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hushblade
2012-06-12, 02:18 AM
The title says it all, share your best stories about what happened when you rolled a one.

Black_Zawisza
2012-06-12, 02:44 AM
The party was opened a dungeon door, revealing numerous goblins sleeping on the ground. I walked forward, attempting to move silently - I rolled a natural one.

Then I rolled a natural one again.

Then a natural twenty.

Then a natural one.

Finally I rolled a non-crit number. I wound up tripping over my shoelaces and collapsing prone on top of a goblin, who screamed in pain at the top of his lungs, awakening all the other goblins.

We barely survived THAT encounter. :smallbiggrin:

hushblade
2012-06-12, 03:07 AM
You do realize that critical failures are a very common house rule, and stories about gameplay don't need to abide by RAW, and even without them, a normal, unexpected failure can still lead to some worth mentioning results?

supermonkeyjoe
2012-06-12, 03:12 AM
you do realise that rolling a natural one doesn't actually do anything, other then make you fail(just a standard fail) a saving throw?
edit; unless you house rule that it does, but doing so is unbalanced and unfair to the players.

Also an auto-fail on attack rolls. But a natural one represents the absolute worst that you can do, if you don't have many ranks in a skill your result is always going to be poor and it's easier to say 'Natural One Stories' than "stories in which you rolled poorly and failed at something spectacularly."

My natural one story involved the BBEG of the campaign, the part was on the ropes, the paladin was nearly dead and on the floor, the BBEG had no chance of missing unless it rolled... Natural one. Next turn the rogue ran up behind the BBEG, flanking with the paladin and hit for massive damage, dropping the BBEG. Natural one saves the day!

W3bDragon
2012-06-12, 04:31 AM
Many years ago, our party of five 4th level characters were traveling through the elven forest. We reached a massive fort, where the macguffin was, and the DM wasn't sure whether the place would be inhabited, since the elves were in the midst of a civil war.

He asked one of the PCs to roll a bunch of luck checks to determine the current situation at the fort. He rolled maybe a dozen checks, each for a specific variable in the DM's mind. Six of them were natural ones. The rest weren't so pretty either.

Turns out the elven army had decided to stop over at the fort. What was supposed to be a quick smash and grab became literally mission impossible. We managed to sneak into the fort somehow, only to get thoroughly humiliated by elite elves, lack of knowledge of the terrain, and of course, the dreaded natural one.

Our last scene of that campaign was when the last two surviving members of the party (myself and another pc) where crawling around air vents inside the fort with many elves giving chase. We wanted to exit the vents and make a mad dash for safety.

We finally reach an opening into a room. We didn't want to peak in in case someone was there. So we decided to create a distraction and run. I lit and threw a flask of Greek fire inside the room blindly, then we jumped down.

Rolled a luck check, 1. Roll again, 1. Turns out the room we jumped into had the Elven Prince and 20 of his elite guards, looking unimpressed by our Greek fire, which was harmlessly burning some flowers on the empty side of the room... the prince's favorite flowers.

Suffices to say, we never played that campaign again.

Objection
2012-06-12, 08:16 AM
Roll a natural 1 on an attack roll with a longbow.
Hit and kill some random owl instead of the enemy guard.
???
Free decoy!

Rallicus
2012-06-12, 08:43 AM
Party pays a visit to a gnome alchemist who lives in a small tower in the middle of the woods. When they arrive he's asleep. Suddenly he jumps up and takes a swing at the nearest target, the party's cleric.

I roll a 1.

Since my attack fumble rules usually rely on "to hit" saves, I roll again. It's impossible to beat the cleric's high AC without a nat 20 though. I fail, and the gnome slips right off his mattress and slams his head on the side of the bed, knocking himself out again.

The sorcerer then decides to use ghost sound to mimic the voices of four nagging gnome mothers. It works, and the alchemist leaps up. However, he thinks that the party is his mother and her friends under a disguise self spell.

He intentionally interacts with the non-existent spell. I roll a 1.

For the rest of the encounter, he honestly believes the party is his mother and her friends. It works to the party's advantage, and he gives away the potion they need pretty easily.

Not very exciting, but I thought it was an interesting outcome.

Grail
2012-06-12, 09:00 AM
2nd ed.
My dwarf Fighter (Myrmidon) has finally completed a series of quests and is awarded a powerful mithral handaxe, from memory it was a +4, +8 vs Dragons, Orcs and Giants.

