Botch by about 3. ST decides that instead of just not seeing anything, I proceed to, very loudly and very not-in-established-character-ly, proclaim "HEY LOOK! COCAINE!". Then I roll again, find listening devices and a ruptured gas line.

Stupid botches.

Axolotl
2010-07-13, 01:16 AM
Once the DM flooded the chamber we were in with lava we all had to make reflex saves not to fall in. OF course one character failed so I immediatly said "I grab him to stop him falling." I then went on to roll a one meaning I'd jus tpushed him futher into the lava. The character in question was also made of wood. This happened twice in the campaign.

Also not for DnD but I oce played a game of Necromunda where every single time I fired a gun I failed an ammo check. Every single shot.

ryzouken
2010-07-13, 01:17 AM
Composite bows are actually pretty difficult to make, I dunno about in D&D but i know in real life it does take some specialized tools to make a good composite bow.


Right, multiple types of wood, glue created by animal products, etc. All of which would most likely be found where?

I get that it would take longer, that's built right into the rules in the higher cost of the bow and higher craft DC. I think an elf with craft: bows and masterwork bowcrafting tools should be allowed to craft a composite bow in the woods, where the components are gatherable.

I'd have let him build it, maybe with an ad hoc penalty of -2 to his craft check. The GM in question just said "no." for no good reasons.

Ugh. Remembering this guy makes me :smallfurious:

Robert Blackletter
2010-07-13, 01:27 AM
Long, epic mushroom-related fail below:

I was in a low level campaign a few months back. We were a party of four, with me as the "rogue" (eventually rogue 1/swordsage 1/swashbuckler 1), along with a barbarian/cleric, a shapeshifter druid healbot, and a bard. We were at the end of a dungeon, and we had two puzzle rooms to complete before reaching the final boss chamber.

The first puzzle room had a table with a chair and a stone block on top. The block obviously contained the key that we needed from the room. Whenever a person sits at the chair, a mushroom appears before them. Eating the mushroom causes them to roll a Fort save for ability damage, and afterward they turn incorporeal for a minute. A mushroom appears only if the previous one is no longer in existence.

The other puzzle was a pit full of maggots. Whenever anyone goes near it, they have to make a Will save. If they fail, they're so disgusted by it that they cannot force themselves to go in. The key was in a tunnel within the pit, but none of us were willing to go into it. We tried burning the maggots, but more kept appearing. The real solution was just to jump in, since the maggots don't actually do anything, but we didn't know that and weren't willing to risk it.

Well, after a bit of experimenting, we solved the first puzzle pretty easily, popping a mushroom, then swiping the key from the block. However, the barbarian found out that more mushrooms appear even after it's solved, so he and the bard started playing with them, cutting them into pieces, throwing them around, etc. The DM was getting bored of the module's listed value of what the mushrooms did, so he started using the "Random Page" button of Wikipedia to figure out what happens (we didn't know this until afterward). Uh oh.

After a few explosions happening and the bard failing his Fort save for HIV, they had the brilliant idea of throwing mushrooms into the maggot pit and seeing what happens. Soon, a tree grew in the pit, blocking off access to it. The druid proceeded to adopt that tree as her resting place, not letting anyone come close to it. I tried to cut it down, she snarled at me, and I eventually decided not to disturb her rest.

The bard and barbarian were still doing crazy things with mushrooms, and then trying to get us to try them. I got sick of it, and threw my piece to the ground, stepping on it with my boot. Right afterward, my boots vanished and were replaced with Boots of Elvenkind. The bard ate the mushroom and got a cool +3 mace. The barbarian got a pretty necklace. Weird, I thought, since our DM isn't really known for being generous (AD&D veteran), but I didn't think too much of it.

Unknown to us, the DM had switched from wikipedia to rolling on the cursed item page. The results were as disastrous as they were inevitable.

Well, the barbarian decided to try on his necklace. As soon as he did, it tried to strangle him, dealing damage each round until he died unless we got a Limited Wish, a Wish, or a Miracle. Since we were a level 3 party and I didn't think our DM would care much for Pazuzu, we used the next best thing: a mushroom. Stuffing a mushroom at the necklace, all of us ran for cover and waited to see what happened. Apparently, our DM rolled for mercy and had the mushroom explode, taking away most of the barbarian's hit points but also blowing off the necklace.

As the druid was healing up the barbarian, the bard made a will save, and upon failing, immediately turned Chaotic Evil and started attacking the barbarian. Apparently his new mace was evil and demanded blood. Knocking out the barbarian, he and the druid started dueling while I kept trying to stabilize the barbarian. Eventually, the druid killed the bard, the barbarian was stable, and I took advantage of the fighting to cut down the tree, jump into the pit, and come out with the key.

By that time, it was almost midnight (real time), and we just wanted to get things over with. We popped the keys, opened the portal, waited a day to regain spells and heal up, then jumped through. The boss was apparently some kind of wizard-spider thing on a giant mechanical throne construct. The throne provided cover for the wizard and was a pretty strong tank/meatshield as well, but if the wizard went off of the throne, it got disabled.

Well, our first thoughts were to jump onto throne and start smacking the wizard. I had the best Jump check by far, and I planned to get on top, go next to the wizard, and throw him off using Mighty Throw. As I started running to it, I started dancing. As in Otto's Irresistible Dance dancing. Despite the other two getting cursed items, I had forgotten about my boots, much to my chagrin. They were Boots of Dancing.

Unable to do anything, I watched as the druid and barbarian failed their Jump checks to get on the throne, decided to swipe feebly at the construct instead, and within a few rounds we were all dead. TPK.

If only I didn't have those boots, I could have jumped on board and thrown the wizard off. To date, this is the only TPK I've ever had caused by magic mushrooms. Somehow, I get the feeling it won't be the only one though.

Cool talk but i would have chuck bits of mushroom at the throne.

PId6
2010-07-13, 01:30 AM
Cool talk but i would have chuck bits of mushroom at the throne.
Actually, the barbarian did when he realized that he couldn't actually harm the throne. Something completely inane and useless happened, the results of which are so mundane I can't even remember it. Long story short: it didn't help.

INWranger
2010-07-13, 01:44 AM
Composite bows are actually pretty difficult to make, I dunno about in D&D but i know in real life it does take some specialized tools to make a good composite bow.

From the wiki on composite bows

Turkish composite bows actually took five years to make properly. Most of it was drying and curing time, but still, five years, start to finish. And the glue was made of pieces of skin from the insides of fishes mouths, if I remember correctly.

Ubercaledor
2010-07-13, 02:59 AM
Right, multiple types of wood, glue created by animal products, etc. All of which would most likely be found where?

I get that it would take longer, that's built right into the rules in the higher cost of the bow and higher craft DC. I think an elf with craft: bows and masterwork bowcrafting tools should be allowed to craft a composite bow in the woods, where the components are gatherable.

I'd have let him build it, maybe with an ad hoc penalty of -2 to his craft check. The GM in question just said "no." for no good reasons.

Ugh. Remembering this guy makes me :smallfurious:

I agree in principle, but if you're talking composite bows, ala mongols, that's made of animal hide and horns, and from steppe creatures, not forest creatures. If you're thinking more like welsh longbows, you'd need a yew/elm bowstave from the heartwood/sapwood junction, which is both difficult and specific to certain species of trees, so in a few words:

Not necessarily.

Plus Rule 0.

Bharg
2010-07-13, 03:25 AM
About 5 or so years ago I'm playing a 3.5 game being run by another player from that group(we were switching out GM's because our usual GM was getting burned out). We had a low level group(5? I think) - a LG elven paladin, CG 1/2 elven cleric(me) of ehlonna, a NG? human wizard, a CG? human rogue, and a CG? human bard. Almost everyone but the bard was engaged with multiple minotaurs in cramped confines, the bard decides to rush past all the other minotaurs to attack the one in the back(eliciting AoO's from the other minotaurs as he rushes past them). After we finish off the opposition our paladin decides to make a heal check to see if the bard had survived(rolls low)

Paladin - "He's still alive".
Me - "Alive?(rolled high enough) How could someone lose that much blood(points at spreading pool) and still live? He's dead."

Needless to say after that I was asked to make any future checks for life from bodies on the battlefield.

Heal Check: Success
Empathy Check: Failed

Poil
2010-07-13, 03:32 AM
Not mine but the best I've experienced. Our group was trying to get aboard a ship that was just casting off and our party swashbuckler decided to jump the gap between the ship and pier. Of course he rolls a natural 1 and falls over the edge. His attempt at acrobatics to turn the fall into a swan dive was also met with a natural 1 so he landed heavily on his stomach.

My own worst fails has been on the character sheets. :smallredface:


I have played through entire (7+ hour long) sessions without rolling above a 10 :smallfrown:

That happened to a guy in my group once, but it was mostly because the dm had slipped him a 20 sided d10.

