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View Full Version : The Dice Gods Hate Me: Murphy Attacks



Choco
2011-03-27, 08:15 PM
Here is a place to share your tales of epically bad luck with the dice. This could be anything from botching one vital roll where you were all but guaranteed success to spending a whole 8 hour session rolling nothing higher than a 3, I just want to hear tales of the inevitable moment where we are not in the dice god's good graces.

I'll start, here is the epic tale of the 4e session I just got back from:

Encounter 1: 4 Mud Men.

This is my new ranger's first encounter, time to make a good impression on the party. This fight went spectacularly, I only missed 1 attack, did over 1/2 the total damage of the party, and downed all 4 of the enemies. Great first impression has been achieved. If only I was aware of what was in store for me next.

Encounter 2: Crocodile swarm.

Things started to go downhill here. I needed a 7 or higher to hit (without flanking or any other modifiers), and my gloriously high defenses depend on hitting with both my weapons (I get +2 to all defenses against the target when I hit with both weapons). Of course, almost every turn I roll a 6 on 1 of the 2 attacks I get (including on dailies and encounters :smallfrown:). Sometimes on both even. Then I am finally able to get some flanking going on, and of course the universe adjusts itself to accommodate and I start rolling 4's. To top it all off, the few times I did hit both times I roll lower for damage than when I hit once. I barely kept up with the leader in DPR (Damage Per Round) that fight. If only I was aware of what was in store for me next.

Encounter 3, Boss Battle: The Incredible Hulk. (it was a custom monster described as a gray version of the Hulk)

Ah, the highlight of the session, this is where the fecal matter really hit the quickly rotating object. This was a very challenging fight because without any other modifiers I could only hit it on a roll of 16 or higher (I have one less than the highest possible attack bonus at my level), and it was almost guaranteed a hit with massive damage. I got lucky early on and was able to land a few chicken scratch hits on it with Twin Strike, and was waiting till I was flanking and our leader reduces its defenses to unleash my daily nova.

EVENTUALLY the leader hit, and I was flanking with him, I now had a 50% chance to land a blow (11 or higher), so I figured now was my chance to go nova. On top of that, we were almost defeated and this was basically my character's chance to shine and save the day. Over the course of 2 rounds I used all my dailies and encounter attack powers as well as my action point, and I did 8 attacks, rolling (in order) 1, 2, 3, 1, 4, 5, 1, 1. :smallsigh: Yeah....... The DM decided that Hulk was laughing so hard he wasn't mad at us anymore, and decided to let us live cause I entertained him so well...

Dire Moose
2011-03-27, 08:18 PM
Oh, man.

I have about average luck with the dice during the Pathfinder Society sessions I've been involved in lately, but whenever I attempt some kind of awesome battle charge or similar epic maneuver the dice usually wind up saying "LOL NO" and giving me really low numbers.

I'm getting tired of all these action scenes ending with my character tripping over his own feet and saying "Derp."

Blisstake
2011-03-27, 08:42 PM
This is what my brother rolled for stats using 4d6b3:

11, 7, 8, 3, 4, 3

I let him re-roll of course, so that incredibly bad luck didn't really matter.

byaku rai
2011-03-27, 08:47 PM
I was making a jump check over a 10-foot moat. I had about a +20 modifier to jump. It was smooth sailing until I made the mistake of bragging about how impossible it was for me to fail.

Guess what I rolled: a natural 1. Splat into the moat, which we then found out was filled with dire bear leavings.

arguskos
2011-03-27, 08:56 PM
I was making a jump check over a 10-foot moat. I had about a +20 modifier to jump. It was smooth sailing until I made the mistake of bragging about how impossible it was for me to fail.

Guess what I rolled: a natural 1. Splat into the moat, which we then found out was filled with dire bear leavings.
Hey man, I have great news (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/usingSkills.htm#skillChecks):

Unlike with attack rolls and saving throws, a natural roll of 20 on the d20 is not an automatic success, and a natural roll of 1 is not an automatic failure.

You didn't fail, unless your DM ruled otherwise.

Choco
2011-03-27, 09:07 PM
Oh, man.

I have about average luck with the dice during the Pathfinder Society sessions I've been involved in lately, but whenever I attempt some kind of awesome battle charge or similar epic maneuver the dice usually wind up saying "LOL NO" and giving me really low numbers.

I'm getting tired of all these action scenes ending with my character tripping over his own feet and saying "Derp."

I feel you man. Only ONE time have I ever had a critical moment to shine and pulled it off (with a natural 20 at that). All other times I have been lackluster at best. All (well, most) of my characters eventually turn into jokes because of this.


I was making a jump check over a 10-foot moat. I had about a +20 modifier to jump. It was smooth sailing until I made the mistake of bragging about how impossible it was for me to fail.

Guess what I rolled: a natural 1. Splat into the moat, which we then found out was filled with dire bear leavings.

Aint that how it always works out? EVERY SINGLE TIME I mutter the phrase "It'l be OK, anything but a 1 and I make this" in any of it's variations, I inevitably roll a 1. Especially hilarious when the 1 is on the save against a Save or Die spell....

Apophis
2011-03-27, 09:29 PM
You didn't fail, unless your DM ruled otherwise.

I did rule otherwise. Mostly because it was really funny, and there was no danger to him. :smallbiggrin:

As a DM, I rarely crit my players. But I always seem to crit their summoned creatures... It's rather annoying.

Draconi Redfir
2011-03-27, 09:41 PM
Two tales depicting the death... of the same character: play the spore games

First up, locked in a room combating several wraiths. I have recently take a massive dose of damage, and am almost dead. now I’m a cleric with cure serious wounds, so i first consider healing myself and running away. But then one of the other players convinces me to instead target my cure spell on the wraiths, as it could easily kill it in one hit. stupidly, i decide to do this, comes the concentration roll, comes the failure, comes my own death, comes my character becoming a wraith, comes me rolling a bard to take revenge upon my fellow players.
play the spore games
Second time, same character, in a swamp on a small sand bar, in the water there are some acid-spiting creatures that like to hide and make hit-and-run attacks. Now one of these things decides it would be a good idea to kill the wolf companion of our local fighter. deciding that this earns them the most painful death possible, i offer to give him bulls strength and water walking while he drinks a potion of rage. i think i gave him water walking first, then followed him a short bit into the water the next round to give him bulls strength, and right after i do so one of the creatures comes up and bites me bad enough to get me to negative hitpoints, and i fall into the water. fortunately the guy i had just buffed grabs my drowning body and throws it to the island. unfortunately one of the creatures decided to spit acid over the group on the island, and i got hit after failing an unconscious dex roll >_>

Desril
2011-03-27, 09:43 PM
My group started up a Harnmaster game yesterday, and my character is a thief/mage type. There was a more or less scripted encounter going on where our caravan was getting thrashed by some lycanthropes (who are absurdly powerful in Harn) but they weren't killing anyone. Well, our resident munchkin/dice god ended up decapitating one of these lycans that the GM had set up to be practically impossible to kill thanks to various improbably high rolls (somewhere in the vicinity of 23 edged damage to the neck and the thing doing abysmally on its amputation roll), so I decided I wanted a chance to shine. Well, lucky me, a huge spell was being cast that, as I was told by the GM later, would've transported us into the arms of another ambush who would've looted the caravan, but put us a bit closer to our intended destination. Well, I decided the big magical dome that was trapping us was a bad thing, so I did what any mage would do, cast Dispel. I critically failed it. The GM ruled that the disruptive energies of the critically failed Dispel interfered with the teleportation, and everyone in the radius was teleported to a random area that ended up being several times further from where we needed to be than we would've been, and in the wrong direction. We ended the session there because the GM wasn't prepared for that.

