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Communard
2011-10-12, 05:33 AM
First proper session I've ever played. 5 ranged characters and one melee character. Level 2. On a train. Split party. Everyone unoptimized. Fighting double-scimitar wielding elves.

Our Cleric went down in the second round.

Yeah...we pretty much should be dead, it was one of the biggest fails ever witnessed and everyone was on negative hitpoints by the end of it. Our DM had to distract the Elves with an escaped air elemental to stop them coup de gras-ing our entire party. But it was also the most fun I've had in a long while. I guess that's the great thing about RPGs, it can even be really fun when you're failing hard.

So, anyone got any good epic failure stories?

Ayedi_Star
2011-10-12, 06:00 AM
First session of our brand new campaign, featuring:
Goliath Barbarian,
Pixie,
Human Telepath,
Human Swordsage.

We enter the dungeon after plot! happens, exploring. we fight two boars in a room set up like a farm pen, murdering them in a single round. the swordsage even manages to cut out some meat from them.

the pixie is our flying sneaky scout, despite having only 8HP.
He manages to find a trap in front of a door, and set it off, revealing a floor trap that has a 30foot drop and spikes at the end, but opens the door.

it's a 5-foot gap. it's easy, right? we're going to jump it!
The swordsage goes first, just using sudden leap to pounce over with no worries (a 6 in the jump skill already means auto-success)....

The telepath rolls a 1.
*SPLAT*
He hadn't even had a chance to manifest a single power.

That isn't the end of this player's misfortune, but it was the end of the Telepath's.

a LOT of his misfortune is to do with unforseen consequences of other player's actions, however - it was the swordsage who managed to amputate his next character's nipple.

NOhara24
2011-10-12, 06:43 AM
The telepath rolls a 1.
*SPLAT*
He hadn't even had a chance to manifest a single power.

That isn't the end of this player's misfortune, but it was the end of the Telepath's.

a LOT of his misfortune is to do with unforseen consequences of other player's actions, however - it was the swordsage who managed to amputate his next character's nipple.

Dying because of one crit fail on a jump check of all things is brutal If it were me, I would have just said he failed to even leave the ground. I think that's how jump checks work anyway, you take your die result+modifiers and divide by 4 to see how much vertical height you actually get. 1+0/4 = would have resulted in him getting 3 inches off the ground.

But maybe I'm just a softie.

Ayedi_Star
2011-10-12, 07:03 AM
The fall and the spikes actually didn't kill him outright, but having 3? rounds max to help him kinda made all options moot points.

Between the time needed to splice rope, secure it, and start getting him out, he'd have died no matter what the group did, as the only healer was an NPC cleric that obviously wasn't about to jump into the pit in an effort to use touch-based healing (and didn't have reach) if the pixie had access to a wand of healing, he'd have been okay, but at the time we didn't have that.

His replacement bard is actually a level above us, so the DM obviously felt it was a firm but fair result.

didn't stop the amputation of said nipple, however, nor did it stop his OTHER telepath psion from dying when I ran RHoD.

2nd session in, they get to Vraath keep, he attempts a diplomacy check against Karkillian the minotaur despite having attempted to charm him + the other party members attacking him previously. I roleplay that he laughs off the attempt and 'will enjoy drinking from her skull'.

his next turn? he rolls a 20, confirms, and deals 57 damage to someone who only had 33HP.
The minotaur promptly cleaves the Psion VERTICALLY IN HALF.

of course, they attempt to use the staff of life, found not more than 5 minutes later, to revive her.
She refuses the resurrection.

Drazik
2011-10-13, 12:44 PM
ok, so the plan was to have a fair amount (6 or 7) people show up to play, but we ended up with three. no big deal.
one of my freinds DM'd, using a dungeon he just started about 5 minutes before hand. the two characters were:
level 7 half elf rogue
level 2 dwarf knight

we ended up getting put into jail by some gaurds to be held for questioning. the plan was to use my ultra lock picking skillz to get us out, then scour the place for our stuff and get outa there. we were able to get out of the cell, but after that hte dm decded this was two easy, so he added some guards. normally, this wouldn't have been a big deal since i eat gaurds for breakfast, but neither me or my knight rolled over a 9 the entire fight, and the gaurds had 16 AC (and i suppose the DM rolling 3 20's may have helped). we both died, down all the way to negatives.

gkathellar
2011-10-13, 01:03 PM
First time I played 3E. Rolled a monk. I got killed by a pouncing lion on the first turn of the first round of the first encounter.

Played a 3.0 monster campaign just a bit after Savage Species came out. I was running a Rakshasa, and I got hit by a blessed bolt right at the end of the session. Dead as a doornail.