Tshern
2010-07-13, 03:58 AM
Played a well-optimized level 16 Cleric/Anima Mage (adapted to suit divine casting) dis/counterspelling specialist, whose other main trait was amazing survival skills; that is high AC, excellent saves, Greater Blink and Greater Mirror Image persisted as well as Haures' ethereal movement. In the very first encounter that acted as an introduction to the story and whatnot we were supposed to kill a king of an extremely rich and powerful nation. After defeating his hencemen we saw the cathedral we supposed was his base. We divined the best we could and I teleported in first. My ridiculously low spell resistance (granted by Zceryll, the vestige) got me through the Forbiddance effect, but didn't stop one of the casters inside throwing a Forcecage on me, making me suffer 12d6 points of damage a round, while my friends got mauled.

Ravens_cry
2010-07-13, 04:10 AM
This is a sorta meta example.
We were levelling up and I, a d10 Paladin, grabbed, with permission, a dice from the centre of the table. I rolled a 2. Now there is a houserule in our group that you can roll twice, but you must take the second result.
I rolled again.
I got a 1.
It gets worse. I looked at the dice and realized it had a few too many faces on it.
In fact, it was a 14 sided die.
That's right, I didn't roll higher then a two on a fourteen sided dice.
FAIL

KillianHawkeye
2010-07-13, 08:24 AM
It gets worse. I looked at the dice and realized it had a few too many faces on it.
In fact, it was a 14 sided die.

A 14-sided die? I don't think I've ever seen one of those.

DwarvenExodus
2010-07-13, 08:27 AM
Long, epic mushroom-related fail below:

I was in a low level campaign a few months back. We were a party of four, with me as the "rogue" (eventually rogue 1/swordsage 1/swashbuckler 1), along with a barbarian/cleric, a shapeshifter druid healbot, and a bard. We were at the end of a dungeon, and we had two puzzle rooms to complete before reaching the final boss chamber.

The first puzzle room had a table with a chair and a stone block on top. The block obviously contained the key that we needed from the room. Whenever a person sits at the chair, a mushroom appears before them. Eating the mushroom causes them to roll a Fort save for ability damage, and afterward they turn incorporeal for a minute. A mushroom appears only if the previous one is no longer in existence.

The other puzzle was a pit full of maggots. Whenever anyone goes near it, they have to make a Will save. If they fail, they're so disgusted by it that they cannot force themselves to go in. The key was in a tunnel within the pit, but none of us were willing to go into it. We tried burning the maggots, but more kept appearing. The real solution was just to jump in, since the maggots don't actually do anything, but we didn't know that and weren't willing to risk it.

Well, after a bit of experimenting, we solved the first puzzle pretty easily, popping a mushroom, then swiping the key from the block. However, the barbarian found out that more mushrooms appear even after it's solved, so he and the bard started playing with them, cutting them into pieces, throwing them around, etc. The DM was getting bored of the module's listed value of what the mushrooms did, so he started using the "Random Page" button of Wikipedia to figure out what happens (we didn't know this until afterward). Uh oh.

After a few explosions happening and the bard failing his Fort save for HIV, they had the brilliant idea of throwing mushrooms into the maggot pit and seeing what happens. Soon, a tree grew in the pit, blocking off access to it. The druid proceeded to adopt that tree as her resting place, not letting anyone come close to it. I tried to cut it down, she snarled at me, and I eventually decided not to disturb her rest.

The bard and barbarian were still doing crazy things with mushrooms, and then trying to get us to try them. I got sick of it, and threw my piece to the ground, stepping on it with my boot. Right afterward, my boots vanished and were replaced with Boots of Elvenkind. The bard ate the mushroom and got a cool +3 mace. The barbarian got a pretty necklace. Weird, I thought, since our DM isn't really known for being generous (AD&D veteran), but I didn't think too much of it.

Unknown to us, the DM had switched from wikipedia to rolling on the cursed item page. The results were as disastrous as they were inevitable.

Well, the barbarian decided to try on his necklace. As soon as he did, it tried to strangle him, dealing damage each round until he died unless we got a Limited Wish, a Wish, or a Miracle. Since we were a level 3 party and I didn't think our DM would care much for Pazuzu, we used the next best thing: a mushroom. Stuffing a mushroom at the necklace, all of us ran for cover and waited to see what happened. Apparently, our DM rolled for mercy and had the mushroom explode, taking away most of the barbarian's hit points but also blowing off the necklace.

As the druid was healing up the barbarian, the bard made a will save, and upon failing, immediately turned Chaotic Evil and started attacking the barbarian. Apparently his new mace was evil and demanded blood. Knocking out the barbarian, he and the druid started dueling while I kept trying to stabilize the barbarian. Eventually, the druid killed the bard, the barbarian was stable, and I took advantage of the fighting to cut down the tree, jump into the pit, and come out with the key.

By that time, it was almost midnight (real time), and we just wanted to get things over with. We popped the keys, opened the portal, waited a day to regain spells and heal up, then jumped through. The boss was apparently some kind of wizard-spider thing on a giant mechanical throne construct. The throne provided cover for the wizard and was a pretty strong tank/meatshield as well, but if the wizard went off of the throne, it got disabled.

Well, our first thoughts were to jump onto throne and start smacking the wizard. I had the best Jump check by far, and I planned to get on top, go next to the wizard, and throw him off using Mighty Throw. As I started running to it, I started dancing. As in Otto's Irresistible Dance dancing. Despite the other two getting cursed items, I had forgotten about my boots, much to my chagrin. They were Boots of Dancing.

Unable to do anything, I watched as the druid and barbarian failed their Jump checks to get on the throne, decided to swipe feebly at the construct instead, and within a few rounds we were all dead. TPK.

If only I didn't have those boots, I could have jumped on board and thrown the wizard off. To date, this is the only TPK I've ever had caused by magic mushrooms. Somehow, I get the feeling it won't be the only one though.

That was booping awful DMing. I hope that he was really, really tired or something, and that he isn't always like that.


A 14-sided die? I don't think I've ever seen one of those.

That's because a fair 14-sided die is impossible. Only the Platonic solids can be made into dice.

EDIT:
These Platonic Solids are:

4 (tetrahedron)
6 (guess)
8 (octahedron)
10 (deltohedron)
12 (dodecahedron)
20 (icosahedron)

While you may find other dice, including the heptagonal trapezohedron (14), they are much rarer.

EDIT 2:
Ok, maybe I misunderstood something.

EDIT 3:
Ah, I remember now. Thanks to the people below who pointed out that a fair die can be made with and amount of sides as long as it is staggered.

Threeshades
2010-07-13, 08:31 AM
Something we didn't actually fail at but should have, was when our party found a storeroom full of barrels of wine in the middle of a huge dungeon and then proceeded to get drunk and pass out for several days (in interchanging intervals), the DM was very mercyful to have none of us die (while any other probably would have, either from alcohol intoxication or from monsters eating us in our "sleep")

okpokalypse
2010-07-13, 08:35 AM
L18 Favored Soul / Sacred Exorcist w/ a 44 Will Save needs to make a DC 22 Will Save or Die.

Rolls a 1.

+Luck Reroll... Rolls a 1.

+Alter Fortune... Rolls a 1.

+Alter Fortune... Rolls a 1.

Give up, muttering about how insanely flawed the D&D system is when my natural save doubles the DC I'm saving against and automatic fails...

That was a 1 in 160,000 chance of happening.

DwarvenExodus
2010-07-13, 08:36 AM
L18 Favored Soul / Sacred Exorcist w/ a 44 Will Save needs to make a DC 22 Will Save or Die.

Rolls a 1.

+Luck Reroll... Rolls a 1.

+Alter Fortune... Rolls a 1.

+Alter Fortune... Rolls a 1.

Give up, muttering about how insanely flawed the D&D system is when my natural save doubles the DC I'm saving against and automatic fails...

That was a 1 in 160,000 chance of happening.

:smalleek: That's almost as weird as the time I cloned a d20. I swear. I had one, threw it at a table slightly too enthusiasticly, and BANG, there were two.

Rainbownaga
2010-07-13, 08:47 AM
That was booping awful DMing. I hope that he was really, really tired or something, and that he isn't always like that.



That's because a fair 14-sided die is impossible. Only the Platonic solids can be made into dice.

EDIT:
These Platonic Solids are:

4 (tetrahedron)
6 (guess)
8 (octahedron)
10 (deltohedron)
12 (dodecahedron)
20 (icosahedron)

While you may find other dice, including the heptagonal trapezohedron (14), they are much rarer.

Pretty sure 10 sided isn't a platonic solid. That's why the faces are staggered and not joined end to end.

Ingus
2010-07-13, 10:39 AM
As a witness of a DM fail: warrior tournment. Win by disarm, surrender, inconsciuosness, death. Our 5th level fighter was going against a mighty, giant-like 12th barbarian. The NPC won the initiative too.
So: rage + charge. Roll... natural 1. Reflex to keep the weapon. Roll... natural 1.
DM: "Uh... ehm... He stares at you, grunts, roars, swings his large greatword, charghes... and the greatsword flyes away. Far, far away".