Arbane
2011-03-27, 10:03 PM
In a game of Exalted, doing a Prolog where I was supposed to go from snivelling mortal to divine hero:

My first roll in the ancient First Age ruins, to notice a trap: FAIL
My second roll, to avoid the trap; BOTCH.

The ground disappeared out from under me, and I ended up in a bottomless pit. I Exalted while the Heroic Mortal (another PC) I was with was trying to bail me out.
I remain convinced that the Unconquered Sun was trying to Exalted him, but something threw off his aim.

mobdrazhar
2011-03-27, 10:31 PM
One of the players in the 4e game i ran yesterday was having the most attrocious luck to the point of he rolled 3 9's for his death saving throws.

John Campbell
2011-03-27, 11:59 PM
In an AD&D game years ago, I rolled up a dwarven fighter with an 18/64 Str, a 19 Con, and 15 HP at 1st level. (Note, this required rolling two 18s on 4d6k3 and then a 10 on 1d10... no point buy, no automatic max 1st HD in AD&D.)

I died, in my very first fight, against three goblins, without ever landing a hit, because I couldn't roll anything higher than a 6 on my attack rolls. (I only needed a 10 or 12.) It took them ages to chew through my hit points - they needed to roll 16s to hit me, and were only doing 1d4 damage - but with me doing absolutely nothing to them, they eventually got there.

CarpeGuitarrem
2011-03-28, 12:34 AM
One of the players in the 4e game i ran yesterday was having the most attrocious luck to the point of he rolled 3 9's for his death saving throws.
Okay, that is just pure RNG spite, right there. You haven't been sacrificing enough virgin kobolds.

In an AD&D game years ago, I rolled up a dwarven fighter with an 18/64 Str, a 19 Con, and 15 HP at 1st level. (Note, this required rolling two 18s on 4d6k3 and then a 10 on 1d10... no point buy, no automatic max 1st HD in AD&D.)

I died, in my very first fight, against three goblins, without ever landing a hit, because I couldn't roll anything higher than a 6 on my attack rolls. (I only needed a 10 or 12.) It took them ages to chew through my hit points - they needed to roll 16s to hit me, and were only doing 1d4 damage - but with me doing absolutely nothing to them, they eventually got there.
I take it back.

THIS is the pure face of RNG spite.

NNescio
2011-03-28, 01:34 AM
Had a 'fun' session once with people on both sides (monsters and PCs) rolling lots of 1's on attack rolls and 20's on saves.

Took a while to finish. And yes, the wizards were reduced to plinking with their crossbows.

GeminiVeil
2011-03-28, 01:46 AM
(we are playing a PF/3.5 mix) The DMPC healer (halfling) in my game was supposed to be a lucky halfling. He took that as a feat from PF, he had the luck domain, and his nickname was supposed to be 'Lucky'.
The first session, there were approximately 8 nat 1's rolled out of a total of 20 rolls. They all seemed to be when the person was withing 10 feet of the halfling. When characters moved away from the halfing, they critted.
Then they get to their hometown, and not only has the halflings parents been turned to stone, but all of his family's possesions had been burned, looted, or destroyed for spite.
We didn't call him Lucky anymore. . .

NNescio
2011-03-28, 02:03 AM
(we are playing a PF/3.5 mix) The DMPC healer (halfling) in my game was supposed to be a lucky halfling. He took that as a feat from PF, he had the luck domain, and his nickname was supposed to be 'Lucky'.
The first session, there were approximately 8 nat 1's rolled out of a total of 20 rolls. They all seemed to be when the person was withing 10 feet of the halfling. When characters moved away from the halfing, they critted.
Then they get to their hometown, and not only has the halflings parents been turned to stone, but all of his family's possesions had been burned, looted, or destroyed for spite.
We didn't call him Lucky anymore. . .

If this were GURPS, he would certainly have the Jinxed (Level 3) disadvantage.

Really munchkiny since the Jinxed character doesn't actually suffer any disadvantages...

Drascin
2011-03-28, 02:11 AM
Thankfully, it seems to be receding a bit, but there was a time where I was actually called the Dice Cthulhu by my group. Every die I touched would not get higher than an 11 at absolute most (more usually 3 or 4. I seem to have an odd tendency to roll 4s). I have botched 17 dice pools in Exalted. I have missed enemies that I just needed 3+ on a d20 to hit for four turns straight. People would actually rub dice on me and pass them to the DM in boss battles to make sure we won, for Heaven's sake :smallsigh:.

Velaryon
2011-03-28, 02:13 AM
Had a similar situation come up in two separate games I was playing in.

First is in Aberrant, essentially a d10 game with super-powers. My character's powers include amazing luck, the ability to cause bad luck in others, and the ability to manipulate people's emotions. He used these to become a super-successful gambler, since not only would he almost always get good hands, but he could enhance people's existing motions to make their tells more obvious, or sometimes cause them to fold (or not fold) when he wanted them to.

Anyway, one of the other characters is a very Thor-like character, right down to the hammer even. During a botched mission, he ends up becoming enraged and attacking some cops. My character tries to use his empathic manipulation to calm him down... and botches horribly. I try to use my luck powers to get a reroll, and make it even worse. I ended up instead accidentally enhancing his rage, which eventually resulted in the death of one major character, lots of collateral damage, and the Thor-guy himself being put into a coma after being shot point-blank by an artillery cannon.

A couple years later, another campaign, this one 3.5 D&D in Ravenloft. I'm playing a cleric who happens to have calm emotions as a domain spell. There's also a barbarian / rogue in the party (same player as the Thor guy, coincidentally). He's manipulated by the BBEG into attacking another player, and goes into rage. I try to use calm emotions, and he natural 20's the save, then kills the other player.

So apparently that's a running thing with me, that if I try to calm somebody down I just make them even more enraged.

Firechanter
2011-03-28, 07:20 AM
I never was the luckiest of rollers, but two weeks ago I had the worst dice luck _ever_.

System was Savage Worlds, and for those not in the know, suffice it to say that as a PC you always roll two dice (of varying sizes), and "snake eyes" are a fumble/critical failure. The consequences of a fumble can be anything between amusing (for the other players) and lethal.
I had skilled my character so that he got bonuses to six different skills, which means that in those skills he could only ever fail by rolling snake eyes.
The chance of rolling snake eyes once is about 3-4%. If you fear particularly bad results, you can spend a benny ("fate point") to re-roll, and you start the game with 3 bennies.

So, guess what happened?

Of about maybe 15 rolls during that session, I rolled snake eyes FIVE FRIGGIN TIMES! Most of them in my key skills.

There wasn't even any combat involved, which was lucky for me, because the way my dice were trying to kill me, I wouldn't have made it into the second round.

I'm not so terribly good at maths, but if my approximation is not too far off, the odds for this happening are about 0,001%, which looks about right. And it happens to me. :smallsigh:

BadJuJu
2011-03-28, 08:09 AM
Will saves against mind control vs undead. If you don't have a pulse, I can't resist your charms. I had a guy with an average to low will save mod. We got caught in a mind flayer ambush. I had to roll a 16 or better to pass. No problem. Did it for like 8 rounds in a row as I slaughtered them. A ghost came out later and possessed me. Had to roll a 7 or higher. 6. I kill 2 party members before I get away. Later a vampire dominates me. Have to roll a 11 or higher. 10.