On my second 4E session, I got KO'd by a band of minions during the first round of an encounter. Shortly afterward they killed my whole party.

I love this game.

Lord Il Palazzo
2011-10-13, 02:07 PM
Three sessions (which was two in-game days) after the start of my first (and to date, only) session as a player, the entire (level 5-6) party was wiped out by CR 16 devil. Granted, this was to set up a Groundhog Day/Majora's Mask style time-loop as the defining feature of the campaign, but it still made quite an impression on us all.

Trinoya
2011-10-13, 05:21 PM
I had a player go through two characters in one 50 minute session. One character lived, in an approximation of game time, roughly 3 seconds... and was killed by his former character.


Needless to say, I've seen some impressive 'first sessions' ^_-

One Tin Soldier
2011-10-13, 09:27 PM
Well in my nWoD group, we have one player who always seems to get his characters heavily injured as soon as he meets the rest of the group.

Vampire: his character is a **** Tracy looking type. He is approaching a popular vampire hangout in the city to introduce himself when he almost gets run over by a couple of us. He jumps out of the way, straight into the npc vampire we just had a chat with concerning the wisdom of sneaking into our hideout while invisible. Npc vamp is a bit pissed, shoves him right back into the street. Character starts getting a bit uppity, demanding an apology, and the npc just starts walking off. Into a dark alley. (At this point, those of us in the car get out to watch the show.) Character then proceeds to be beaten into torpor with a lead pipe. Then we cart him off and bloodbind him. :smallbiggrin:

Changeling: This time he's playing what amounts to a kitsune. She's wandering around town when she spots one of us, an anthropomorphic rat, and decides to stalk him to our hollow. Once they arrive, the rest of us spot her, and ask who she is. Instead of answering, she decides to scare the rat, pretty much just jumping and shouting "Boo!" The rest of us, however, just see a strange changeling apparently attacking one of us. She is promptly grabbed, hit with a thrown scalpel, and hit over the head with a wooden sword. Immediate unconsciousness.

Werewolf: For a change, he was polite and actually talked to the rest of the PCs rather than getting into fights with them. He comes up to the Courage Wolves and requests to join the pack. (Yes, our totem spirit is Courage Wolf. It's awesome.) We agree, but first he has to impress Courage Wolf. He decides to do this by swinging into a bar on a grappling hook, and starting a bar brawl, while the rest of us videotape him. Things go a bit badly for him, so he had to run. (The rest of us got jumped by some Pure, so we can't help.) Anyway, he decides to run through the kitchen. Where a panicked chef throws a pot of boiling oil in his face. Now he's stuck with some nasty burn scars, which will make him look like he had mange whenever he changes to the more wolf-y forms.

I can't wait to see what happens when he joins Mage. :smallbiggrin:

Dr.Epic
2011-10-13, 10:19 PM
An unreliable play who kept showing up late so one night he shows up late and we all went ahead and were on top of a mountain. He decides to catch up and try to climb the entire thing himself. He falls down multiple times and almost ends up dead.

Tukka
2011-11-12, 01:10 AM
Tonight we had the first session of a new campaign and it was probably the single most incredible session I've ever experienced, but it wasn't an epic fail.

The basic set up was that the party were mercenaries hired by the constabulary in a major port city that was preparing for the arrival of some royalty, who were being transported aboard a massive, unique, cutting-edge warship.

Our first task was to wander the docks where hundreds have gathered to gawk at the ship and nobility and help maintain order. There had been rumors that someone might be planning an assassination or otherwise cause a ruckus.

I guess because two characters in the party were trained in thievery (my assassin character, and a monk) he told us that there wouldn't be a "penalty" for trying to pickpocket in a large group of people, by which I think he meant that the dense crowds would actually be a help rather than a hindrance to thievery checks (basically, not everyone in the area would be making perception checks against your thievery attempts). However, I think the way the player of the monk understood it was there there would be no major negative consequences to failing thievery check. Neither of us used our thievery skill in that skill challenge (we're playing 4e) and in the end we barely successfully managed to identify some rabble-rousers and arrest them (the thievery bit would become significant later on, though).

Later that day, we were tasked to provide security on the ship itself. The party was able to mill around with some high society types, including an extremely high-ranking noblewoman and her handmaiden. The DM described the noblewoman as being bedecked in jewels, which got the monk feeling a bit greedy, plus he still had the inapplicable "no consequences for stealing" thought in his head. However, I think he figured that trying to steal from the noblewoman herself would probably be too ambitious and attract too much attention, so instead he tried to steal from the handmaiden. The entire party, of course, responded incredulously as the monk randomly attempting to steal from a servant girl at an event where we're supposed to be upholding the law.