As PC: making up a little carnival joke out of jelousy (putting on fire some leaves in front of a house) ending in the house catching fire while the two inside were experimenting another kind of fire. :smallmad:


As PC2: Casting a save or die spell on the weak save. Dm rolls 18. Casting a save or suck spell on the weak save. DM rolls 17. Casting a save or die spell. DM rolls 17. Cursing, casting a disintegration. I roll a 1. A pillar collapses, along with the vault. Everyone dies.
Except the BBEG, our DM kindly let us know :smallfurious:

Beelzebub1111
2010-07-13, 11:50 AM
Right, multiple types of wood, glue created by animal products, etc. All of which would most likely be found where?

I get that it would take longer, that's built right into the rules in the higher cost of the bow and higher craft DC. I think an elf with craft: bows and masterwork bowcrafting tools should be allowed to craft a composite bow in the woods, where the components are gatherable.

I'd have let him build it, maybe with an ad hoc penalty of -2 to his craft check. The GM in question just said "no." for no good reasons.

Ugh. Remembering this guy makes me :smallfurious:
Animal Glue ALONE takes a long time to make from animals, and just being in the woods isn't enough to find the different types of wood to make a decent composite bow. I'm with the DM on this one.

PId6
2010-07-13, 12:11 PM
That was booping awful DMing. I hope that he was really, really tired or something, and that he isn't always like that.
He's normally a good DM, though he occasionally has a Gygaxian mindset of "DM vs players" typical of AD&D DMs, along with a playful impulse to randomly roll everything. To be fair though, the bard and barbarian were getting really annoying playing with the mushrooms. Over the course of the game, they probably went through 30+ mushrooms with their antics. I can understand why the DM was tempted to get creative in light of that.

Sindri
2010-07-13, 12:45 PM
Pretty sure 10 sided isn't a platonic solid. That's why the faces are staggered and not joined end to end.

Yeah, the d14 is just as fair as the d10. You can also do d24, d30, etc. just as well, but you should be suspicious of d5, d7, and any other odd numbers.

Accersitus
2010-07-13, 02:51 PM
It wasn't D&D, but it was epic fail so I'll post it anyway.

The party was going to assassinate a rather powerful person who was
hiding out in a system of caves, and we had realised there was a small
air shaft going from the part he was staying in to the surface, and it
was just large enough to crawl through.
We manage to take out the guards watching the entrance and start crawling.
When we get down, the guy we were supposed to kill is sitting right in front
of the entrance to our small tunnel with his back to us.
My character was crawling first (and had the best combat stats), and we
thought this was fine, since although we had to stab him from inside the tunnel,
at least he was alone in the room.
I managed to roll up 5 Critical failures in a row on everything from stabbing
him to grabbing his feet so he couldn't run before we finally got out of the
tunnel. By this time the guards were in the room and we had to surrender.
We decided this guy was favoured by the gods (in character) and promptly
switched sides in the conflict.

gallagher
2010-07-13, 02:58 PM
:smallconfused: No weapons that deal slashing damage and/or sneakers good enough to get by frost giants?the ropes holding the dragon were rather large, seeing as they held down a dragon. we were a group of 3 halfling sorcerers with penalties to strength

IzualDarkwater
2010-07-13, 03:56 PM
I think we were like lvl 12 or so but here was our party, lvl 12 drow wizard, lvl 12 human assassin, lvl 12 elf ranger (he's noble), lvl 12 Wild elf druid, and me a lvl 12 Warforged monk with attachment feats

Ok, so the assassin and the ranger were tied up and were being sent to prison in a large horse carriage surronded by guards, the wizard was jerking off somewhere, so the druid and me took out the guards surrounding the carriage, i forgot what he transformed into... i killed the horses and then i used these fire hose attachments on my wrists and tried to burn out the guards inside the carriage ( and the driver) but i ended up collapsing the entire thing and burning alive my comrades inside... i felt rlly bad

PId6
2010-07-13, 03:59 PM
i killed the horses and then i used these fire hose attachments on my wrists and tried to burn out the guards inside the carriage ( and the driver) but i ended up collapsing the entire thing and burning alive my comrades inside... i felt rlly bad
You realize that fire deals 1d6 damage per round?

HunterOfJello
2010-07-13, 04:06 PM
Sneaking up on a band of kobolds one of my characters rolled a 1 on Hide and 1 on Move Silently.

He got blasted to death by 2 kobolds sorcerers pretty fast.

Closak
2010-07-13, 04:22 PM
"Fort save."
"14?"
"You fail, and take 12 points of strength damage."
"I fall over. Great, I'm going to get killed by a Hag."
"What's your charisma?"
"21."
"Well, she might not kill you yet."
:smalleek:

Strangely, a lot of my male characters have this problem. However, it's usually relatively attractive women (and guys), and not Hags.


Something similiar happened to someone i know once.

Only it was a dragon rather than a hag.
And the player went along with it willingly.

The results were...predictable.

peacenlove
2010-07-13, 04:30 PM
Counting monster hit points as a first time DM at 3rd edition:
Dire Bear hit points were (12d8+51)*105 in my games (i was confused and multiplied the HD value with the HP value :smallmad:)
End result: monsters that never, NEVER died.

SuperCracker
2010-07-13, 04:52 PM
Alright. This wasn't me, but it is the most epic failure I've ever seen in D&D-- several of them in fact! In the same session!

So, we're playing 3.0. This is actually my first tabletop game in college. Our friend decides he wants to make a drow rogue. We're all level 3, so with the LA he comes in at level 1. He completely min-maxes his stats to try and be an assassin. One of his min stats... is Con. He dumps it completely and takes a 6. So, as a level 1 rogue, he has 4 hit points, when the rest of us are well above.

Failure 1: The party is on a riverboat. We get attacked by these guys. Some are shooting arrows at us from the banks of the river. The drow rogue makes a hide check to be hidden in the tall grass.

"I'm going to take him out from hiding." - The Drow

He attacks with his hand crossbow. He rolls around a 5. He misses the guy. The guy then sees him, turns around, and one shots him with a longsword. Dead.

Edit: This was his introduction, by the way.

The DM was kind and let him live and only be knocked out.

Failure 2: Later in the session, we make it to a fort, manned by these guards. We have a dramatic stand-off with the BBEG and his archers, who are standing atop the battlements. In the middle of talking, the drow tries to attack the BBEG with the hand crossbow. He actually crits and does okay damage (read, not that good cause it's a hand crossbow w/ no sneak attack at the time). The fight begins.

"Haha. I really got him." - The Drow's last words (this time).

The BBEG, on his first turn, uses his wings of flying to come down from the battlements hit the drow with a mace. Dead. Again.

This drow died more than any character I've ever seen. We really only kept raising him because of the comedy.

Hague
2010-07-13, 05:06 PM
Critical failures in DnD are a stupid mechanic. Way to arbitrarily swing a fight in a game that's swingy enough already with 5% miss rate.


I had a player once when I asked "You're in town, you might want to buy some supplies."

The player replied, "I want to buy 99 Remedy."

Guess the game:

Shadowrun

Dust
2010-07-13, 05:07 PM
I was pushed out of a moving train by a single goblin and killed.

Nihb
2010-07-13, 05:25 PM
Robert the Fushia Ninja.

Probably the best and worst ninja you could know. So bad at being a ninja, you'd never think he was one. He has a few good stories about him, but quite a lot of memorable fails.

The party is sneaking into a trolls' hideout. So far, everything went well, and the sound of snoring tells us that we might be on a roll. If Robert acts swiftly and kills most of the sleeping trolls, the party should be able to strike the remaining enemies without any severe wounds.

So, Bob the Fushia turns around and puts a straigth finger over his mustachied lips : "Wait here, I'll sneak into and put some dreamers in a nightmare they won't wake from." He puts his mask on and crouches, walking slowly towards the cavern's next room.

Spot failed.
Reflex failed.

*Crack* *HAAAAaaaaa!* *Boom* *HAAA, MY BACK*

If only the stealthy ninja falling into a pit trap was all there was to the story. The trolls were alerted and stormed out of their improvised bedroom of rocks and attacked the party.

"Can I take 10 to climb out?"
"Well, we're in a fight. It's a stressful situation. Gimme your Climb."
*Roll poorly*
"Ok, Robert stands up and test the walls, hopefully he'll find some better spot to cling to"

Next turn, our Fuchia Ninja climbs 20 ft, but he's still 30 ft from the opening. But he fails on his following turn, falling back in and taking damages.

In the end, the last troll fell and the party took a look in the pit, only to watch a bloodied ninja with a few broken bones, desperatly trying to climb over the 30 ft line.

"A little help?"

Dust
2010-07-13, 06:48 PM
Poor Rob. http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs10/i/2006/088/d/0/ROFLMAO_emote_by_morima.gif

Lord Loss
2010-07-13, 07:02 PM
A Maug NPC fell off a cliff into a large body of water. he was one of the PC's favorite characters, so the barbarian leapt down to save him. Seeing as the maug was quite heavy, I ruled that the Barbarian would need to make a str check to pull the maug's head out of the water, another to support it whilst the maug began his climb and a final one whilst the Maug made his climb check.