Draconi Redfir
2011-03-28, 08:13 AM
I'm not so terribly good at maths, but if my approximation is not too far off, the odds for this happening are about 0,001%, which looks about right. And it happens to me. :smallsigh:

If there is even a small chance of something happening, it WILL happen somewere at some point in time.

Cartigan
2011-03-28, 08:32 AM
Well, I decided the big magical dome that was trapping us was a bad thing, so I did what any mage would do, cast Dispel. I critically failed it. The GM ruled that the disruptive energies of the critically failed Dispel interfered with the teleportation, and everyone in the radius was teleported to a random area that ended up being several times further from where we needed to be than we would've been, and in the wrong direction. We ended the session there because the GM wasn't prepared for that.
I really can't respect DMs who break their own games by using DM fiat.
I mean, you're the damn DM, can't you just not do something that will screw up the game, especially since you are making it right the hell up on the spot in the first place?

byaku rai
2011-03-28, 08:56 AM
Once I was DMing for my little brother and sister. They encountered a group of kobolds on a road between towns. Out of the 15 kobolds, 7 got Great Cleave critted by my little sister (a fighter), 4 got shot to death by my little brother (a ranger), who also critted... And the other four killed themselves. One in particular was about to throw a javelin at them, rolled a 1, followed by three twenties in a row. He stabbed himself in the brain. :smallfrown:

Erom
2011-03-28, 09:03 AM
I mean, you're the damn DM, can't you just not do something that will screw up the game, especially since you are making it right the hell up on the spot in the first place?
That was my reaction to that story as well. Why go out of the way to sidestep the normal rules just to end the session? I guess he really probably wanted to be done for the night...

Cartigan
2011-03-28, 09:17 AM
That was my reaction to that story as well. Why go out of the way to sidestep the normal rules just to end the session? I guess he really probably wanted to be done for the night...

One of my DMs did the same thing. Twice.
Once, he turned some fluff into a mechanical occurrence that threw the game so far off the rails that we could advance no further.
A second time, he didn't account for the party splitting up due to different playstyles of the players and when that hit his plan of attack he only updated it partially and in such a way that it AGAIN threw the game off the rails.

Jarawara
2011-03-28, 10:12 AM
I had a character, Reliah Essend, who had the most amazing luck when it came to scoring critical hits. Didn't matter what game system, or what DM or campaign, if there was a critical hit system, she ran ramshod all over it.

I tend to reuse characters, remaking the character from the ground up for new games, even into new systems, so Reliah has had herself statted out in D&D, Gurps, Rolemaster, etc... But every one of those had critical hit systems, or at least the DM had their own personal houserule for it. At least they did, until Reliah snagged it as her own personal showcase rule for awesomness.

Except... there was one little detail. Yes, she could score critical hits, often and with high end damage. Yes, when she scored a critical hit, the target died. Spectacularly, in fact. But the one little detail that kinda deflated the whole thing was...

...she never actually scored a critical hit on anything that possessed more than 4 hit points!

*~*

We're fighting the big bad lizard kind. Reliah rushes forward, plinks for 4 damage, thumps for 6 damage, pattycakes for 5 damage, etc.

Kobold rushes in from the side to flank her, she turns to strike at him. Natural 20! Followed by another 20! Followed by a roll on the crit chart! 32 damage on the 3 hp Kobold! Kobold literally explodes from the impact, spraying bits and pieces of lizardflesh so far that we were still finding bits of him three encounter rooms down the hall!

*~*

Reliah finds herself mano e mano against a towering Ogre. Her eyes close to a menacing slit and she takes pose with her rapier, confident in her ability to deal death, regardless of the foe. The Ogre charges...

The Ogre has 26 hp. Reliah slices. 6 points She parries and thrusts. 5 points. She rolls from an impact, slices at the beast's legs. 4 points. She rises, dodges the Ogre's massive club, and slashes at the belly. 6 points. The Ogre strikes her again, she reels from the impact, but recovers and stabs at his arm. 3 points. The two foes circle, she sees a gap in his defense, darts forward to strike... rolls a natural 20, natural 20, high roll on the crit chart. Ogre explodes from the 39 damage, large hunks of flesh hurl out in every direction!

*~*

Fezzerand: "Ok, team, we need this bookkeeper alive for questioning. Gormac, you divert the guards. Vendassi, you get that gate open. Try to do it quietly, but blast it open if you have to. And Reliah, you're the quietest of us, so you sneak in and rap the bookkeeper over the head, knock him out for easy transport."

Reliah: "Sure thing, boss. As good as done!"

Natural 20, natural 20, high roll on a crit chart, BOOM. As bits of flesh fly past Fezzerand, he's heard to remark: "We may not have sent the right person for the job..."

Choco
2011-03-28, 10:13 AM
One of my DMs did the same thing. Twice.
Once, he turned some fluff into a mechanical occurrence that threw the game so far off the rails that we could advance no further.
A second time, he didn't account for the party splitting up due to different playstyles of the players and when that hit his plan of attack he only updated it partially and in such a way that it AGAIN threw the game off the rails.

Heh, yeah, DM's that derail their own campaigns are funny aint they? I have seen DM's do that before and honestly I got a good laugh at their expressions when they realized what it is they just did. I like to run mostly sandbox games myself, so the problem isn't really that bad for me. If anything, it's the PLAYERS who risk getting their plans derailed, since they are driving the campaign, and as we all know players are good at destroying everything they come across... :smallamused:

Back on topic, both the groups I am playing with now have terrible luck when it comes to random encounters. We make quick work of plot-relevant encounters 3-4 CR/EL higher than us without even breaking a sweat, just to almost get TPK'd by a random encounter 2-3 CR/EL below us. Nothing beats the whole group spectacularly failing their saves against a harpy's song...

Cartigan
2011-03-28, 10:29 AM
Heh, yeah, DM's that derail their own campaigns are funny aint they? I have seen DM's do that before and honestly I got a good laugh at their expressions when they realized what it is they just did. I like to run mostly sandbox games myself, so the problem isn't really that bad for me.
He is running a sandbox game that he barely isn't making up on the fly.

I would provide some stories about how the dice hate me, but that would be every game. I made a point to buy the "The Dice are Trying to Kill Me" shirt.

With ridiculous DM: I try to shoot a guy. I roll a one. My arrow ricochets around a corner (note it can't do this if I try to make it) and hits some teammate in the back.

With less ridiculous DM in 4e, I charge some guy with my Dwarven Fighter. I roll a 1 to hit. The D&D has me roll to see if I stay up right. I fail that. But I'm a Dwarf! I make an automatic saving throw to be Dwarvenly stable. I fail.
As a matter of fact, I don't think I've ever made the automatic Dwarven saving throw to not fall prone...

flabort
2011-03-28, 10:35 AM
"We may not have sent the right person for the job..."

:smallbiggrin: :smallbiggrin: :smallbiggrin: :smallbiggrin:
This. This, oh so much.

Choco
2011-03-28, 10:41 AM
stuff

Oh man, I thought I was the only one this happened to (that is the case in both the groups I play in...). 19 out of 20 times any of my characters get a crit, it is against something I would have killed with minimum damage on a regular attack. And just as you described with the ogre, the crit comes after round upon round of missing and rolling low damage hits.

To top it all off, I roll a crit MAYBE once every 3 sessions. I roll A LOT of 1's, but 20's don't seem to appear all that often. Even with my 4e ranger, who does about as many attack rolls on average as the other 3 party members combined, gets less 20's than any 1 of them and more 1's than all 3 of them combined (so far this is only from 1 session, but this is me we are talking about, it will likely only get WORSE form here on out :smalleek:).