The very first fight we get into after that, is on a gantree over flowing lava. (you see where this is going.....)

Natural 1. - house rule is roll DEX or less on d20 or drop weapon.
Roll > DEX, weapon is dropped.
House rule then is to roll another d20 to determine how and were it goes.
Natural 1. - 10' to the left.
Sploosh.
Me = sigh. :smalleek:

Griffith!
2012-06-12, 09:09 AM
Young adult blue dragon versus level two party. Battle started in a canyon - the dragon was making strafing runs with lightning breath. It went for three or so rounds, and the players were starting to get worried. Then somebody got clever and knocked out a rock outcropping.

Dragon attempted dodge. Critical failure - hit by the rocks. Pinned in the canyon, he made an attempt at freeing himself - rolled a two. Trapped worse than before, he tried to hold off the party with a last ditch attack. Critical failure. Rule is natural ones hurt self - rolled maximum damage. The dragon reduced himself to negative hit points, and the party killed him.

Bonus points for murdering the recurring villain one round before he would have left. Bigger bonus for doing it because I can't roll to save my life.

I should have fudged it. Funnier this way.

Arbane
2012-06-12, 11:41 AM
The greatest Critical Failure story of all time: the Story of Sameo (http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Sameo).

Malimar
2012-06-12, 01:08 PM
One of my very first days DMing a new system. The party faced a gargantuan shark! In retrospect, it was way too strong for them. If it got lucky, it could have done enough damage to kill a PC in one hit. And they were doing pretty poorly against it. It chewed on the swashbuckler for awhile, almost killing him before he escaped. Most of the party's attacks were bouncing off its thick hide. It goes to attack one of the characters again!
And rolls a natural 1.
It rolls to confirm the critical failure!
Another natural 1.
The shark bites itself to death!

The "shark story" is still in my group's repertoire of commonly-referenced stories, alongside the "goatfolk story", the "never-calculate-treasure-by-volume story", and the "there's-a-dragon-on-the-bridge?! story".




you do realise that rolling a natural one doesn't actually do anything, other then make you fail(just a standard fail) a saving throw?
edit; unless you house rule that it does, but doing so is unbalanced and unfair to the players.

Also an auto-fail on attack rolls. But a natural one represents the absolute worst that you can do, if you don't have many ranks in a skill your result is always going to be poor and it's easier to say 'Natural One Stories' than "stories in which you rolled poorly and failed at something spectacularly."

And this is not even the D&D3.5 subforum. Not all systems are D&D3.5. Other systems have different rules for what happens on a natural 1 in various circumstances, or other ways critical fumbles happen.
Also, even within 3.5 RAW, a natural 1 on a saving throw against a spell does mean one of your items gets affected (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/spellDescriptions.htm#itemsSurvivingafteraSavingTh row).



The greatest Critical Failure story of all time: the Story of Sameo (http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Sameo).

The critical fumble story thread automatic win button has been pushed.

Mordokai
2012-06-12, 01:28 PM
The greatest Critical Failure story of all time: the Story of Sameo (http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Sameo).

Beaten to the punch :smallbiggrin:

Yeah, Sameo sure had a special day :smallsmile:

Hylas
2012-06-12, 03:09 PM
Warhammer 40k - Rogue Trader.

We were transporting a princess to be married to a governor's son. In the end she turned out to be a terrorist and tried to suicide bomb the son and start a revolution on the planet. We grab the son's barely alive body and drag him onto the shuttle in an attempt to save his life, shooting at anyone who gives us a dirty look.

DM: "A tropical storm is rolling in, so this roll will be difficult."

Our pilot rolls against his pilot skill and four degrees of failure later our shuttle is in the nearby ocean, spilling fuel all over the coral reef, and we're all drowning. A few fate points later everyone, except for the governor's son, who is still inside the shuttle, makes it ashore. We later decide to storm the palace and start shooting everyone until we get to the garage, and if the opportunity arises we'll try to use the coup and take over the planet ourselves with a puppet in control.

We stumble across the rebels holding the governor hostage, tied up to a chair, and a shootout between us begins. I use my psionics to trip up all of the baddies in the room, which our party decides to use to rush in and do finishing blows. After a few players run in the Arch Militant, specializing in pistols, runs in and fires his best quality bolt pistol at a guy in the middle of the room, who is close to the governor. Super duper critical damage!