So, the barbarian spent 5-10 RL minutes pulling him out, dropping him, pulling him out, supporting him, Maug falls back in the water,pulls him out, drops him, fails to pick him up, pulls him up, drop him, etc. etc...

super dark33
2010-07-14, 04:18 AM
thats alot of funny stories

Vulaas
2010-07-14, 06:22 AM
Well, my party was running through The Burning Plague module. Not anything too bad. The party was as follows: A lecherous cleric ("But my cures are touch spells!"), a rogue who was too sensitive about that (me), and an elven sorceress. We went OK for a while, until I climbed up onto the ledge where the crossbow-kobolds were, in the second cavern. We saw the baby kobolds, and I decided (as a CG guy) we should save them. Wisdom was a dump for me, though, so...

I threw them down to the other party members. DM required dex checks, DC5 to catch them.

They both rolled nat 1's.

Scarey Nerd
2010-07-14, 09:56 AM
Had a character who, for no particular reason, had to make a will check whenever he saw a woman that wasn't a PC, to see if he could resist chatting her up. He failed every check, and culminated in attempting to "woo" a married woman, who was married to a Level 20 sorcerer who I think ruled the city.

Yeah.

Kroy
2010-07-14, 10:06 AM
OOC: I thought the game was called DND not D&D for 3 years. Yeah...

Too mean?

TheAmishPirate
2010-07-14, 10:23 AM
My sig. The worst case of simultaneous poor skill checks I've seen. :smallsigh:

For reference, the Kobolds were either giving us a plot hook, or a straight-up scam/flim-flam/bamboozle. If they were telling the truth, then a devil was coming to destroy a nearby town within the week. If not, then they were just a couple of robbers. Hmmmmm.

super dark33
2010-07-14, 10:52 AM
Had a character who, for no particular reason, had to make a will check whenever he saw a woman that wasn't a PC, to see if he could resist chatting her up. He failed every check, and culminated in attempting to "woo" a married woman, who was married to a Level 20 sorcerer who I think ruled the city.

Yeah.

were you a bard?

''please understand that the horny bard does not represent us''

Scarey Nerd
2010-07-14, 10:53 AM
were you a bard?

''please understand that the horny bard does not represent us''

Half-Orc Barbarian with 10 WIS.

WHY DID THIS HAPPEN TO ME?!

Nerdanel
2010-07-14, 11:28 AM
My level 2 Rogue had to do a solo adventure to get from place A to place B where the actual adventure was located and I could accidentally meet my party members. Since the DM was a simulationist, the journey couldn't be skimmed over. It wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't been for me constantly rolling low for random encounters when my lone rogue was unable to handle them. Nevertheless, any heroism is distinctly absent.

I swam across a river to escape some wild boars. I saw a leopard, but luckily it wasn't hungry since I had rolled a stray 2. I climbed a tree to escape from some more wild boars. At night I got attacked by some plant things that shot spines at me. I ran away with maybe 2 hp. I spent the rest of the night hiding in the bushes to avoid random encounters while the random weather roll brought up a storm. In the morning I was out of carried water and tried to drink water from the ground. The DM rolled low and I got dysentery. By some miracle I actually managed to roll correctly on 1d8 so I didn't get lost in the woods and walked in exactly the right direction. I arrived on a river that I could follow to a nearby city. That's when I had to roll for random encounters again, and you know it, I rolled a natural 1 again. I then failed a spot check, and a giant wasp paralyzed me and laid eggs in me before I had had time to act. The end.

The whole adventure took 24 hours. Luckily I didn't have much invested in that character. I had started on level 2 and played two sessions before the disastrous journey.

big teej
2010-07-14, 01:19 PM
The majority of our groups major fails are on the part of NPCs (incompetent assassins, one shotted BBEG's etc)


however, I shall relate those tales in another post... as I have one that actually happened.... too....... me:smallredface:

warning... I ramble

the group (me: bard + a fighter and a rogue) have been tasked with clearing out a cave complex


we get to a fork in the tunnel, and down one tunnel we here a large 'something' moving. and the other tunnel is silence...

so I (in real life) finally rolled a 1 on my common sense check (the DM's description of things didn't help me at all, I might have actually rolled like a 10 and just got down to 1 via unfavorable circumstances, but I digress)

have the two stabby people hide in the other fork and I lure the beastie into the tunnnel

now here's where the whole "DM needs to be clear on what they're describing" thing comes in

the DM told us, flat out, that the beastie was a "tank zombie" from left for dead, I am the only one at the table who hasn't played the game, so to me, tank said "larger than normal, maybe an ogre zombie"
no one saw fit to correct me on this.

so I send a silent image+ghost sound of myself down the tunnel to attract it's attention...

for those of you who have played left for dead, I imagine you are rolling about with laughter at my folly...

for those of you who have not, they described it to me (AFTER we were being chased) as "think the Hulk, but a zombie"

my response was along the lines of "YOU DIDN'T THINK I NEEDED TO KNOW THAT BEFORE I GOT IT'S ATTENTION?!:smallfurious:

but it turned out okay, so I'm not sure if that counts as a fail (it rolled a two 1s when attacking me so I got two free shots with what has become known as "the shockstar" (a shock morningstar) and killed it

SilverLeaf167
2010-07-14, 02:07 PM
This wasn't me, but...

I was DMing, and the party was exploring an underground cavern inhabited by Tritons. So, after killing some Tritons and a Sea Cat, they come to an empty room with nothing but a large shell attached to the far wall. They were supposed to simply whack it to reveal a button beneath it, but nooo. They spent 15 minutes using Diplomacy on the shell! I finally cracked and told them that they were supposed to just hit it.

Maybe I should have actually made it some epic monster?

~Nye~
2010-07-14, 02:19 PM
This is not such an epic fail on behalf of any players, but when i was DMing I made this NPC, but i thought I might chuck it in because it was funny.
They were in a cavern with kobolds, and they encountered a runt called Meepo, the kobolds were being oppressed by a group of yetis so the runt joined us to prove himself to his tribe.
First round of combat he had to make a balance check on a sheet of ice, he slipped (Nat1) gets dazed after bashing his head. After he spends a round getting up, he tries to throw a spear at a yeti (Nat1) we improvise and say he stepped on his tail when throwing, (we roll again to see how bad his fail was as a house rule...nat1) he ends up tripping up and spearing himself, we roll again for the attack roll (this time we reverse the dice numbers so 1 is a crit) he crits himself and suffers like 15dmg and dies.
I brought him back saying he was hardier and gave him a few more HD, he was kinda important to the plot in the cavern, however more or less the same thing happened self crit death. I was upset the players were in fits.

Volomon
2010-07-14, 02:28 PM
Not mine but a players, a Druid shifter using a bow to try to snipe the enemy. Her line of sight had her warforged friend, and beyond that the evil wizard. Roll 1 plink to the back of the head of the warforged, he looked around and was like "what the hell?" his DR/- prevented the damage. Roll 1 again, plink back of the head again.

Oddly enough the next one was a natural 20/crit and did enough damage to instantly put the low level wizard in the ground.

Remmirath
2010-07-14, 02:54 PM
A fairly long time ago in AD&D, my grey elven magic-user Lothill was trying to rescue some prisoners along with several other members of the group. When we finally made it to the holding cell, there were a lot of guards.

He cast Web on the guards, filling the room up. Then, the next round... he cast Burning Hands. The DM ruled that this caught the web on fire, and everyone in the room burned alive.
Including the prisoners. Especially the prisoners, in fact, since most of the guards were already dead by that point. He had a rather large guilt complex about it all since then.

That same character later was killed due to a misunderstanding, and while the creature that had killed him was attempting to resurrect him (and despite still having a fairly good constitution)... he failed his system shock. That was the end of him.

In MERP, we misunderstood the fumble tables the first time we played it. This resulted in one of my characters somehow vaulting off her horse and breaking her neck, despite the fact that she was using a sword and was not on horse-back.

In D&D 3.0 I had another grey elven wizard, this time a necromancer named Liareth, who was oddly given to rolling 1s on his listen and spot checks. He was already a bit trigger happy, and this sometimes led him to attack people who really weren't hostile at all because he misunderstood what they were saying or doing.

In a Vampire: the Masquerade game, we were trying to infiltrate and destroy a complex of... I forget what now. Enemy agents of some kind. My character was set to guard the van and the equipment. When the fighting started inside, he decided to run along the edge of the van and take a flying leap off it, hoping to get into the second story of the building but failing horribly. He ended up lying flat on his back.
Luckily for him, the people spying on the van decided he wasn't a threat because of this, and he was eventually able to get away when the bomb got set off too early (another horrible fumble by a different player) and he still wasn't in the building.
Sadly, he didn't know how to drive the van, and ended up crashing it on the freeway halfway back to the main base. He was never seen again.