Firechanter
2011-03-28, 10:57 AM
Note: sometimes you may just have bad dice. Literally, not superstition. Unless you have casino-quality dice, they simply aren't shaped perfectly. D20s especially can be very obviously irregular -- just try measuring the diameter at three different points, and you will usually get 3 different values. There is a reason why your DM has his "Fearsome Die of the Crumpled Character Sheet" in his repertoire.

My ex had a black-and-purple d20 that rolls really well. Sometimes when I was rolling miss after miss, she'd toss me that die and, more often than not, I managed a Crit even on my third iterative attack. (She doesn't game anymore, so I made sure I got hold of that magical die.)

Choco
2011-03-28, 11:05 AM
That is definitely true, though I have 9 D20's that I alternate between so I doubt that bad luck streak is the fault of the dice (unless I have bad luck when buying dice and they are all rigged against me :smallwink:). I guess I should mention now that for the Hulk incident in the OP I WAS using my "lucky" dice, which usually doesn't roll lower than a 15. I guess I drained all the luck outta it :smallfrown:

byaku rai
2011-03-28, 11:07 AM
On an opposite note, my current character has God-awesome crits (once my DM fluffed it so that one of my crits caused the target to disintegrate into subatomic particles and give everything in Baator cancer). Generally about 120 or so damage on a successful crit, so anything which still has HP left afterwards is probably going to fail the Fort save anyway.

I'm just waiting for that fateful day when I do to myself what that poor kobold in my last post did...:smallfrown:

Cartigan
2011-03-28, 11:24 AM
Note: sometimes you may just have bad dice. Literally, not superstition. Unless you have casino-quality dice, they simply aren't shaped perfectly. D20s especially can be very obviously irregular -- just try measuring the diameter at three different points, and you will usually get 3 different values. There is a reason why your DM has his "Fearsome Die of the Crumpled Character Sheet" in his repertoire.


I've only DMed a couple of times and my dice roll consistently RIDICULOUSLY better than when I am playing. Like regular 20s and max on damage dice.

The Glyphstone
2011-03-28, 11:34 AM
On an opposite note, my current character has God-awesome crits (once my DM fluffed it so that one of my crits caused the target to disintegrate into subatomic particles and give everything in Baator cancer). Generally about 120 or so damage on a successful crit, so anything which still has HP left afterwards is probably going to fail the Fort save anyway.

I'm just waiting for that fateful day when I do to myself what that poor kobold in my last post did...:smallfrown:

If they take 120 damage to the face and are still standing, they've either got a lot of HD, a ridiculous CON mod, or both. A DC15 Fort save vs. Massive Damage is nothing at that scale.:smallconfused:

Cartigan
2011-03-28, 11:49 AM
If they take 120 damage to the face and are still standing, they've either got a lot of HD, a ridiculous CON mod, or both. A DC15 Fort save vs. Massive Damage is nothing at that scale.:smallconfused:

The DC gods loved me last night. I snuck into a guard tower and coup-de-grace'd some sort of tribal barbarian giant thing. I borked the Move Silently check but I was invisible anyway. Luckily, the DM didn't roll a 20 on his Fort save against the DC 91 save to prevent dieing after surviving the damage from the CdG.

Arbane
2011-03-28, 12:27 PM
After the last D&D game I was in, I've decided if I ever play again, it'll be as a caster doing all Save or X spells.

If I have to roll dice, I've _already lost_.

Freylorn
2011-03-28, 04:30 PM
Really a very simple one, but it stuck with me.

4E campaign, I'm playing an elven Avenger. I go to use a daily power that would hit on a roll of 5+.

I roll my two d20 due to my Avenger class feature. They come up as 1 and 2. I use Elven Accuracy to reroll. They come up as 2 and 3.

It was funny, and irritating.

Hiro Protagonest
2011-03-28, 04:37 PM
Here's mine.

Once, in an eberron campaign, we were facing these two Valenar elves on the pole in Stormhome.

The elves won initiative, both their attacks that round were successful crits. Next, my half-orc fighter attacked them. Natural 1, that encounter didn't go so well. At least nobody died. Well, except for some NPCs trying to stop the fight.

byaku rai
2011-03-28, 04:39 PM
If they take 120 damage to the face and are still standing, they've either got a lot of HD, a ridiculous CON mod, or both. A DC15 Fort save vs. Massive Damage is nothing at that scale.:smallconfused:

My DM has changed the massive damage rules for us. The equation is something like DC=15 + (.5X - 50), X being the actual damage. So, for my 120 crit the save is 50. :smallcool: Mwahahahaha

flabort
2011-03-29, 10:48 AM
Er...
120*.5=60
60-50=10
15+10=25...
Your save DC would have been 25 for 120 damage, not 50. :smallconfused: Is it then supposed to be x2?

Also, looking for DC 15
15=15+(.5X-50)
0=.5X-50
50=.5X
2(50)=X
X=100.

Huh. So to have a DC of 15, you have to do 100 damage?

Apophis
2011-03-29, 10:59 AM
Flabort: First, I am Byaku's DM.
Second, I use DC=X/2-10. This keeps the DC for massive damage at 15 for 50 points of damage, but scales it so that it gets more difficult when you take more damage.

I believe I got the formula from this forum, but I'm not sure.

Inkpencil
2011-03-30, 02:10 PM
My halfling rogue recieved (from a random treasure roll) a small-sized +1 keen rapier at lvl 4 or 5. Having recieved that incredible gift from Olidamarra, he then proceeded, over the next 3 levels, to only once roll higher than a 14. That was the fight in which he died.

absolmorph
2011-03-30, 02:54 PM
Note: sometimes you may just have bad dice. Literally, not superstition. Unless you have casino-quality dice, they simply aren't shaped perfectly. D20s especially can be very obviously irregular -- just try measuring the diameter at three different points, and you will usually get 3 different values. There is a reason why your DM has his "Fearsome Die of the Crumpled Character Sheet" in his repertoire.

My ex had a black-and-purple d20 that rolls really well. Sometimes when I was rolling miss after miss, she'd toss me that die and, more often than not, I managed a Crit even on my third iterative attack. (She doesn't game anymore, so I made sure I got hold of that magical die.)
My d20s (the only ones I get to consistently roll) just don't roll well for me.
I can give them to another player and suddenly they roll fine. Great, even. But they pretty much never roll well for me.
It's pretty much only limited to rolling low numbers, like when I tried to shoot my bard's bow at some giants and needed like a 15 to hit and missed twice a round for ~10 rounds. Fortunately, the abilities of my magical items which I've figured out since then have yet to require an attack roll.

Of course, there's also my paladin, who I suspect manages based on the fact that I put a lot of work into optimizing his to-hit bonus. I typically roll a bit under 10 with him, as I recall.

flabort
2011-03-30, 03:47 PM
Flabort: First, I am Byaku's DM.
Second, I use DC=X/2-10. This keeps the DC for massive damage at 15 for 50 points of damage, but scales it so that it gets more difficult when you take more damage.

I believe I got the formula from this forum, but I'm not sure.

See, the math for that equation makes sense. Thank you.

John Campbell
2011-03-30, 10:27 PM
Note: sometimes you may just have bad dice. Literally, not superstition. Unless you have casino-quality dice, they simply aren't shaped perfectly. D20s especially can be very obviously irregular -- just try measuring the diameter at three different points, and you will usually get 3 different values. There is a reason why your DM has his "Fearsome Die of the Crumpled Character Sheet" in his repertoire.