The DM consults the critical damage table.

"All of the ammo on the target explodes, dealing damage to everyone in a 9m radius. Then his body explodes, sending chunks of meat in a 5m radius and causing additional damage. Gore spews out, covering a 2m radius and everyone in that area needs to make an agility test or fall prone."

I was outside of the room and took damage. The governor wasn't so lucky and our body count for important NPCs is now 2 for 2, not to mention the people in the room were also mangled pretty bad. We find out that the rebels are actually imperial loyalists, so we try to delete all of the security footage and kill all witnesses (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcW7ttZfZ8c&t=1m50s) so we won't be hunted down by the Imperium.

Ninjadeadbeard
2012-06-12, 06:58 PM
The greatest Critical Failure story of all time: the Story of Sameo (http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Sameo).

Yeah, nothing beats that gem. But these come close (http://spoonyexperiment.com/2011/11/03/counter-monkey-botchamania/).

DaMullet
2012-06-12, 07:35 PM
My only truly notable one was when I was trying to make a point about my inability to roll numbers higher than five. In character it was couched as the gods hating me, but at some point I said, "I bet if I tried to throw myself at the ground, I'd miss!" So my companion said "I'll take that bet, try."

An attack against a specific square is made at AC 5, and I had more than +5 attack bonus, but I jumped. And botched. And learned to fly like only Dent knows.

Eldan
2012-06-12, 08:13 PM
We played with critical misses once. The DM (me, it was my first time, don't hate me) gave up on that after the BBEG killed himself with a ranged touch attack ice spell of some kind.
In the first round of combat.

DigoDragon
2012-06-13, 07:17 AM
A classic story in my group--

The party was fighting a Mindflayer upon a floating castle. The fight was starting to stalemate so the party rogue decided to use disable device on the "floater stone" device that kept the castle aloft. He succeeded and the castle began to drift and then fall from the sky. The party all grabbed onto the wizard and she cast Feather Fall to keep everyone from the gravity of the situation.

The Mindflayer had the Feather Fall spell and took to the air. The party Favored Soul wouldn't have any of that and attempted a Dispel. Barely made the concentration check holding onto the party wizard and then succeeded on the caster check, stripping the Mindflayer of his protection.
Ace in the hole time-- the Mindflayer attempted a concentration check to cast Fly.

I rolled a 1.

Total check missed the DC so his spell fizzled and down he went... and as a Rule of Cool, the castle landed on top of him when he cratered. :smallbiggrin:

Madcrafter
2012-06-13, 01:44 PM
In my sig (I think it still is Ah yes it is). This was in a pbp a few weeks ago. Even though the skill rolls can't fail automatically, it was still pretty hilarious IMO.

Grail
2012-06-14, 12:52 AM
Here's another one. This isn't a natural 1 story, as this isn't dnd. But the premise is the same. Game was MERP, a d% based system.

I was running a high level first age game during the Wars of Beleriand. One of the characters (the one in this story) was a Noldor Ranger, pretty hard character, level was 20, which in DnD reckoning would put him around 30th level.

During one session the characters were trying to hold back an attack by a massive orc horde, complete with a large force of trolls. The character in question charged forth, his blade gleaming.

Roll d% = 01. That's a fumble.
Fumble roll = d%-10 (for a 1 handed slashing weapon). He rolled 100 - 10 for a 90.

Resultant fumble reads:


Bad taste and poor execution. You attempt to main yourself as your weapon breaks. Roll a "C" slash critical on yourself.


The player bemoans that his favourite weapon, a +50 Primary Flaming Longsword of slaying Orcs and Balrogs has been broken. The other players laugh.

I tell him to roll the "C" slash critical.

Critical roll = d%+0 for it being a "C". He rolled 90.

Resultant critical reads:


Disemboweled, dies instantly. 25% chance your weapon is stuck in opponent for 2 rounds.


The player just sits there, dumbfounded. The other players are also shocked into silence for a moment, and then burst out laughing.

And yes, he rolled the d% and got his weapon stuck in himself, at least what remained of his weapon.

So basically, this legendary Noldo Warrior charged the orcs and cut his guts out, such an ignoble death. Fingolfin he was not.