He rolled moderately well on the thievery check and managed to surreptitiously slip the girl's small handbag off her wrist without her noticing -- however, the more perceptive noblewoman did notice. When she demanded to know to know what he was doing, he tried to claim he was checking for weapons -- he rolled a natural 20 on his Bluff check (for result of 19). He didn't fool the noblewoman, but most everyone else bought it. Of course, to make the bluff more convincing he followed through by opening the bag and poking around in it while he was explaining himself.

At this point I had my character scurry over to peek in the bag as well, since she's an inquisitive, slightly air-headed halfling who perked up at the mention of the word "weapons" (she carries seven different types on her at any given time) and was curious about what kind of devious, deadly instrument could fit in the tiny handbag.

The DM called for perception checks for both of us. The monk miserably failed his, but I rolled a 15, for a result of 23, beating the DC 22 to spot the hidden compartment that leads to an extra-dimensional space ... which stored material components intended for use in an assassination plot.

When my character announced her discovery, the noblewoman suddenly vanished and several people about the room drew weapons. A fight ensued against the handmaiden (actually an elite spellcaster) and several of her minions. The fight was fairly resource-intensive but went relatively smoothly (only one of us briefly went unconscious) with the party emerging victorious.

The DM was running a published adventure and trying to do so more or less by the book, using relevant stats for the relevant NPCs, up to and including the DC check on the handbag. He revealed to us that we finished the first act of the adventure, which had various gradations of possible failures and victories. It turns out that our backwards bumbling into the plot made the fight with the handmaiden spellcaster significantly easier and will produce an outcome that's probably actually better than even the best victory scenario described, since there there was zero loss of innocent life and no significant destruction of property; in the worst failure scenario, the party dies, the leader of a major empire dies, and the warship is sinks.

The DM decided to award us with enough XP to hit level 2. An auspicious start to our adventuring careers.

Gavinfoxx
2011-11-12, 01:58 AM
But... a 1 on a skill check isn't a critical failure, and he could've just taken 10?? And maybe gotten a reflex save too? How deep was the pit??

One Tin Soldier
2011-11-13, 06:29 PM
Well, I have a new epic failure story. What's more, the failure is %100 (OK, maybe %90) my fault. Elaboration:

The game is Scion, a modern day White Wolf game where the characters are the children of gods. The game is at demigod tier, which is extremely high-powered. Think epic-level D&D.

So for reasons that would take far too long to explain in one post, our group needed to take over a castle, so that we could use the Frankenstein-esque lab inside. So we approach the castle, only to see a large mob of people, being whipped up into a frenzy by a guy with an unusually bright torch. He's going on about how he's spent ages trying to destroy the "monster" within the castle. We notice that he is another Scion, like us.

The guy then holds the torch to the (wrought iron) gate, which is immediately consumed by flame. Now, we realize that this guy intends to burn the whole place to the ground, which would severely hinder our attempts to save the world. So we form a quick plan: A couple of our characters who have a shockwave ability (hit the ground, everything around you flies away) are going to jump over and hit the mortals from both sides, flinging them away, while two more go in front of and behind the guy. The general idea was to negotiate, I believe. Meanwhile, I have the brilliant idea to shoot the torch out of the guy's hands, since I have a power that makes that sort of thing trivial, but another party member was even better at it than I was, so he was the one doing that. Meanwhile, I was going to fly over the walls and get into the castle.

It goes pretty well, at first. The mortals, true to plan, get flung up into the air like popcorn in a kettle, and the guy with the torch finds himself completely surrounded and very surprised. Then we shoot the torch.

It turns out that the torch was a very powerful relic, an item imbued with divine power. Far more power, in fact, than such an item was ever designed to hold. So when the bullet hits, the torch just plain explodes. Like a miniature nuke. Torch guy gets completely incinerated, about 2/3 of the mortals are killed immediately, and the four characters who were standing right there only narrowly avoid death. (Like I said, very high powered game, this.)

So that's the story of how I almost singlehandedly caused a TPK.

The Dark Fiddler
2011-11-13, 08:51 PM
I don't know if this is so much of an epic fail as a big damn underdog heroes story, but our Iron Heroes session on Friday fits.

Basically, nobody shows up except me and one other guy (plus the DM, whose house we play at). Normally this would mean no game at all, but it's a new campaign, so we can afford to start with fewer people. Friend rolls up an Archer and I roll up a Harrier. Friend takes the trait that gives him a title and ends up sheriff of our podunk little town. I'm just a well-meaning person, which is how I get wrapped up.