I have a d20 (one of the old-school ones with 0-9 twice, in different colors) that's visibly out of true, to the point that it's nearly an eighth of an inch longer across the long axis than across the short one. I haven't actually tested it to see how it's biased, but given the degree of its distortion (about 16%), I'm sure it has to be.

That was not the die that killed my dwarf. The one that killed my dwarf was the ordinarily well-behaved clear green d20 that I've been using as my primary one for decades, which has, just in the most recent campaign, rolled lethal crits for me (with a 20/x3 longbow) against two dungeon bosses that were well on their way to killing us all before I shot them in the face, and one DMPC that we really didn't want to talk to anymore (who I rather hilariously one-shotted in the middle of the DM's dramatic moment).

chainer1216
2011-04-03, 06:30 PM
ok, i've got one.
the system: starwars D20 RCR
the setting, KotOR era, during the mandalorian war.
my character? a 15th level martial arts master jedi, who specifically has the ability to negate hits against him (both normal and crit) and absorb energy damage

i charge BBEG and attack.
crit miss, as a joke, the GM says i slipped on a banana peel, and fall prone

he attacks me.
crit hit.

i roll my martial arts feat to dodge the attack
i fail

i roll my PrC ability to turn a crit into a normal hit
i fail

i roll to absorb the energy damage from the lightsaber
i fail

the GM had rolled enough damage to kill me in one shot. before this point, i was considered the most powerful jedi in the universe at the time...and i died because i slipped on a banana peel.

Vonwalt
2011-04-04, 02:18 AM
The thrilling tale of this guy I play d&d with in two campaigns, one 3.5 and one 4.0. So we're fighting some thing, and he rolls his attack, gets a 1. No problem, he thinks, I'll use one of my two re-roll abilities. Re-rolls into a 1. Well, he says, I can still use an action point. Makes another attack, rolls a 4. Decides to use his other re-roll ability, and rolls... a 1. The next day, at our other d&d game, nearly the same thing happens. Rolls no higher than four in every fight of the day. And on saves. And skill checks.

Jarawara
2011-04-04, 11:33 AM
The worst luck with dice I ever saw was in a game of Axis and Allies. The German player saw this British battleship down off the coast of Gibraltor. He wanted to make sure that battleship was dead, so he sent his own battleship, two submarines, 3 fighter aircraft, and his bomber. Also present was a transport with an infantry to take Gibraltor after the naval battle.

For those few of you who haven't played A&A, the combat system works like this: Each unit has an attack/defense score, and you have to roll that or under on a d6 to score a hit. Every unit takes only one hit to kill (nowadays battleships take two hits, but this was 1st edition A&A). All units roll for attacks every round, save for transports which don't have an attack score. So the German only had to roll a 4 or lower (on a six-sider) for his battleship, or a 4 or lower for his bomber, or a 3 or lower for any of his three fighters, or a 2 or lower for either of his subs, to score the one hit needed to win the battle. And if somehow, somehow, this didn't occur, he could just fight another round until the british were sunk. (Attacker can choose to retreat, defender is stuck in the battle till he wins or loses.)

So the battle begin!

Dave starts with his subs, as they get a first-strike ability (if they score the hit, the british sink without even being able to fire back). Two subs, he rolls a 3 and a 5. No hits. He rolls for his fighters. A 4, a 5, and a 6. No hits. His bomber. A 6. His battleship. A 5. Incredible, he failed to score a hit.

The british rolls his attack, rolls a 2, scores a hit. Dave selects a submarine, which sinks to a watery grave.

Round 2. Dave rolls for his sub, a 5. Three fighters, a 4, 6, & 6. Battleship, he rolls a 5. Bomber, he rolls a 5. Gah, no hits again!

British rolls a hit. Dave wants his subs, so he gives up a fighter.

Round 3. Sub, a 4. Two fighters, both 6's. Battleship, a 5. Bomber, a 6.

British rolls a hit. Dave gives up another fighter.

Round 4. Sub, a 6. Fighter, a 4. Battleship, a 5. Bomber, a 5.

British rolls a hit. Dave is alarmed at his air losses, so he gives up the submarine.

Round 5. Are we seriously into round 5?!? Dave picks up a new dice, rolls for the fighter. A 6. He tosses that dice aside, selects a new one, rolls for the battleship. A 6. He tosses that dice away, selects a new one, rolls for his bomber. A 6.

British rolls a hit. Dave considers his options, decides he really doesn't want to lose any more aircraft, and he doesn't really need to take Gibraltor. The transport doesn't have an attack factor, but it *can* be given up as a casualty. It takes the hit, sinks to the bottom, and the infantry on board goes down with it. Costly, but Dave still has all three combat units in the fight for the next round.

Round 6. Rotating through dice: Fighter, 4, Battleship, 6, Bomber 5.

British rolls a hit. Dave's last fighter aircraft plummets from the sky.

We're down to round 7. Dave still has two 4 point units, and he only needs to score one hit to sink his opponent. His Battleship... rolls a 5. His Bomber... rolls a 5.

British rolls a hit. Bombers are cheaper than Battleships, so down it goes in ignoble flames.

(As an aside, it's a good thing nothing actually 'goes down in flames' in this game. The peices are all plastic, and would make an awful mess when burning.)

So we're on to round 8, Battleship vs Battleship, mano e mano.

The british player offers Dave his dice. Dave accepts, having run through his whole supply. He rolls... a 6.

British player selects a new dice, from Dave's discarded pile. All eyes are upon his hand as he rattles the dice back and forth, and then let's fly...

... it comes up a 5. A miss. Another chance for life.

Dave leaps up from his chair, sensing the tide had turned, sensing that indeed his luck has finally changed. He dances with joy and exhuberance. I mean, he literally *dances* for a whole minute.

:smallconfused::smallbiggrin:

And then, with his legs tiring but his spirit soaring, he grabs up the dice and rolls a 6. British then rolls a 2, and sinks Dave's battleship to end the fight.

Firechanter
2011-04-04, 11:35 AM
before this point, i was considered the most powerful jedi in the universe at the time...and i died because i slipped on a banana peel.

Maybe your DM killed you, not the dice. Unless Star Wars is specifically different in that respect, there are no Fumbles in D20, and for very good reasons. So you wouldn't have slipped, but simply missed. You wouldn't have been prone, and maybe those 4 points of AC would have been enough for the NPC not to confirm his Threat. You wouldn't have taken multiplied damage, and lived.

Or if you play without confirmation rolls altogether... then that also would mean your DM killed you.

Lesingnon
2011-04-05, 10:09 AM
Neither of these rolls involved my characters specifically...but they're both just too good not to mention.

The first was in nWoD, and actually between PCs. A vampire snuck into an area that some Mages had warded against supernaturals. The mages come to investigate and the vampire, thinking they were just mortals, tries to sneak up on them invisibly. All three see her coming and one of the mages (an Acanthus, naturally) pulls his pistol out and rolls 15 successes on 14 dice to one-shot the vampire who can usually practically ignore bullets. Someone I know actually wrote a program to give you the odds of rolling x successes on y dice in the nWoD system...that particular roll was so unlikely that the program rounded it down to a 0% chance.

The other happened in a first-level DnD campaign when we were fighting a bunch of skeletons. The Paladin rolled three straight 1's to attack which left; his bastard sword embedded in the wall, his short sword stuck in the ceiling, and his dagger lying on the far side of the room. Then he had his back to the wall, unarmed, facing three skeletons, and was taken down in fairly short order.