No wonder the legendary exploits of "Hymongaliflan" didn't make it into the Silmarillion or Unfinished Tales. :smallbiggrin:

Oscredwin
2012-06-14, 11:36 PM
I was a introducing a replacement character to a campaign. It was a mid level barbarian. The DM didn't like characters starting with magic items (his character creation rules made things really tough if your character wasn't there from the beginning). My only magic item was a +3 electric keen great sword (he didn't approve a budget, he approved a weapon that he picked).

My first session, I charge a group of zombies in a swamp. I roll a 1. I roll to confirm the failure, get a 1. Roll to double confirm, 2. He ruled that I sundered my sword on the ground.

Menteith
2012-06-14, 11:57 PM
While in a crowded room in downtown L.A., I botched a self control roll against Frenzy in Vampire the Masquerade. This was on an 7th gen optimized Tremere, with maximum dots in Path of Mind. It would have been a massive Masquerade breach had anyone lived. Oh, oWoD, you never fail to create good stories for me.

Acanous
2012-06-15, 02:22 AM
So two lv 16 wizards are having a drinking contest at the end of a campaign.
Being lv 16 wizards, and both in the same party, you can imagine the shennanigans we've been pulling.

One is a L/E female Tiefling with 28 CHA, the other is a C/N female elf with 24 CHA.

So naturally, despite the "No magic" rule, we're both cheating.


The Tiefling has Still/Silent spell and is popping low level enchantments, the elf has a few transmutation spells in play.

Eventually, after twenty two rounds of drinking, the Tiefling is well and sloshed (Considered "Helpless", but consious.) and the Elf is pretty tanked (One step down from Sickened. I think Nausiated?)
The Tiefling has one last card to play, to try to get the Elf to look too inebriated to finish the contest. The 4th level spell "Unnatural Lust".

So the DM says "You're very, very drunk. You can't see straight. That's going to be one hella concentration check."
'yes, I know, but it's eschewed, still and silent, so it's not like there's any actual components to it I could botch.'
"alright, name your targets and roll it."
'Well, the elf, of course, and that harpy.'
*Roll*
*1*
'Well, that's still pretty high. I mean, I have +24 to Concentration. What sort of penalties am I eating?'
"You're sitting at -16"
'Ok, so I got a 9.'
"Well, your spell didn't fail, as there was no component to mess up. [elf], make your save."
*Roll*
~27~
'Well, that's not quite high enough.'
"Alright, you find yourself irresistably drawn to the Tiefling. She's currently helpless and sitting right in front of you."

...hilarity ensues.

Friv
2012-06-15, 06:07 AM
I was running an Exalted game a while back. The party is thus playing full-on demigods capable of running roughshod over most mortal opposition, and are sneaking through a town filled with potentially magically-enhanced enemies because they'd like to get to their destination without dozens of other demigods beating them up (Realm town, basically, for those who know the setting, and there were several Dragon-Bloods on alert in the area.)

So everyone is making stealth rolls, slipping through town, and one player who is normally quite good at stealth manages to roll a botch.

He still talks, with amusement, of that time he was sneaking through town, silently vaulted a wall, and landed on a cat.

Blepability
2012-06-15, 08:55 AM
I have a couple as DM.

>Party is escaping from a slave camp (Beginning of new campaign)
>The mage is high on opium to keep him unable to use his magic
>They break out and end up in the small village the slavers are using as their HQ
>The party goes into the smithy to find weapons leaving the still opium-addled spell caster outside
>Mage decides to enter the smithy after he hears fighting break out
>Uses fey step or some such spell to teleport through the wall
>Rolls a natural one for Luck
>Re-materialises with one foot inside a basket
>Basket becomes apart of his body.

By the second game he had the foot of a Warforged, thanks to an artificer and the party cleric.

Rodimal
2012-06-15, 02:17 PM
In one of our longest and most fun campaigns, my friends Fighter/Ranger rolled six ones in a row vs a Charm Person spell. This was made even funnier by the fact that we were at 12th level and he had never rolled below a fifteen at anytime before that in the game.



out

JonRG
2012-06-15, 03:03 PM
Our 15th level Evil party was fighting an 18th level exalted druid. For... some reason I don't recall, he cast Meld into Stone. Our half-dragon (high ops right here) breathed acid on the floor, forcing him out of it. Druid has to make a Fort save, and roll a 2 or higher to not die.

Guess what he rolled. :smallbiggrin:

Hemnon
2012-06-15, 03:23 PM
We we're using the infamous fumble table.

i rolled a natural 1, then i rolled the 1d100 to reference on the table, where i rolled a 'Crit adjacent Ally' (whom i crit'ed with a decapitation roll on teh crit table which we also used.)

so i basicly ended up killing the only cleric in the party.:smallannoyed:

Leshy
2012-06-29, 01:23 PM
I have a rather interesting story. It was when we just started playing d&d and we weren't really into the rules... anyway, we were in a fight and Barbarian in the crew rolls a natural one on the attack roll. Now, the house rule is, that after natural one in a combat, DM rolls d6 with three options: hits an ally, hits yourself, and break your weapon. The dice decided he hits an ally, and additional roll determined it is the rogue who gets smacked with the great axe.

What happened next, we still can't explain it. Barbarian rolled another attack roll, we still don't know why and why we allowed it, it was natural 20, critical succeeded, and he basically killed our rogue in one swing.

Ianuagonde
2012-06-29, 01:34 PM
This one happened in the latest campaign. The DM is very good at describing player actions, and I tried to make my half-elf rogue (lvl 5) a smooth, sophisticated duelist.

Our party got ambushed by two trolls. For initiative, I rolled a 20. I Tumble towards a troll (Large = reach), and roll another 20. During this move action, I draw my trusty rapier.

The DM goes overboard in describing how swiftly I respond to the threat, assessing the opposition in a split second, doing a cartwheel over a troll's arm and drawing my weapon while I'm upside down. I roll my attack, and the d20 lands on a 1.

It was considered a critical hit on my image and self-esteem.

Khedrac
2012-06-29, 01:34 PM
My DM managed two greats in one campaign - also he uses fumble rules.

The first we were up against the final climactic fight in a min-campaign, round about 13th level iirc. there we were on out ship (well we were pirates) with half the navy with us (on our side) and the actual demigod (whose summoning we thought we had stopped) turns up!
Round 1: he swoops across our ship grabbing 2 NPCs and carrying them off (to demonstrate just how tough this would be). I cast a spell at him (don;t recall if there was SR, if so I got through) and say to the DM "Please roll a natural one" (I knew any other roll would make).
The DM asked what happens when he has - Baelful Polymorph - said evil demigod is now a pigeon...

The second was a major campaign mini-boss - we had to fight a death knight who was optimised for 2 weapon fighting - lots of fancy tricks, sword and sickle I think. Round 1 - he rolls a natural 1 and then fails the dex check - and throws his offhand weapon behind him - where we promptly covered with with things like an Evard's...

Worforj'd
2012-06-29, 02:06 PM
The party was fighting a spider swarm that caught us all flatfooted. It attacks the nearest guy, a dwarf fighter. It rolls a one and bites and poisons itself to death. Next round, a monstrous spider drops down from the ceiling and onto the cleric, enraged at the death of its brethren. It rolls a one and bites itself to death.:smallbiggrin:

Goober4473
2012-06-29, 04:41 PM
I have a pretty great stroy from a GURPS game.

My character was a mage/psion cat in a low-powered post-apocalyptic game. We were trying to save a few guys who had been trapped inside an old supermarket by a 30-foot mutant bear guarding the exit.

My companions drew the bear's attention, and began leading it away from the door, around the side of the building. I decided to telekinetically lift myself up to the roof, and started throwing rocks at the bear, hoping to get it to stand up to try and reach me, at which point I could use movement-impairing magic on it (range penalties for magic in GURPS are brutal). This was not working, as it didn't even feel the tiny rocks bouncing off of it. So I decided the only way was to float down onto its back, and cast from there.

My character had Cowardice, but I made the roll against it, so I proceeded to jump down, floating harmlessly onto the bear's back with telekinesis, and grabbing on with my claws. Just like the tiny rocks I tried to distract it with, it didn't notice me.

Then it roared, which it turns out was a Terror attack, which causes a Fright Check. I rolled against my Will, with penalties from Cowardice, and critically failed. The GM rolled on the Fright Check table, adding my margin of failure (very high) to the result, and it came up with a new, permanent phobia.

The most obvious phobia to gain was bears, so the GM had me add "Ursuphobia [-10]" to my character sheet. But that wasn't the end. I now had a phobia of bears, while on the back of the biggest bear I had ever seen. I had to roll another Fright Check, with penalties from Cowardice, and it failed miserably (this time not critically, but still by a wide margin). The GM rolled on the table, again adding my margin of failure, and rolled "retching for 10 seconds". The GM, having real-world experience with a cat clinging to him while throwing up, ruled that I remained attached.

So there I was, a terrified cat clinging to the back of a 30-foot bear, hurling my guts up while my allies and the men we were there to rescue ran off.

Luckily the bear never noticed me, and I could teleport, so I managed to escape uninjured, though with a new permanent fear of bears.

LanternArchon
2012-06-29, 05:55 PM
I remember I played in a campaign in which we had to negotiate with a hostile halfling tribe. Our DM told us that they would only listen to us is we won the rock throwing contest later that day. Me being a halfling rock skipping champion took up the challenge. I step up to the target and throw. I look at my dice and long behold a natural one. I did not only succeed in losing our only chance to negotiate I also hit the leader. Furious the tribe attacked and we were forced to run away for three days.

Nyes the Dark
2012-06-29, 08:34 PM
In our 4D campaign, we've had one or two of these.
Our 6th level characters had been empowered by the Wrath of Lolth by our Matriarch (we were drow slaves in the Underdark) and were attacking another High Priestess. We had two fighters, and in the first round of combat both of them stepped up to the HP. One rolled his Daily Brute Strike.
Natural 1.
Determine effect.
Nat 20.
For us, this means he attacks the other Fighter, and only by margin of the Wrath of Lolth blessing did he survive, but it also took him out of the fight (It inflicted triple damage, but the attacked had extra HP).

Lord Tyger
2012-06-29, 09:35 PM
"Okay, we need to climb out this window before the guards break down the door. What should we use to anchor the rope?"

"What about this desk?"

"No, that might break the window if it gets pulled up against us, and then we'd have the desk fall on top of us on top of the falling damage," (or something- I honestly can't remember why they bypassed the heavy desk.

"I know, the monk's the strongest party member, let's use him."

Me as DM: "Okay, as the sorcerer climbs out the window, the monk suddenly finds himself supporting all of the sorcerer's weight. Make a strength check."

The rest is history.

Xerinous
2012-06-29, 11:01 PM
My favorite natural one story comes from a session when my group had just started playing Pathfinder and didn't quite understand how some game rules worked.

The party had been inside a city which had grown up around the Paladins' citadel. They had come into the city to seek help from the Paladins in dealing with a demon of some kind that they had found out in the wilds and seemed to be following them. When they were talking to one of the higher ranking Paladins, the alarm went up. Of course, right?

As it turned out, gates to the Abyss had opened up around the city and demons were pouring out to assault the walls. Antipaladins had been spotted amongst the demons, and seemed to be coordinating the attacks. The party was asked to help out, and so they head out to the battlefield.

So after cutting through a couple demons, they find a human wearing pitch-black armor, blood-red cloak billowing around him, and whom the demons have not made a move against. So the cavalier decides to make a Sense Motive check to try to figure out this guy's alignment. Natural 1.

So I just kind of look at him and tell him "He's a pretty good guy!"

That incident has something of a legacy in my group, whenever a check is made to gather some kind of information, a natural 1 gets the opposite information.

The most notable was the time a minotaur attacked us in a one-shot. I roll knowledge (dungeoneering) to identify. 1. It's a pixie! The witch (the same player as the cavalier, actually) decides to try to identify it, in case I'm mistaken. 1. We have confirmation, that big hairy thing with an axe is, in fact, a pixie.

Jay R
2012-07-01, 03:04 PM
It wasn't a one; it was a twenty. But I'm posting it here because it was a critical fumble.

The game was Flashing Blades, a musketeer game. The rogue in the party had decided to learn the Etiquette skill, which takes three months. He'd spent two weeks on it. To make a successful role, you have to roll your Charm or less on a d20.

The party went to a high-status hunting party, and at one point, the rogue decided that he was going to go talk to the duke's daughter, who is surrounded by noble suitors. They tried to tell him that he cannot go introduce himself to her; he needs a proper introduction. But he decided that since he was learning Etiquette, he could do it anyway.

So he barged through a collection of high-level nobles and introduced himself to her, and said, "I want to make an Etiquette roll to impress her."

So, he is attempting to use a cross-class skill he has not in fact learned, in front of several masters of the skill, having already misbehaved, in a high-stress environment, and had to roll an 8 or less (if he had the skill at all).

He rolled a 20. Critical fumble.

I said, "You compliment her beauty, look soulfully into her eyes, take her hand gently, bend over it, raise it to your lips, ... and f*rt."

Grail
2012-07-01, 09:30 PM
I said, "You compliment her beauty, look soulfully into her eyes, take her hand gently, bend over it, raise it to your lips, ... and f*rt."

that had me quite literally LOL.
My regional manager is in the office and just wanted to know what was so funny.

Starwulf
2012-07-01, 11:24 PM
The greatest Critical Failure story of all time: the Story of Sameo (http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Sameo).

omg. That story was so freaking epic, and absolutely hilarious at the end. The look on the DMs face must have been priceless!

GeriSch
2012-07-02, 05:24 AM
New Campaign, i can't remember exactly why, but the first fight started when we all were sitting up in a tree, some mooks from below started peppering us with arrows, so we started the climb down - well, except our half-giant fighter, who just says something like "i have the hiptoints, i jump down so i can attack right away". So he eats the 2d6 falling damage which put him to single digit HPs (we started 2nd level) and next round he draws his huge Falchion, calls a full power attack and... nat 1. We have the houserule for a critical fumble you have to "confirm" just like for a critical hit, and his fighter had a huge attack bonus (and the opponents were very low AC mooks), so the only chance to really fumble would be another nat 1 - which he promptly delivered. The next step in our fumble rules is to determine, if you slip and fall prone, lose your weapon or cut yourself. You guessed it correctly - our beacon of strength, the half-giant fighter, managed to cut himself in half (it was enough damage to kill him outright) with his very first strike.

Another new Campaign - the same guy wanted to eventually play that half-giant fighter with the huge Falchion and tried the same build, while the rest of our group was commenting on him not learning from his faults (and of course retelling the funny story of the glorious one-hit half-giant). Beshaba must hae touched his dice this day, because he managed to roll not one, not two but 3 natural 1's in a row and again made the near impossible possible to kill his own half-giant again with his very own weapon (i mean, how low are the odds for that?). The look on that players face was priceless.

gr,
Geri

keen320
2012-07-02, 03:49 PM
My first campaign ever in D&D 3.5.

We were 3rd level supposed to help out a dwarven king whose soldiers were secretly working against him, or something.

Anyway, we ran into the king and his guards, and were trying to figure out how to convince him. Our half-orc barbarian, "Grug," decided to have some fun, and was talking to one of the guards. He said to the DM "I insult his mother!" This earned a glare from the guard.

Eventually, something I can't quite recall happened, creating a distraction. Our NPC party member, who we knew was evil and hired to assassinate the King but had somehow convinced ourselves we could work with, runs up behind the king and instantly kills him with a magic item.

Naturally, a fight ensued. During the fight, the half-orc ends up squaring off against the same dwarf he insulted earlier. So he again says "I insult his mother." So the Dwarf screams, throws down his weapon, and tries to tackle him. We didn't really understand the grapple rules, so the DM just had them make opposed checks. Grug rolled a natural 1. DM says roll to confirm. 1. Confirms it with an ordinairy bad roll. So the DM rules that he gets slammed in the face, knocked to the ground, and then the dwarf elbows him in the back while he's down. He lost most of his remaining hp and was at 15-25%, just because he insulted somebody's mother.

keen320
2012-07-02, 03:53 PM
Editing Double Post with a different story.

This was our second campaign. We played mostly evil characters and monsters. I was a Centaur (didn't find out about ECL until the last minute), our evil Druid was some homebrew turtle race, and our Neutral sorcerer was going to be another race we dug up from a sourcebook called a Spellscale. The Sorcerer was just joining the party, as he was unavailable the first session and took a while to choose spells. We'd just saved the town from a bunch of Monitor Lizards that attacked us (we didn't want to be blatantly evil as we were fairly close to a large city with an appropriate supply of Paladins) when he showed up to meet us in the barn we were using to sleep in. His roleplaying justification was that he wanted to see the Rhino (the druid's animal companion). So he opened the door and asked to see the Rhinoceros. The Turtle Druid had answered the door. He told the Sorcerer he was the Rhinoceros. He rolled a 20 on his bluff and the Sorcerer rolled a natural 1 on sense motive.

So in character he completely believed the Druid was a Rhino.

Although, I guess I'm not entirely sure if this is a natural 1 story, since a 20 was involved as well.