Orders come from up above for the sheriff to capture 3 barbarians who have been spotted nearby, preferably alive. He looks for help, and my character is the only one who responds. We also get his deputy to help, but the barbarians attack while he's getting his armor on and he ends up not being able to do anything. After a short fight (I end up at about half health, sheriff at a quarter), we manage to capture two and kill the third, and the sheriff's boss rides in to collect them. He tells the sheriff that they're needed for a prisoner exchange with a nearby nation: 200 barbarians for 49 heavily armored, well-trained warriors of our own. The sheriff flips out at this, taking it as the worst idea ever and a sign that war is going to be coming to our town, so we (along with his deputy and soup chef... don't ask) decide to get out of the nation. My character's been meaning to start traveling, so she goes along with it. We hire a ride to a town 50 miles away and say goodbye to our past lives.

Except when we get there, the town is burning. Sheriff flips out even more and we book it, because what can three fighters, a carriage driver, and a soup chef do to help? Eventually, we get attacked by bandits... and this is where it stops. 4 bandits on foot with axes, and a fifth riding a horse with a bow and arrow. Mounted archer hits our horses, scaring them and causing them to stop, so we're stranded, but our own archer hits him well enough that he runs (which doesn't make much sense, considering the fact that his backup alone outnumbered us, but looking back, we would have died if he hadn't).

So anyway, four axemen versus an archer, a harrier, and the deputy of unknown class. An axeman closes and takes out the driver in a single hit, archer and I take out two of the axemen. Same axeman from before takes out deputy in a single hit, we start freaking out. I take out the other axeman who'd tried to switch to a bow, and the soup chef tries to stabilize our driver. Last bandit drops the sheriff to two HP, I land a good hit but realize that this guy is level 2... while the sheriff and I are both level 1. He takes me down to six HP, out of 11, and another hit to either the sheriff or I will drop us. We manage to hit him and... take him down to one HP. We cry because we think one of us is going to die, but suddenly the soup chef attacks with a board he ripped out of the carriage. Drops the bandit to 0, and he surrenders.

All hail the soup chef.

Traab
2011-11-13, 09:35 PM
This isnt D&D but its a pretty epic fail in an mmorpg.

Ok, to start off id like to state that I was still new playing computer games when this happened. I had started up everquest and run through a few characters trying them all out. The reason I tried so many was because night time STUNK! I mean, I couldnt see more than a few feet away from me even with a light source, and, being a newbie, had never even heard of gamma control. I just thought that was how the game worked! Night time is bad for wandering, hang out and wait for dawn. Ok, so I got my halfling druid up to something like level 14, and had a high level player kindly teleport me to a zone called north karana. This place is pretty much a featureless plain and is freaking huge. Bad news is, I got the teleport at night. No big deal, ill hang out here at the landing point till daylight! Not too fast skippy.

A gryphon, that was about 10 levels above me, apparently didnt like the look on my face, so he decided to remove it with his claws. Now, as a druid I get a buff that lets me run really fast, and I was thanking whatever god I worshipped that I had that spell, as I ran off in a random direction, and kept running. Unfortunately, I heard a splashing sound. Apparently I ran into some water. And also apparently, I swim slower than I run, so the gryphon caught up and killed me dead. No big deal right? Ill wait till morning then go find whatever lake I ran into and get my body back. Not so fast skippy.

Apparently there is only one real source of water of any size, thats this MASSIVE river, that crosses the entire length of the zone, which, as ive said, is a really REALLY big zone. Not knowing what angle I ran at to hit the river, I started going up and down the bank looking for a sign of my body. I got nothing. I started swimming in the water going up and down the river. Still nothing. At this point about 2 hours of corpse recovery time has gone by for me irl, and im getting very upset. That little druid was my best equipped character! (He had an AWESOME set of very expensive vendor trash gear:smallamused: ) Finally, after another hour of frantic searching, and calling out to the zone for help, a friendly bard or something shows up. Apparently he had a wand, or a skill or something that would actually point him in the direction of a targetted players corpse. We ran, and ran, and ran, and it turned out that I had managed to die, in the middle of the river, not 5 feet from the zone line, which made getting to my body hard as it was so close id keep zoning and missing my body and having to zone back.

Incidentally, that was also the person who asked me a question that changed my gaming life. When I told him thanks, because it was getting dark again and I was afraid id have to wait till morning to keep looking for my corpse, he replied, "Well why dont you just turn up your gamma setting so you can see better?" WOOT! I was able to try out all the cool races and classes I couldnt play before because they either lacked any form of night vision, or started off underground where I couldnt see anything at all even WITH night vision!