Dwoir
2011-04-05, 05:33 PM
My characters(s) have an issue with critting and missing, and failing saves.

Currently, I have a Dwarf TWF Fighter 6. His to hit isn't spectacular, so he misses a few more times than normal. When he does hit, its ok - nothing like the partys barbarian - but three attacks make it even out, or at least you would think. Rolling misses three times in a row is a bigger bummer than missing one.

So, the party (me, half-orc barbarian, human cleric, human druid) is tasked with killing a mindflayer who has fled from us after we stormed his base in the Underdark. Long story short, we end up teleporting into the artic north, and tracking him down in another fortress. Final room has a large pool of water, and some stairs. Our party, being quite wary of traps, attempts to determine what the pool is. My dwarf, lacking wisdom, decided to throw a corpse into the pool to see what would happen (corpse vs trap was shamelessly stolen from this site). DM grins, roll a will save. And....15! Hmm...no. He pulls me out to the side and tells me I've been dominated by an aboleth living in the pool, and it tells me to fall into the water.

The party sees their favorite dwarf just fall into the water like a plank, and start to sink. Immediaely the party sets to work. The barbarian will take a minute to strip armor, while the druid wildshapes into a shark. Cleric cant do much (ill drown before he can strip armor) so he holds the rope tied to the barbarian.

The druid immediately enters the water, without waiting for backup, and swims to find my dwarf in the mouth(?) of the aboleth. Initiate counter-grapple, and he wins. Initiative. Druids goes first, pulls me along. Me turn, counter grapple...25. I win. Aboleth, attack, blah blah. Druid tries to grapple me again, i roll much higher than him. My turn, I attack.

I never crit. Half the time I don't hit. I only crit when the monster has 2hp left. I roll a 20. Roll to confirm..hit. Second attack, hit. Third, hit. I did something in the vicinity of 60 dmg. To a lvl 6 druid.

There you have it. The first time I crit worth a darn with this Dwarf, and I kill my fellow. Probably would have killed the barbarian too if he hadn't of killed the aboleth.

CarpeGuitarrem
2011-04-05, 06:14 PM
Really a very simple one, but it stuck with me.

4E campaign, I'm playing an elven Avenger. I go to use a daily power that would hit on a roll of 5+.

I roll my two d20 due to my Avenger class feature. They come up as 1 and 2. I use Elven Accuracy to reroll. They come up as 2 and 3.

It was funny, and irritating.
That's amusing.

Neither of these rolls involved my characters specifically...but they're both just too good not to mention.

The first was in nWoD, and actually between PCs. A vampire snuck into an area that some Mages had warded against supernaturals. The mages come to investigate and the vampire, thinking they were just mortals, tries to sneak up on them invisibly. All three see her coming and one of the mages (an Acanthus, naturally) pulls his pistol out and rolls 15 successes on 14 dice to one-shot the vampire who can usually practically ignore bullets. Someone I know actually wrote a program to give you the odds of rolling x successes on y dice in the nWoD system...that particular roll was so unlikely that the program rounded it down to a 0% chance.

That's...incredible.

Traveler
2011-04-05, 08:49 PM
O.K. I have one. Some time last year in an AD&D session.
The party had just cleared the room of several fire giants, but we heard something moving from futher inside the fortress. I play a halfing thief, so I go to check it out. I have had some previous encounters of checking doorways alone and being attacked outright, so (thanks to a permant spider climb I aquired) I tend to climb above the door and look in from the top and that has served me pretty well so far.
So climbing up the wall and tooking down the hallway I see an old (I forget the real age) red dragon coming down the hall. I alert the party and stay above the door. Dragon comes through the doorway and battle begins.
Some damaging blows later and both the party and the dragon are close to death. It could really be 50/50 at this point who comes out on top.
That leaves me, above the door, untouched because my character stays out of the way against thing that can kill him in on hit. Then I remember, I'm playing a thief, I get a backstab, I'm above it's back, it's the size of a bus. I call I drop down on it and backstab the thing. It could have been a killing blow, I could have been the hero, but then I wouldn't be posting this on a bad die roll thread.
I had a bonus for a buff the cleric had cast, another for it being a giant target at this point (and it didn't know/care about me), the thing was stunned, and all of my usual modifiers. I roll to hit. I roll a 1. Not only do I miss, but the DM calls that I bounced off and land somewhere ground nearby. Thankfully, the fighter did it in the next round.

MidnightOne
2011-04-06, 01:30 PM
Long story short: We're at the final BBEG encounter of a two-year (real time) campaign with a Drow priestess and her dozens of minions. I'm playing a Drow 10 rogue / 5 cleric of the Neutral variety who hates her guts with a fiery passion.

(switching to first person) I use a teleport ring charge to come in behind her. It works, surprisingly. I'm within thirty feet, have her flat-footed and unaware and to top it off I have three arrows of Slaying (Drow) I've been saving for just this occasion. She's casting spells at the rest of the party and not having a lot of good fortune.

My rolls? Seven. Five. One. Even with all the bonuses, none of these even comes CLOSE to hitting her. Three arrows of slaying, gone.

BooNL
2011-04-07, 03:54 AM
Awesome Axis&Allies fight.

Oh yeah, A&A. The incredible luck you can have in that game. I once lost my entire Japanese army (about 5 tanks, fighters, bombers and a literal ton of infantry) against a single Russian infantryman. In Moskou. It was his last unit on the board.

Cartigan
2011-04-07, 10:50 AM
Oh yeah, A&A. The incredible luck you can have in that game. I once lost my entire Japanese army (about 5 tanks, fighters, bombers and a literal ton of infantry) against a single Russian infantryman. In Moskou. It was his last unit on the board.

He forgot to tell you his last infantryman was Captain Russia.

Thorcrest
2011-04-07, 02:05 PM
Oh God Bad Dice Tales! Note: I have horrible luck...

I have played at least three DnD sessions without a single successful roll.

I have had the DM roll Three confirmed crits in a row, all 20s, in the open when attacking my charachter.

Risk, other than the fact that it is a bad game for numerous reasons besides dice, is notorious for your 1 block just killed 50 of mine! (Blocks are armies, I have an old Risk game... stupid Risk... Grrrr :smallfurious:)

Axis and Allies suffers from the same as above if you are lucky/unlucky. Once, playing against my brother, he had all the techs developped right away with some luck, I had pumped in twice as much money as he did and had nothing.

Playing Warhammer Fantasy Battles, I once lost (I win about 90% of the time due to hitting the enemy in the right spots) because my Orc army had a turn where EVERY unit subject to animosity failed... basically a round of free shots for the three Empire Cannons and 40 Handgunners and 20 Crossbowmen that my Brother had fielded... then when I got the survivers to combat I charged, and my Elite unit rolled 7 1s and a 2... of the rest, my best unit had 40% hits with the odds being around 50-60%, so not terrible... but my brother passing on a third of his 6+ saves was, especially when only a quarter of the hits wounded (odds were 75%)...

Playing History of the World (I don't think it's well known... board game where you take parts of the world over time as different randomly chosen civilisations), I got the Romans (who get the maximum of 20 counters (more than anyone else ever)) and only took 4 territories (a territory can only have one person).

Oh! Once, my brother beat me when the odds were 1/248000 in my favour (forget what the exact number was) this was in Axis and Allies.

This is fairly normal for me... I generally don't get close to the odds... and my brother has a horseshoe rammed up where the sun doesn't shine! :smalltongue:

Choco
2011-04-08, 09:28 AM
Oh man, my luck playing Warhammer 40k is never average, game to game it varies from exceptionally good to truly horrific. I play mainly Witch Hunters.