Nerdanel
2010-07-14, 04:52 PM
Here's one from one of my party-mates:

He was playing an elven ranger in 3.0 and we were just starting out on level 1. On our first trip to the dungeon, the ranger first fought with his masterwork longsword but then dropped it to shoot with his bow. The fail turned up when we soon after had to run away from the monsters. The ranger forgot about his nice sword and left it behind on the dungeon floor. We returned later to the dungeon and cleared it, but we never got that sword back.

This was in a low-level campaign that was far from Monty Haul. When the campaign ended at level 4, my wizard's +1 dagger was the best and only magic weapon in the party. Everything else was strictly mundane non-masterwork. As for the ranger, he was ever after shadowed by a cloud of incompetence reinforced by some bad rolls at skill checks he was supposed to be good at. The player ended up retiring his ranger and rolling up a new character even though that meant he had to come in a level lower. He just wanted to feel powerful for a change. The new character was a bard. None of us was exactly a skilled optimizer back then.

Makiru
2010-07-14, 05:33 PM
This was in a d20 Future game a while back. I think we were around level 8 at the time and we needed to sneak into a well-protected complex for some reason. So we came up with the plan to wheel in a crate of explosives, using the bluff that they were viral cultures in cold storage (I was the doctor that came up with the excuse, but the mech jockey had to say it, so I inevitably confused him with biology lingo, but that isn't the fail.).

So, either we get in with our "samples", or the crate explodes and creates a nice distraction. Seems like an alright plan to us so far, but the lizard rogue wants to hide in the crate and use the "rogue in a box" shenanigans to create a little more mayhem. Well, we reason, his Reflex is high enough to actually avoid the explosion he would be sitting on, so we go with it.

So we get to the guards, make our bluff, which fails because the party face is reading it off of a note card. They check the crate, which is rigged to go off when the lid is removed, so it explodes. Everybody makes the save....except the rogue, who actually had to get a nat 1 to fail. So this burning lizard leaps out of the remains of the box screaming at the top of his lungs, shoots one of the guards dead, then falls over in the negatives.

Combat proper starts, so the rest of the group ganks the other guards while I use my cryonic rifle to put the rogue in cold storage...again. (There have been other cases where the rogue nearly got killed and was only saved by me freezing him.)

Panigg
2010-07-14, 05:51 PM
I bluffed a vampire once into giving me his hand in greeting and than failed a melee touch roll to hit him with searing light. Which isn't so bad. Only it happened three times in a row.

Cardea
2010-07-14, 05:55 PM
Context: Me and my Adventuring party are in a dungeon. We have no idea what it's here for, where it came from, what inhabits it, etc.. We have no clue what this dungeon's purpose is. So we are all paranoid of whatever is in the next room or past each door. We are level two.

We rest for the night, but during my Ranger's night watch shift, we hear a banging on the un-barricaded door to the room. I wake everyone up, and the banging continues. Everyone is ready to take out whatever comes through. I tell my DM "I ready action to shoot whatever comes through the door."

Door opens, and in comes a Half-Elf Rogue, who is the character of the newest member of our gaming group. The Half-Elf greets us, and tells us he'll be willing to work with us to get out of the dungeon. The DM tells us all that the Elven Ranger fires on the Rogue. Did I mention my Ranger was an Elf?

I roll to hit, and get a critical on the poor thing. I do max damage, and the fired off arrow flies into the Rogue, and with enough force, pins him to the stone wall behind him.

The Rogue survives, and is treated, but never stands farther than ten feet away from me, just in case I turn hostile so he can get an attack of opportunity the moment I fire into melee.

zephiros
2010-07-14, 06:21 PM
Not me, but I've got 2, both from the same player, they were (obviously) pretty new.

First one was in 3.5, I can't even remember the party or anything, but we had just tripped a series of traps in a forest setting, mostly tripwires with arrows or darts, a few magic ones thrown in. After being informed that we had entered combat with a group of....orcs/trolls/ogres/bugbears/somethinglikethat the character loudly announces to the party that they're making a Knowledge (Nature) check to determine the proximity of nearby foes before being killed by a trap the next round. I honestly wish I could say that they were trying to roleplay a low-Int character. :P

The second one was in the Star Wars tabletop game or whatever the official name for it is. We had an encounter in a docking bay with several Rodian heavy gunmen. All of the Jedi are gathered in a group, leaving a Twi'lek and the aforementioned player (Who, true to nature, was playing a Gungan Noble. No, really.) isolated on the other side (The Rodians had caught us unawares in this position.) After deciding to take a position that put the Twi'lek directly in her line of sight, the Gungan fires on the Rodians, hitting the Twi'lek with both shots. The Twi'lek then passes a Reflex save to tumble out of the way of the return fire. The Gungan doesn't, and the heavy repeater reduces it to ash.

Probably the most laughter I've ever heard from a group at those two scenarios. Our group is largely the same now (albeit with a different DM) and we still commonly reference "nature check in combat" and "Oh, look! A Reflex Save."

Good times.

Quirinus_Obsidian
2010-07-14, 06:42 PM
Me (Swordsage 6+) and the Big Lumbering Oaf (Fighter 6?) were disconnected from the party looking for a minion-of-bbeg. We finally found it, and then we had it cornered. I decided to do this: Death from above attack on the minion-of-bbeg. Made the jump check, Nat 1'ed on the attack roll. Was deemed that I tripped on something on the way down, and struck my party member instead. We use the Game Mastery crit cards, too. ended up somehow dealing x3 damage, the bonus damage from the DFA attack, and a ton of STR damage. Minion of BBEG runs away laughing as hard as it can, while I am dragging the almost dead corpse of the lumbering oaf behind me.

I have not played a swordsage since...

Zieu
2010-07-14, 07:08 PM
I have a few stories, most of which aren't short, but I'll share one that's of me and one that's not.

We had a 4-person party in a low-level (3 or 4) 3.5 campaign. We had a cleric, two fighters, and a rogue, all of whom were short characters. We called our party "The Mighty Short Bus"....

Anywho. We were investigating an extremely old mansion with assorted scary/haunted backstory, and after exploring the majority of the first floor was thoroughly rigged with jar traps containing centipede swarms, we all booked it for the staircase leading ot the second floor throwing torches and any flammable supplies we had to try and stem the pursuing tide of creepy crawlies.

At the top of the stairs we had the option to go left or right, both directions were dark. My sister was one of the fighters and this was her very first D&D session, so she was TERRIFIED of dying. So while three of us agreed to go left, so shouted in panic to the DM:

"I TURN RIGHT! I RUN! I RUUUUUUNNNN!!"
To which he replies: "Ok, you see a light ahead of you. Do you want to run towards that?"
"YES OH GOD OH GOD"
"With your little leggies pumping, you notice the light is a bit off the ground and you'll need to jump to reach it. Since you're already sprinting at it, I'll let you take 10 (he explains briefly what that means to her) on the Jump check."
"OK!"
"....You've just sprinted 40 feet down the hallway and jumped into a magically-reinforced window. Your head hurts. You feel like you need to sit down for a little while and get your bearings."

At the SAME time, everyone else in the party turns to her and says "....Fail."

But the fun doesn't stop there. OH no.

So after that episode, the rest of the party (who all turned left at the top of the stairs) encountered a very different problem. The cleric was running first, and after turning at the top of the stairs we started to see that we were walking on a balcony overlooking the hallway we'd just escaped from. Dear Dwarven Cleric gets halfway down the length of the balcony before it collapses. She botches her Reflex save and falls 20 feet to the floor below. The one with the centipede swarms. She's missing a chunk of HP, prone, and surrounded by hundreds of centipedes.

In an effort to help, the Rogue (me) takes out a flask of oil and a torch and drops them one after the other to try and clear out the centipedes from the immediate area.....setting the Cleric on fire. On the bright side (forgive the pun), the centipedes stayed away.

Following that, we got my sister back under control and proceeded to try and jump across the gap formed by the collapsing balcony. Rogue makes the jump check easily, fighter makes it, my sister catches the edge and has to be pulled up, and only the Cleric remains on the original side. She gets a 20-foot running start, her little Dwarven legs appearing as little more than a blur, reaches the edge....and rolls a natural 1. Fails her Reflex save [[AGAIN]]. Falls down to the floor below, 8 damage, and by now the oil 'n torch has gone out so the centipedes are swarming again. On her face.

She went on to fail ANOTHER time, after which we tied a rope and pulled her across, but that was just ridiculous.

devinkowalczyk
2010-07-14, 07:13 PM
First great game I ran:
Lvl 10
2 half dragons (one scout, one duskblade)
1 human cleric (dm's npc)

Second level of dungeon
Paralyzer monster (the 3.5 one with the tongues)
Half dragons are immune to paralyzation, so the only person who got screwed over was me, the cleric.

Third and final layer of the dungeon
Water Necromental (cr 13)
Does enough damage to kill human cleric (on accident), knocks out scout, which leaves the duskblade to hide in a corner till he eventually escapes.

great start to a game

devinkowalczyk
2010-07-14, 07:14 PM
Very simply put:

Never let the mages go explore a barn full of carrior crawlers in 3.5
paralyzation also stops one from crying out...

Agzarah
2010-07-15, 04:33 AM
We've had a couple of epic fails in our numerour campaigns

the first of which is a complete DM screw up. the DM, being a HUGE fan of Icewind Dale decided that this campain was going to be based in that realm and loosely on the games story...
I dont know how many of you are familiar with that game, but theres a small subquest involving a back and forth fetch and carry quest between a 'haunted' commoner and a waternymph.

Well... in our campaign, this was no ordinary side quest, this was going to be one of the initial and main plot hooks.

i forget the exact details of what happened, but it basically involved us finding this guy, hearing the song (and at the time, thinking nothing of it)
Later on we find the waternymph and she explains in a little more details about what is going on and asks us to pass a message on to this guy.
we say "why cant you go and tell him yourself?"
to which she replies, im bound to this spot on the beach (any one who knows the game may realise this is WRONG)
so, being a small town, and me being a loud mouth impatient fighter, yells out something along the lines of "Oi, Song man, come over here a moment"
the song man comes down, see's the nymph and Poof she dissapears...
QUEST FAILED!

the DM's now ranting and raving over how we just screwed up the entire campaign etc all because the nymph was supposed to say something like "i cant ask him myself, for should i see him ill dissapear" (but more convincing obviously) and on his own screw up FORGOT to inform us of this!!!


Another huge fail was in a different campaign with a brand new player.
again it was low level cha's (3 i believe).

important things to remember
the only player of interest is a dwarven Lawful Good paladin in Heavy Spiked full plate. (Danny) and we have a 'battle map' of everything we do/where we are

so the campaing begins with us all sitting in a tavern (mapped out, with all minatures placed accordingly) ordering some food and having a few drinks. when all of a sudden the sky clouds over and everything goes eerily quiet.

we all get up and rush over to the windows (all the peasants included) and look out at whats going on.
to which the dwarf says "im going to the window too"
DM:which one?
Danny: the one there, by the door
DM: ok,you see a granite wall
Danny: why? im looking out the window?
DM: your only 3ft tall, the window is 5ft high... You see a granite wall....
Danny: Ok, ill stab my sword into the wall and stand on it
DM: err ok... you sword deflects of the granite and into the shins of the guy to your <rolls die to decide...> right...
Danny:What why? my swords metal.. it'l go straight through a wooden wall
DM: a wooden wall maybe, but this one is GRANITE.... as i said twice
Danny: Fine... ill jump on the guy next to my right
DM: ok
Danny:can i see out the window yet?
DM: No... you see a granite wall.. the guy you jumped onto is in a crippled mess on the floor
Danny: WHY? im only 3ft, hes like 6ft tall.. he can carry me easily
DM: maybe so.. but hes a weak commoner with cut up shins, and your a fat dwarf in full plate... hes now on the floor hurting badly
Danny: Ok, i jump up and down, can i see out the window now?
DM: kinda...
Danny: why only kinda
DM: well, your jumping, which involves going UP [you can see] then back down [you cant see]
DM: btw, your boots are very red with splatted commoner now...
Danny: FINE! ill go over to the door and look out instead, where is it
DM: about 3ft to your left

After all this the dm explains how danny has now taken quite a shift into the chaotic realms and not quite so good as he once used to be...

then to top it off, after all this chaos, and we've all sat down again the barmaid brings over our food, Danny eats his and promptly dies.

the rest of the party, somewhat confused investiage matters further and discover that the guy the dwarv jumped on and killed was infact the father to the barmaid, and tavern Owner

wick
2010-07-15, 05:14 AM
Was playing a human Wizard in 2.0 and our group had fought off a pretty big red dragon. THe dragon fled the scene but not before snatching up one of the fighters. I casted Fly and picked a location ahead of the dragon in which to teleport. The dragon quickly makes it to my postion where i whip out a "Mirror of Oppostion form my bag of holding." Brilliant move on my part right? Wrong the DM ruled that despite the dragon seeing himself in the mirror, the mirror could not create a duplicate because the dragon was too big. I run right into the dragon's face and take damage. Ohhh....it gets better. The captured fighter pulls out some kind of crazy Dragon breath potion (from encyclopedia magica.?.) The DM asks him where he is aiming. He responds, "I'll breath at it's head." The breath attack kills me well into the negative 10's, and hurts the dragon. The dragon then drops the fighter sending him to his grave.

One of the worst cases of punishing a player for trying a crazy and heroic stunt to save another PC. And please note that this was 2nd Ed where the rules for magic items are spelled out in depth. i.e. there was nothing in the item description about size or being fully displayed in the mirror or size limitations.....purely the DM's call. The mirror would have slowed the dragon down enough to allow the rest of the team to catch up or allow me to rescue our fighter...but no 2 dead players were what the DM wanted instead.

Zieu
2010-07-17, 10:59 AM
Just yesterday our party rogue was sneaking through a lizardman lair, leaving us outside because of our abysmal movie silently/hide checks (ranging from -2 to 1). So we're twiddling our thumbs outside and the DM is passing notes back and forth to the rogue and he turns to the rest of us and says:

"You hear a big splash, a hiss, and a very loud 'CRUNCH' sound."

We look at him with blank expressions, turn to each other, and the cleric mouths "What the f---...?" So we all head in, everburning torches out and stealth completely thrown to the wind and we see a huuuuuuge crocodile standing 10ft from the edge of a pool of water with some legs hanging out of his mouth. We roll Initiative.

The rogue had been looking around the cavern, trying to spot and seach without a light source. She's also unknowingly failed several hide checks, and the DM was kind enough to give her a spot check when this happened to represent the croc's eyes opening and seeing her (because they have reflective eyes or something..?), giving her a chance to see it.

But no, she failed and kept failing but made ONE check, upon which the DM told her "You see a bridge. It looks a little funny...." So she walks closer and stops 10ft away, which JUST so happens to be a croc's land speed. Suprise round -- Nom nom nom. Rogue fail.

FuryOfMetal
2010-07-17, 11:50 AM
Pardon me, i rant...

Whilst not DND, my nWoD werewolf group have had 2 constantly quoted fails (1 by me ;))

So we're running around the ST's custom city that we do everything in, on the trail of some magical shenanigans involving a girl killed in a park. We're lead to the mall and our spirit guy uses "two worlds eye" (allows you to see ionto the umbra, where spirits are) and there is a big spirit of commerce on a window...which he talks to. But everybody else in the mall just sees him talking to a window which understandably brings out the shop owner (who is a mage, we don't know this).
After some general conversation where he tries to pick up hints from this guy he flat out asks "are you a magic user?" in a suitably mysterious tone....If you know about the rules relating to the msytical creatures of the WoD universe then it's explanatory they don't want to be found. So after possibly revealing the cover of this mage, the mage takes him into the shop and mind wipes him so he doesn't remember.
I can't remember why but the equivalent of the men in black show up in response to this mage stuff and in the following show down we are forced to and some cieling collapse, killing innocent bystanders. Then whilst escaping our followers some crazy magic crocodile/lizards give chase and end up killing our spirit guy/dumb ass. So our beta death rages, kills alot of people in the slums, wakes up naked and bloody :D.

Now to my fail:
Our alpha (played by the ST, generally only in a roleplay fashion as she's very old for a werewolf and doesn't fight much) dumps me out of town in the woods and tasks me to get back to our hideout as a test (I'm the current omega). So yeah it's easy going until i reach the gate to the native american reservation we've been living on, then i find out i don't have entry papers :smalleek: So i try and bluff my way around losing them at a crazy party, resulting in me being dumped in the wilderness. The guard doesn't buy it, taps his gun and tells me to leave. Knowing that i probably won't get in now i momentarily loose mental reasoning and say "I live here". This in itself is a pretty normal thing to say, but in the context everybody was laughing OOC. I get asked where? I may have insulted his entire culture by pulling at straws, saying i live "in eaglemount road, just off of bear cresent." Ofc i'm chased away and the guards to the reservation don't like me now.

Writing those out doesn't seem as funny as they were, maybe you had to be there. But the phrases "I live here" and "are you a magic user?" are still quoted when one of us does something particularly stupid.

Fenrazer
2010-07-17, 12:17 PM
I was doing a campaign with gunpowder weapons. (Smiling yet?)

My Halfling Rogue had a Shotgun (DMs Guide) and I rolled a natural 1. Lost an arm. Two rounds later, the groups throwing master...THROWING MASTER rolled a natural one, and by roll of dice, the dropped grenade lands next to my halfling that is bleeding out. My Halflings leg was turned to ground chuck at that point.

Yora
2010-07-17, 12:20 PM
In one of my games the evil gnome 1st level rogue tried to jump across a 4m wide pit, without any reason to do so.
While the rest of the party was still discussing if they could build a kind of makeshift bridge to cross the pit.

All the more fail by the fact they never checked if there are other corridors that make crossing the pit unneccesary, of which there were several.