Once time, this was actually my first game ever, my Canoness (who was the last unit I had left and only had 1 wound left after she and her squad of Battle Sisters (no, not Celestians, I was new...) had successfully defended against multiple waves of demons of various power through excellent rolls on faith point usages) charged a Demon Prince and totally whooped him at melee combat. She then went on to solo-kill the squad of Khorne Berzerkers that charged her after that. And on top of that mopped up all of my opponent's remaining forces and won me the game. It was awesome.

Of course, the next game had to balance this out. I was facing a Guard player who deep-striked most of his army on his 2nd turn (bastard had some good deep strike roll luck, not only did he get all but ONE unit out on his 2nd turn, they were also all on target...) behind my forces and attacked. Every one of my units lost at least one person and needed to roll a morale check. No problem right? Sisters of Battle have EXCELLENT morale saves and I didn't have any Stormtroopers with me this time, and don't forget the faith points! Every one of them failed (I have never been so furious at rolling so many 6's :smallannoyed:). Now remember that all the enemies were BEHIND my forces now, so they tried to run towards my board edge, ran into the enemy, and were thus annihilated. Yes, I was completely wiped out on turn 2 in the first serious action of combat.

And don't even get me started on my Exorcists. I once wiped out a Tyranid army focusing on heavy units in 2-3 turns by 1-shotting each of their heavies with an exorcist (6 shots, 5 AP-0 hits on a Hive Tyrant from one Exorcist? Yes please!). Of course next game neither of them (I was fielding 3 at the time) were able to land a single hit against anything. Lets just say I didn't last very long.

Murphy80
2011-04-08, 12:43 PM
So many stories, but just 2 for now...

Honor of the Samurai (a card/dice game) I was attacking with 18d6 vs 6d6 (you add up the numbers, high wins, ties go to the defender) to win the game.... and lost. Technically it was a tie and ties go to the defender.

DnD just recently I attacked a Naga with Displacement, 1st round 1,1,crit(but missed the displacement roll). 2nd round 3,4, hit(again, missed the displacement roll).

Douglas
2011-04-08, 12:56 PM
Oh yeah, A&A. The incredible luck you can have in that game. I once lost my entire Japanese army (about 5 tanks, fighters, bombers and a literal ton of infantry) against a single Russian infantryman. In Moskou. It was his last unit on the board.
Reminds me of my brother's track record with one specific attack at the start of the game. The game's initial setup has this one Japanese transport sitting on the coast, undefended, in range of a British carrier-based fighter. Britain always gets to go first, and usually that fighter takes the easy potshot and kills that transport. I have seen my brother attempt to do this in three separate games, and all three times the transport shot down the fighter and survived.

I calculated the odds for that battle. The fighter has a 5/7 chance of outright victory, 1/7 chance of mutual kill, and 1/7 chance of the transport winning. He got that 1/7 chance all 3 times.

Otherworld Odd
2011-04-09, 11:46 AM
A little bit of a different take on this here but whenever I DM and one of my players says, "I want to do (insert something incredibly impossible and stupid here, ex hearing someone whisper from across a room."

Me (DM'ing): "Yeah right, if you roll a nat 20 sure, mwhahahahaha it'll never--

Them: Roll, nat 20.

Me: Happen.... Well (expletive). -.-.


All the time... All... the... time...

Cartigan
2011-04-09, 12:00 PM
A little bit of a different take on this here but whenever I DM and one of my players says, "I want to do (insert something incredibly impossible and stupid here, ex hearing someone whisper from across a room."

You know that's a DC 15 check, right? Maybe a tad higher due to distance, but it would stretch to hit a 20 in an otherwise silent, normal sized room.

Otherworld Odd
2011-04-09, 12:07 PM
You know that's a DC 15 check, right? Maybe a tad higher due to distance, but it would stretch to hit a 20 in an otherwise silent, normal sized room.

The precise check was to see if she could hear them (Whispering) across a busy street filled with people. Like a mob of people. I wasn't trying to be technical or anything, just an example that I didn't get detailed with. The point was making outrageous skill checks or doing silly almost impossible things.

Also: The DC is 15 just to hear them. To make out what they're saying, it would be 25. In an empty room of course.

Ajadea
2011-04-11, 04:39 AM
My players in the PbP I run here, on a fairly regular basis. It's almost ridiculous. Despite generally having bonuses to their checks (except that one time with the paladin and Balance...) over 50% of the time, they roll under 10.

To compare, the last set of rolls I got was 18, 20, 13, 20, 23, with a +3 mod.

The only player who did ever get reliable good luck (like 3 crits in a row actually, that was insane) is on hiatus. And when do the others get maximum damage? Well, one of the times is when the paladin is punching his own ally in the face for rather nebulous reasons (that is, the factotum told the paladin to punch him, without really explaining why).

The exceptions are the druid on perception-related skill checks, the factotum on knowledge, and everyone on initiative.

We tend to blame it on the in-game god of the paladin, who is likely very pissed at said paladin due to him violating the code left and right. Mind you, the fact the paladin is violating his god's code left and right probably makes him a lot closer to the expected image of a paladin than the other more favored paladins who generally behave more than a bit like this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=193630) without the torture.

Peregrine
2011-04-11, 04:43 AM
It's always iffy whether it's good luck or bad luck when the DM rolls poorly. The specific tale that I shall relate is even more ambiguous, since I the DM was rolling to attack an NPC, essentially one of my characters against another.

My players had been having a rather bad day, with three elder xorns ambushing them and sending them flying all over the place with Awesome Blow. And then the relatively safe-looking, wolf-sized shark-headed quadruped* turning out to be the nastiest foe of all and the one commanding the xorns. The whole party had run dangerously low on hit points, including the NPC paladin, an important ally for the party and also their only source of serious healing.

As I recall, one xorn was still standing, and looked like it was about to kill one of the PCs, lying prone within its reach. The paladin charged and managed to get its attention. He also therefore drew its entire attack routine: three claws and a bite. And thanks to the paladin's AC being mediocre even before the charge, the xorn's +21/+19 attack bonuses were sure to hit on anything but a natural 1.

So of course, I rolled two natural 1s. The paladin's hit points dropped to precisely 0. With little if any healing left to the party, and with one PC already dragged away by the shark-thing to its underground lair, dropping to negatives would have probably been the end of that paladin. Heck, I think one of the misses was the bite, and 4d8+7 would have been a guaranteed fatality.

A paladin saved by a 1/400 chance on the dice (or even longer odds if you factor in the damage rolls)? Yep, that's divine intervention for you.

* A cerebral stalker from Tome of Horrors II, advanced by several Hit Dice and with its "sink" ability (a rather bizarre version of earth glide) simply replaced with a burrow speed.


My DM has changed the massive damage rules for us. The equation is something like DC=15 + (.5X - 50), X being the actual damage. So, for my 120 crit the save is 50. :smallcool: Mwahahahaha


Er...

I'm pretty sure Byaku Rai meant 15 + 0.5(X - 50), which is mathematically equivalent to Apophis's actual formula (X/2 - 10), but actually hints at a clearer way to express it in words: "DC 15, +1 for every 2 points by which the damage exceeds 50".


The worst luck with dice I ever saw was in a game of Axis and Allies.

That... was epic.

Cartigan
2011-04-11, 08:01 AM
The precise check was to see if she could hear them (Whispering) across a busy street filled with people. Like a mob of people. I wasn't trying to be technical or anything, just an example that I didn't get detailed with. The point was making outrageous skill checks or doing silly almost impossible things.