RE:Insanity
2010-07-17, 02:12 PM
My brother had an orc barbarian with a double-axe, and my sister had a halfling pally with a greatsword. My friend Matt was playing an elven druid, and HIS sister was playing an elven cleric with animal and nature domains (the fuh?). They were all seventh level.
I was DMing, and they were all fighting a big red dragon. Matt's sister had insisted I use all the house rules for critical failures and spell misses and all that, so I did. My brother was trying to do some damage to the dragon, but I had ruled it was too big for him to hurt that much with a normal attack. I mean, you can't kill a dragon by hacking at it's foot!
Well, Matt's sister casts enlarge whatever. Thanks to the house rules she wanted, she missed. And hit the dragon. The dragon grew big enough to swallow my brother, and step on Matt. Now too big to fit in the anti-magic circle that had kept it's breath at bay, it roasted the girls in one shot.
But wait, what's this? My brother is still technically alive! He chops and hacks his way out of the dragon's stomache with a handaxe, killing it. It then proceeds to shrink back to normal size (still very big) and fall on my brother as he cries," VICTORY!", killing him.

Matt doesn't let his sister play D&D any more.

GreyMantle
2010-07-17, 02:51 PM
This is more of an epic fail for an entire (short) adventure.

The PCs (all level 6) had been tasked with preventing a traitor from transfering some stolen information pertaining to Breland's (from Eberron)military strategies to his homeland (Thrain). They know who the traitor is but not where the handoff will probably take place, so they immediately put him under surveillance.

They notice that the traitor is going on a hunt the day the handoff is supposed to take place, so they immediately think he's going to do it in the forest. So they send their two strongest characters-an elven (custom) ninja and a gnoll (custom) eldritch knight to accompany him on the hunt just in case.

The remaining four party members decide to break into the traitor's manor on the off chance the information is not on his person.

This is their plan: The warmage summons a fire mephit and then uses a scroll to make it invisible. They then send the mephit into the manor's stables and instruct it to set them on fire. Meanwhile, the druid summons earth elementals to dig a tunnel through to the manor's cellars. Their plan is to have the rogue sneak into the cellars while all the guards are distracted with the stables, allowing her to then go through the manor in search of the information.

So far, so good. I, as the DM was very much impressed with the intricateness of their plan, and so I let it go more or less as they want. But then it turns into total, abject failure.

The rogue discovers the traitor's office, but is unable to bypass the creature guarding the door, a crystalline troll with some minor modifications to make it work more like a construct. So she sneaks back through the tunnel and gets the druid. They are also unable to defeat the troll, so they sneak back and get the two remaining characters, a (homebrewed) hobgoblin monk and the warmage. The four of them get the troll down to less than 10 hitpoints, but then at the last second they decide to pull out because all of them are nearly unconscious and they're concerned that the guards will be returning soon.

So the entire attempt ends in total failure on their part-all they've done is alert the traitor's guards that someone is after his stuff.

After some quick and successful Gather Information checks, the four party members discover that two of the traitor's servants are going to do the handoff; they also learn where it will take place. With no way of contacting the ninja and eldritch knight, they rush over to the deserted park where the handoff is taking place. Whereupon, because of some absolutely horrible tactical decisions (e.g., the druid not summoning anything, not bothering to get good positions, etc.), they proceed to get their asses totally kicked by three level 5 characters. Whoopsie.

Not wanting a TPK, I bs that the eldritch knight and ninja hafta make 4 Charisma checks each-if the total is at least 100, the party's patron will somehow realize what's going on and rush in to save the day.

So they do this. And the total is a mighty...99.

End result: 2/3 of the party dead, the remaining two totally clueless to what just happened, and Thrain in possession of enough information to launch a successful war against Breland. Yep. I'd call that an epic failure.

Akulatraxis
2010-07-17, 04:42 PM
A spectacularly unlikely set of events led to the following in a heavily homebrewed D&D game set in a post-apocalyptic earth after a demonic invasion. Its horribly long so soz for that.

The BBEG finally goes down after a full 2 hours of real life play time, the BBEG in this case being Bel Lord of the First, who had been tricked into making himself vulnerable to the attack of the PC’s by Dispater. His death sealed both the demonic gates that he had set up all over the earth and the one devil gate connected to his plane. The plan had been to weaken the barriers between the planes and eventually allow the legions of the Hells to capture other material planes of existence to use as breeding/recruiting grounds in the blood war. The demons were being used as unwitting distractions and agents of havoc by Bel. However it turned out that Dispater was actually behind the whole thing and the plan from the very beginning was to dispose of Bel and install a new lord of the first that could be counted on as an ally and used to greater effect in Dispater’s designs.

The players were badly beaten and bloodied and all of them had been subtly working against each other all campaign, some of them just because they didn’t trust the others and some of them genuinely had been making deals with devils and demons to gain power. One of the players who had a bargain with Dispater to kill all of the others in exchange for being made lord of the first turned on everyone. He knew he couldn’t beat them all on his own but he had come prepared, he had brought two very important items with him: a thermobaric bomb fuelled by the blood of a slain angel and a orb of prevailing night.

Sprouting fiendish wings of flame the betrayer with designs on the first plane of hell won initiative and shot up into the air, a good 240 ft, he activated his orb of prevailing night shrouding everything within a mile radius in shadowy illumination and blocking all line of sight into the area of effect. The others all backed away, some took pot-shots at each other or the now blazing devil creature rapidly ascending into the air. Much shouting and confusion ensued and the betrayer activated his thermobaric bomb.

Unknown to the betrayer one of the other players, a very resourceful vanilla human known as Peirce had seen him steal the stupidly powerful bomb and planned for the worst. Peirce had messed with the bomb, he had a good amount of technical and arcane understanding so he had tried to disable it so that it wouldn’t work when activated. He had succeeded, sort of, the bomb’s timer had been ruined so it couldn’t be set to detonate, however the bomb and detonator were still intact. The party rogue/ necromancer, Sabina, had also messed with the bomb later that day, she had been more brutal with her sabotage and simply rigged the detonator to go off but not trigger the thermobaric reaction. She had seen the betrayer play the suicide bomber card with a dead mans trigger before and had decided if he was going to do it again he would only kill himself. The betrayer had spotted her sabotage however and made rolls to sort out the damage done, but he only managed to reconnect the detonator and partially fix the timer.

So we come back to him, now 480ft above the rest of them, ready to flip on the bomb and just let it drop. He primes it, and switches on the timer… to see it read 001 and then explode. The bomb goes off killing him instantly and a massive explosion/implosion wracks the area. The others are a little bruised and battered but survive. The worst thing about it all is that no one knows what anyone else has done or was planning to do. Those looking at the spectacle simply saw the betrayer sprout wings of flame, laugh manically and shoot 480ft up in the air and explode.

tcrudisi
2010-07-17, 05:22 PM
I was running this game:

The players had been fighting a monster for a while when one of the players gets fed up. He decides the fight has been going on long enough, so he casts "Harm" on it. This was 3e, when Harm left a monster at 1d4 hp. He rolled and got a 3.

This healed the monster, since the monster was at 2 hp. I burst out laughing and we still laugh about this on occasion.

Hague
2010-07-17, 06:04 PM
I'll say it again: "Critical failures are stupid." All these stories about critical failures on a 1 aren't real fail. Fail is where you make a choice that leads to really bad consequences. Rolling your attack die and chopping off an arm (stupid) is not "failworthy." It's just stupid mechanics.

Fail is telling the exotic fur dealer, "Yes, I am a shapeshifting tiger with regeneration."

Math_Mage
2010-07-17, 06:26 PM
I'll say it again: "Critical failures are stupid." All these stories about critical failures on a 1 aren't real fail. Fail is where you make a choice that leads to really bad consequences. Rolling your attack die and chopping off an arm (stupid) is not "failworthy." It's just stupid mechanics.

Fail is telling the exotic fur dealer, "Yes, I am a shapeshifting tiger with regeneration."

Oh, I don't know, if that's the prelude to ripping his throat out, it could be pretty win.

Hague
2010-07-17, 07:19 PM
Well, at the time, the player didn't know he was a fur dealer (this is another Shadowrun story, but they do get pretty amusing, especially when you consider how closely the reactions and the like are to modern life now, as opposed to the pseudo-medieval that makes up DnD) and shapeshifters in Shadowrun are still susceptible to narcotics and the like. Essentially, you cage the shifter and you can continually skin it over and over again while the fur regrows later.

bobspldbckwrds
2010-07-17, 07:23 PM
last night, actually.

i decide to make a stretch attempt at a knowledge check (geography). none of the characters had encountered the monster before, and the wizard and just failed his knowledge (arcana) check, and trying to nudge the monk into making his knowledge religion check, i rolled a knowledge geography check. the player who was playing the wizard literally rolled on the floor laughing, and then promptly took all ranks out of knowledge (geography)

FAIL

Math_Mage
2010-07-17, 07:30 PM
Well, at the time, the player didn't know he was a fur dealer (this is another Shadowrun story, but they do get pretty amusing, especially when you consider how closely the reactions and the like are to modern life now, as opposed to the pseudo-medieval that makes up DnD) and shapeshifters in Shadowrun are still susceptible to narcotics and the like. Essentially, you cage the shifter and you can continually skin it over and over again while the fur regrows later.


Oh, I was aware of the, ah, unfortunate potential consequences. It's just one of those scenarios that could either be utter awesome or utter fail depending on context.

Sad to say, I haven't played enough to have any epic fail or epic win stories yet.

wick
2010-07-28, 05:16 AM
I'll say it again: "Critical failures are stupid." All these stories about critical failures on a 1 aren't real fail. Fail is where you make a choice that leads to really bad consequences. Rolling your attack die and chopping off an arm (stupid) is not "failworthy." It's just stupid mechanics.

Fail is telling the exotic fur dealer, "Yes, I am a shapeshifting tiger with regeneration."

I usually tell the goups i play with that crit charts are really stupid. I would rather give up critical hits than play with them. My group usually looks at me like I am insane. I of course explain:

Crits:
A. There will be far more rolls to hit you (Aka...chances for critical hits) in your character's lifetime than your hits against bad guys.

B. While it is fun to chop a monsters limb off or whatever, it is actually devasting when it happens to your character. No one cares that you Highlandered Hobgoblin number 3015. You get insta killed or maimed then that can derail the plot, cause bad feelings, make the player feel like a chump.

C. Trust me the standard rules for critical hits are bad enough. If you have ever been criticaled by a hill giant with a heavy pick and your meat shield went from full to past negative 10 in one hit you will know what I mean. At least in 3.0+ you have to roll again to confirm so you do have a chance.


Critical failures:
A. The higher level you are the more you incompetent you become. And don't forget the poor two weapon fighters they will fail twice as much. Some fumble charts can be outright sick. just ask Sleeveless Steve the high level dual weilding Fighter who accidentally chops both of his own arms off in one combat. Even with the more mundane "you drop your weapon" rulings this same fighter build should be labled the juggler for the amount of times his weapons go flying.

B.Hobgoblin # 3028 fumbles and (cuts his own head off, drops his weapon, you name it) who cares. The same thing happens to you, that can be a big deal even if it is just stopping to pick up a weapon. You will be in many harrowing fights where you need to be attacking every round or your only ranged weapon breaks and it is imperitive that you make a ranged attack.

C. The main rules suggest that you automatically miss and lose all remaining attacks that round. That is fairly bad in itself no need to go overboard.

wick
2010-07-28, 05:28 AM
Epic fail:


My group (3.0) was exploring ruins to rescue a desert princess and we were gathering clues and books etc, but were not ready to sit down check them for traps and read them. We came across a large size horned ape creature but it did not attack and seemed friendly enough so after a chat with it (no useful information gained) we continued exploring. We came across the BBEG (i forget what kind of creature) and we proceeded to fight. We were pulling out all the stops and getting our butts handed to use but this guy would not go down. Between the players we started to add up the damage this guy was taking and it was well into the 300's. We fled like the chumps that we were and to be honest this creature could fly so if it had wanted to not all of us could have gotten away and we were in a fotress in the middle of a desert so really it could have tracked us all down and killed us.

The DM frustrated let slip that the creature had put it's soul or something into the Ape beast and the only way to kill him was to slay the Ape Beast. Cough..cough*DM Magic* cough. Personally i there should have been more clues.

Grogmir
2010-07-28, 06:27 AM
I’m DMing a little 4th for 2 PCs, One is my wife.

Its early on – rumours of ‘darkness from below’ etc. When they get approached by the daughter of the local Mystic. Said Mystic has been taken over by Demon and she’s ranting and raving.

I launch into a skill challenge – the aim is to Heal the woman, Talk the demon ‘out of her’, while also trying to find out information about the impending ‘darkness from below’

Things are going well – the mystic is still alive, well enough in fact to start providing info on the demon – when my wife says.

“I’m going to try and bluff the demon directly”…. ‘ So demon underlord – You know us – were powerful hero’s – and if you let us know such and such. Then you cannot fail take over the land!’

Now this was a risking move anyway – the SC remember is too help the woman and banish the demon – but I put in the option of talking direct to the Demon (meant easier info gathering but way harder healing checks) as a more ‘evil’ path. But this is a bluff, they’re good. And the action wasn’t helped when the Wife rolled… you guessed it a 1!

Both PCs go pale – they know that wasn’t a good time to roll a one. I’m stunned too… but go into a quick Demon like Rage. Standing up I shout ‘YOU DARE TRY AND FOOL ME??? I KNOOOOOW WHO YOU ARE, I KNOW YOUR SOUL AND WILL DEVOUR IT FOREVER MORE’ ‘The Mystics body drops – all signs of life are gone’ ‘You feel hatred, darkness and pain wash over your very soul’; Whats your Will defence?
Luckily both have high enough will – But they lost half their Healing surges until a full rest; If you didn’t realise I counted that as a double failure, could I have your character sheets please?
I wrote ‘Noted by such and such a Demon’ on their sheets – hoping to scare them a little..

At this point I think – maybe I’m going a little overboard. So try to move the action along – ‘So yeah there’s a little child outside that might need talking too’

PCs “That’s it? – Wow we got away with that one!” They actually expected MORE ‘punishment’! I think they were worried they would have to fight some uberdemon!

YesImAHalfling
2010-08-11, 02:54 PM
Don't know if it's really a fail, per say, but it was pretty fail for our characters.

First my character. Level 5 Halfling Ranger, female. I'm the only female in the campaign (RL and in game) and the only non-human.
The rest of the group consists of a Favored-Soul of St. Cuthbert, a cleric (dont remember which deity), a monk/sorcerer, another monk (the first one's student), and a rogue (who is now dead).

We're exploring an old dwarven fortress. After finding the man who let us in dead (old age), we're looking around for something that can explain the magically replenishing food cabinets. Well, me and the Monk/sorcerer are looking at a giant fireplace. Now, we're the ones that have the highest dex mods. I think the DM had us roll a search check... Well, we both rolled Nat 1's...

The DM is almost in shock and is laughing. Ends up that the monk steps on my foot, causing me to scream, making him fall backwards into the fireplace and revealing a hidden door opening to stairs.



At another session of the same campaign, the rogue went ahead of us in a stone corridor to check for traps and such. he came back telling us that he heard some type of skittering on the stone floor up ahead. Well, me (not thinking) tells him to take me to the spot where he heard it so that I can try and figure out what it was.....

DM: Ok, Roll initiative, i mean.. *laughs*
Everyone else: >.<

turns out that what he had heard was 5 centipedes.... he ended up dying after not making his fortitude save multiple times... I still feel bad about that... good thing he had a back-up character ready...

DanReiv
2010-08-11, 03:42 PM
I guess you have to hear about our Ravenloft game.

For the record it started more than 10 years ago in Ad&d, updated to 3.0, then 3.5. Dm and players are always the same, even we don't play it a lot these last years.

We didn't managed to accomplish a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g. Just so you know, no PC ever made it past level 8, most are dead, a couple are now undead.

Didn't found the culprit behind many murders in a village.

Failed to kill a vampire we were hired to bring down : one survivor.

Failed to recover the magic shield supposed to protect a town in an hydra infested cavern. Town ended up invaded by an undead army (we're still supposed to do something about that)

There will be no Return to The Temple of Elemental Evil since we died before even getting in there.

Got enslaved by a werewolf lord while traveling.

I could go on...

We're currently in the process of freeing a town overun by Erythnul cultist. Pity these resistant fools who hired us.

For a epic fails with a normal group there's always ToH. For everything else, well, there's our Raven group :smallwink:

BobVosh
2010-08-11, 04:03 PM
Really impressive group ya got there Dan. :P

Although it did remind me of one great Living Greyhawk session we had. I live in Texas, therefore I got to do the bandit kingdom stuff. The whole party was a stealth group, about level 2 I think. Rogues, druids, and rangers. We were using the Bandit Kingdoms feat of +1D6 sneak attack, or so was the plan.

That said we get to a town. Obvious creepy stuff happening around town, noone likes this old women they keep calling a witch at the north end. Nice house that is falling apart is what she calls home. So after getting nothing from the town that is even close to definitive we strut on up to the front door and knock.

Nice old grandma opens the door and we talk for a bit. I end up fixing her shutters, my friends go shopping or painting her house up. (Living Greyhawk required good alignments, or at least neutral I think. We were all pretty much CG) Long story short about fixing up her house is that her chair (throne type thing) cast dominate on us. I end up going to the soccer game kids were playing and murdering them all, the ranger is up on the roof (where he was fixing shingles) raining arrows down on the town guard and folk, and the rest of the party up to the same thing.

Turns out we were suppose to beat up grandma and break her chair. The DM just called it, signed our sheet for whatever we have picked up, and left to laugh in the back room for a good 5 minutes.