Also: The DC is 15 just to hear them. To make out what they're saying, it would be 25. In an empty room of course.
Not too hard depending on the level and if they invested any points in Listen.

John Campbell
2011-04-11, 12:54 PM
The only player who did ever get reliable good luck (like 3 crits in a row actually, that was insane) is on hiatus. And when do the others get maximum damage? Well, one of the times is when the paladin is punching his own ally in the face for rather nebulous reasons (that is, the factotum told the paladin to punch him, without really explaining why).

That reminds me of a "that would've been good luck... at some other time" moment in an AD&D game.

Long story short, we were defending a village, and had killed a doppelgänger that had (presumably) murdered one of the villagers and taken her place, while it was attempting to open the gates for the attacking orc horde. After we'd beaten off the attack, the murdered woman's husband was, understandably, freaking out about the whole thing.

One of the other PCs was a giff... this is a race from Spelljammer: basically a nine-foot anthropomorphic hippopotamus with a natural head-butt attack and a racial gunpowder fetish. He had, I don't remember exactly, but a 19 or 20 Str... people with experience only with 3.x and its inflated stats may not realize quite what that meant in AD&D. Normal PC races topped out at 18/00 Str, which was ogre strength. Hill giants had 19 Str. Stone giants had 20 Str. In terms of damage bonus provided, it'd be the equivalent of a 24-26 Str in 3.x, and hit points were scarcer in AD&D, too.

So, anyway, we had this villager freaking out because his wife had probably been murdered by a thing that had taken her form and had been posing as her for at least several days, which we, in turn, had killed before his eyes while it was still wearing her shape. The nine-foot-tall hippo went over to try to calm him down, and, after failing miserably due to being terrible at interpersonal interactions (both in and out of character), decided to just knock him out with a head-butt to get him to stop shrieking.

And rolled a nat 20. DM had him roll to confirm the crit (he'd back-ported that from 3.x)... another nat 20. Damage? Max on both dice. Plus twice his ludicrous Str bonus. And, because it was a crit, lethal damage rather than subdual. Against a 0-level NPC. A friendly 0-level NPC that we were supposed to be protecting. This was more than enough damage to take him from full HP to dead, dead, dead.


Not too hard depending on the level and if they invested any points in Listen.
Yeah, my current character, at 9th level, can make a DC 25 Perception check by Taking 10. In the right situation, with my favored enemy and favored terrain bonuses kicking in, I could even get to "on anything but a nat 1". (No, you can't auto-fail a skill check. My modifiers would just happen to add up to exactly +23.) With a good roll, not even necessarily a nat 20, I could make a DC 40 check without any trouble. And I don't even have any magic items boosting Perception. (They're not uncommon, either.) It's just one of the class skills that I keep maxed.

The real lesson, though, is don't say "only on a nat 20" unless you actually mean it. A 5% chance really isn't all that unlikely. (This is why I have an issue with crit-fumble rules in D&D.)

erikun
2011-04-11, 08:58 PM
My worst luck in recent memory: My first time playing 4e D&D. Four entire sessions of rolling nothing above a 6, which accounted for nearly a dozen battles. Thankfully I was the Shadar-Kai Warlord, so that I could still do something with healing and Wolf Pack Tactics (ability still triggers even on a miss). It was a computer program RNG, and the same one everyone else was using, so it can't be a case of lopsided dice.

Actually, that represents my luck most of the time. Either I'm rolling subpar all session, or I'm hitting 18-20 with every attack. This is why I like precision dice, as at least I get to see the 8-14 range occasionally. :smallannoyed:

MidnightOne
2011-04-14, 07:23 PM
I knew I forgot another one: Mordecai the Foul, magic-user under 2nd edition rules and couldn't hit the broadside of a barn if he was inside and the doors were closed.

Out of frustration, he starting using the shovel in his backpack, taking the -4 to-hit penalty, figuring that it couldn't be worse.

Three critical hits in a row. And many many other solid hits.

He took shovel proficiency.

Peregrine
2011-04-15, 08:45 AM
I knew I forgot another one: Mordecai the Foul, magic-user under 2nd edition rules and couldn't hit the broadside of a barn if he was inside and the doors were closed.

Awesome. :smallbiggrin: I didn't know there was a D&D God of Shovels, but apparently there is and he loved Mordecai.

Jarawara
2011-04-15, 09:34 AM
Ah, I remember another one! And this one is actually for D&D!

My player Steve made up a new character, focused on the bow. Shoah the Archer. This was way back, using the Archer character class from Dragon magazine. Not a very good fighter, but lots and lots of bonuses for missile weapons. Add in being an elf with a high dexterity (as if there were any other kind of elf...), and we have a buttload of pluses to the basic to-hit roll, and a buttload of plusses to damage.

Not that it ever mattered. I seriously doubt he ever hit a thing in the entire campaign. Every arrow he shot went wild, grounded out, or simply disintegrated upon leaving the bow. His dice must have had a bad experience with flight, maybe from being tossed through the air in a previous game session, because nothing that archer fired would fly more than 10 feet. The player used the same dice for melee attacks, and did just fine. Shoah made for a great back-up fighter. He was just a lousy, abyssmally unlucky, archer.

Then came the battle with the giant Scorpion. Claws were snapping, swords were stabbing, spells were dazzling, stinger was threatening all within range. Shoah nocked an arrow from his quiver, drew his bowstring... and damn near nailed his own foot to the ground. He drew another from his quiver, aimed, and watched the arrow fly straight and true... straight *over* the target that is, landing true into a patch of weeds. Shoah cursed, pulled another arrow, nocked, drew back the string... rolled a 1. We weren't using critical hits, but Steve insisted that the bowstring broke.

He then dove forward with the bow in hand, using it as a makeshift spear, though lacking any actually blade on the end.

Rolls a 20.

Confirms with another 20.

Steve kills the giant scorpion in one hit with a bow. No arrows... just a bow.

GideonRiddle
2011-04-15, 09:45 AM
I played a pacifist healer that had been given a bow and arrows so as to look threatening. There was no way that an arrow could pierce the armor on the guys we were fighting. At one point I say an ally get hit for almost massive damage(rocket) and I pulled out and shot an arrow in an attempt to distract, sort of a "hey shoot me, I'm annoying" ploy. I was safe for huge AC. but my shot went like this:

Atk roll: nat 20
dmg: nat 8
crit: nat 20
crit dmg: nat 8

I killed the guy with an arrow through the skull.

The DM ruled that as I had never killed before I went into shock.

Jay R
2011-04-15, 12:25 PM
I was playing a low-level 2E thief, and I had put serious points into Climb Walls. It's 75%. There's a hole in the wall only ten feet up, with rubble below it. Easy 10 foot climb, and the DM gives it a +20%. So I roll ...

00.

I fall, and the DM says that there won't be any damage from a fall that short unless I fall twice. So I roll to climb again ...

00.

That's one chance in ten thousand.

(The kicker is that my dice were actually trying to save me. The hole contained a Grey Ooze, and when I'm climbing, I'm not carrying my quarterstaff, the group's only non-metal weapon.)

MidnightOne
2011-04-20, 03:12 PM
Awesome. :smallbiggrin: I didn't know there was a D&D God of Shovels, but apparently there is and he loved Mordecai.

In the way of Bigby, he created the Mordecai's Magnificent Shovel spell.

The verbal component? The phrase "ONLY YOU!" (preferably shouted)

Yea, it was that kind of campaign.:smallsmile: