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Suzaku
2007-02-07, 11:07 AM
For those with an unfortunate experience of playing with fumbles, what was your worst experience with fumbles?

It was a level one campaign and it was my first time playing D&D. I was playing a lvl 1 half-orc barbarian and for stats I rolled 3 18s and no stats under 16 oO. In the second encounter I raged and charged a goblin, rolled a fumble to attack myself. However I just happened to roll a critical on myself and then rolled for max damage with a great axe. The rogue laughed at me and then charged only to attack himself incapping himself also.

Although a bit off topic the cleric rushed forward to heal the rogue, but the Kobold we both charged attacked the cleric and critical hit the cleric.

crazedloon
2007-02-07, 11:09 AM
well didnt happen to me but my friend was playing a monk/drunken master and in full drunken stuper he fumbled and then critted. our dm decided the monk had punched himself in the groin and was incapasitated for a few rounds

vanyell
2007-02-07, 11:12 AM
hm... fumbles... kobolds... fumbles... goblins...
two comics.
ultimate fumble
the first one (http://goblinscomic.com/d/20051224.html)
and either click next comic or click here (http://goblinscomic.com/d/20051225.html)

the other comic I read

Dairun Cates
2007-02-07, 11:13 AM
Roll a 1. Roll to see if I hit myself. Roll a 1. Roll to see if I instant kill myself with a third 1. Roll a 20 I believe. GM rules that the axe my dwarf was swinging just got thrown 300 feet forward without hitting anyone. That's REALLY annoying for a fully armored dwarf, but at least I wasn't dead.

Brauron
2007-02-07, 11:17 AM
My first game of D&D...I was a fairly combat-oriented druid. I fumbled an attempt to hit a goblin with my sickle, slashing off my own toe. Then the Goblin, who was armed with a slightly-pointy stick, scored a Critical Hit. Ow.

Behold_the_Void
2007-02-07, 11:27 AM
We never use fumble rules because we find them to be stupid, but I have gotten a string of 3's before in a D20 Modern Game which was definitely not fun.

Woot Spitum
2007-02-07, 11:35 AM
Worst fumble? Rolling a natural one on two fairly plot-crucial knowledge:religion checks with my mid-to high level cleric with max skill ranks and an extremely high wisdom score (over 20). If our DM hadn't allowed our bard to use bardic knowledge to get the same information, we might never have made it out of Acheron.

Matthew
2007-02-07, 11:53 AM
Never really suffered at the hands of a fumble before, though I have often seen characters shooting into melee hit their companions (though 3.5 seems to have erased that mechanic).

The_Losar
2007-02-07, 11:53 AM
Not exactly a fumble (I don't deal with that), but one of my players was fighting a monstrous scorpion and got grappled and ended up in the scorpion's claw. A few rounds later, they each make a grapple attempt (the PC being at a rather severe disadvantage due to size and strength) and both roll 1s.

I wasn't certain how I was to describe what happened, but the player did a good job of it. Basically, he figured that the scorpion released him accidentally, so he grabbed onto the claw for fear of falling. Sort of "Oh wait, don't drop me!"

Fax Celestis
2007-02-07, 12:01 PM
I started Gehenna with a botched roll in a V:tM game.

ampcptlogic
2007-02-07, 12:05 PM
Fax: How did you manage that? Please elaborate.

starwoof
2007-02-07, 12:10 PM
The party was confronted with an anthropomorphic tyrannosaurus with a greathammer and adamantine full plate. The dwarven fighter charges!

He rolls a one. I roll on the fumble table. I roll a 100. Then the dwarf proceeds to crit himself 3 times with his waraxe, lose his weapon, and entangle the axe with the dinosaur. The level 11 fighter did 110 damage to himself, more than he had done to anything in the entire campaign. And then the dwarf who had like 5 hp left was eaten by the unharmed T-Rex.

Good times...

Gamebird
2007-02-07, 12:30 PM
I fumbled my first serious combat roll of the new tabletop campaign I'm in. However, I had prepared for this by making an 18 CON Barbarian with Diehard. I charged, raged, and fumbled, doing normal damage to myself. The DM was astonished that I survived the battle. I figure I'll knock around until a new character will start at 2nd or 3rd level, then I'll die (assuming it doesn't happen anyway) and make a new one.

Normally I'm not so fatalistic, but in this campaign, you have to be.

OzymandiasVolt
2007-02-07, 12:32 PM
Punching a party member in the arm and rolling three 20s on the attack roll.

Thomas
2007-02-07, 12:36 PM
At least two characters in our Rolemaster campaign have died from fumbling with weapons. (The odds are something like 5 in 100 to do that even if you do fumble).

Quirinus_Obsidian
2007-02-07, 01:09 PM
In our game; if you are threatening a square and you roll a 1, you get AoO'ed. I was playing a 13th lvl (ECL17) Soulknife. He Storm Trooper'ed (Directed Bull Rush) into combat, and on the attack roll, he got a 1. ARRRGH! It sucked because he was going to Direct Bull Rush the Troll hunter leader (ECL 20 himself) into a threatened square of the group's tank. So... I got critted twice by each one that I threatened, and dropped down to 3 HP, from a full 200+. Dodge, Mobility and Combat expertise did not help that much.

Matthew
2007-02-07, 01:13 PM
That's really harsh.

Fax Celestis
2007-02-07, 01:17 PM
Fax: How did you manage that? Please elaborate.

Playing a Giovanni. I summoned the spirit of the founder of the city we were in, who happened to be (a) the most powerful spirit in existence; and (b) the trigger for Gehenna.

Of course, if you botch the roll, you get the spirit's Shadow instead of the Wraith itself.

And of course I botch.

So Mr. Johnathan Stoneridge busts out of nowhere, flings some Numina around, and the net result is that the entire cotierie is either dead (me) or unconscious (everyone else). Everyone, that is, but for the Gangrel in the party who made his soak roll.

Good times.

Cobra
2007-02-07, 01:18 PM
I ran a game where a player brought in a new character that was a dwarven spiked chain wielder. In his very first fight, the party engaged a blackgaurd. The dwarf, runs up and whirls his spiffy masterwork chain around his head and releases it at the blackguard... only to roll a 1. Which he promptly confirmed.

I ruled that he accidently released the chain. The handy direction die indicated that it flew to the left... which was off the edge of the wharf and into the harbor.

The dwarf didn't want to look like a wuss in front of his new group, so he closed ranged with his spiked gauntlets and promptly got eviscerated. Not a good day for that player.

Maelstrom
2007-02-07, 01:33 PM
Worst fumble? Rolling a natural one on two fairly plot-crucial knowledge:religion checks with my mid-to high level cleric with max skill ranks and an extremely high wisdom score (over 20)...

You *do* know that skill checks do not autofail on a 1, right? (just like they do not auto succeed)... Also, is there a reason you could not take 10 or 20?

Woot Spitum
2007-02-07, 01:59 PM
You *do* know that skill checks do not autofail on a 1, right? (just like they do not auto succeed)... Also, is there a reason you could not take 10 or 20?

They do if the gamemaster says they do.

daggaz
2007-02-07, 02:44 PM
So even if you failed it adding the one to your skill ranks, how did you/your DM call the failure? I would say something like, 'you're character is at a total loss for words, the information, which should be there, has completely slipped your mind. You have forgotten, and without serious study, you are unlikely to ever remember again.' Cuz it just sounds weird that a high level cleric would be *completely* wrong about something religious in nature, especially something which he should have been thinking/studying a lot about, as it has so much to do with his present situation. BUt yeah, I guess it could happen..

Marius
2007-02-07, 02:48 PM
We were playing Rolemaster in MERP and our noble knight was dueling with a dark knight. Both of them fumble hitting themselves, with their greatswords, exactly in the same place, the same awful place were no man wants to be ever hit by anything (unless he works at Jackass). Both of them ended up on the floor screaming with pain while everyone else laugh their ass off. I think the probability of making the same fumble on rolemaster is like one in a million.


You *do* know that skill checks do not autofail on a 1, right? (just like they do not auto succeed)... Also, is there a reason you could not take 10 or 20?

You can't take 10 or 20 on a Knowledge check.

Suzaku
2007-02-07, 03:29 PM
You can't take 10 or 20 on a Knowledge check.

Ummm yes you can, skills you can't take 10 have it listed under special such as Use Magic Device. No where in the knowledge skill does it say you can't take 10.

Matthew
2007-02-07, 03:41 PM
Indeed, you just cannot take 20.

SpiderBrigade
2007-02-07, 03:48 PM
Right. You can't take 20 on Knowledge, because you can't retry a check. But taking 10 is fine.

In fact, while some might consider it metagaming, I would actively encourage players to take 10 on checks for basic knowledge. Otherwise you could run into things like a 1st-level wizard not knowing what a spellbook is, for example.

Joran
2007-02-07, 03:58 PM
Nothing from d20, but here's mine.

I was playing a game of Battletech and was moving a mech through a river.

To move through water requires a piloting skill check, but this should be easy.
Nope, so my mech falls over and takes some damage.

Now I need a piloting skill check to avoid my character smashing his head into the cockpit and taking damage.
Nope, failed that one.

Okay, my pilot took some damage, so he needs to roll a consciousness check to see if he stays conscious.
Nope, good night.

To whit, my mech had taken no damage, my pilot took no damage, but thanks to rolling sub 4 three straight times on 2d6, my mech was on the bottom of a river with an unconscious pilot. Fun times.

Matthew
2007-02-07, 04:10 PM
In fact, while some might consider it metagaming, I would actively encourage players to take 10 on checks for basic knowledge. Otherwise you could run into things like a 1st-level wizard not knowing what a spellbook is, for example.

I quite agree. One way of ensuring this is to cap Knowledge Checks at [Ability Modifier + Ranks + Feats + Synergy + 10], so that rolled results cannot exceed 'taking ten' and are only made when under duress.

lordhed
2007-02-07, 04:16 PM
Hmmm... We've always ruled that a natural 1 is treated as a -10 and a natural 20 is treated as a 30 (in addition to critical hits etc.).

MusScribe
2007-02-07, 04:29 PM
Not a bad idea...


But it was either a level one or level four game... we used crit and fumble tables (pulling from 2nd edition games) - allowing instant deaths. But a few were hitting the wrong target, etc. (with a small chance of getting a critical on the target on a fumble - allowing for a really strange chance of instant accidental death of the creature you attack).

Anyway, I was a bard (trying to show they weren't useless) with a crossbow. Shoot it at a wolf (I think) that was fighting the party tank (we didn't have penalties for shooting into combat). I roll a 1, so I roll percentile for the result. Hit closest ally, and get nearly max damage, and the tank ends up almost getting incapacitated at the start of the fight.

Indon
2007-02-07, 04:39 PM
I'm the party monk in a game and we're fighting a few werebeasts who are part of some cult or another.

I engage two of them, easy enough, take one down with a full attack and get a Cleave (yes, I was a monk with Cleave. Got a problem wit' that?) on the other one.

Because the two happened to be flanking me at the moment, I describe my attack as a flipping kick that knocked into the head of one, and my leg just kept going, arcing over to descend on the other one.

Then I roll a 1.

We don't do 'you fumble, you could hit yourself' rules, thank GOD, but things generally do happen. We were probably going to win anyway, so the DM rules my leg comes down horribly wrong and I break it, losing some ability to move. Okay, I'm a monk, not that bad.

My next action comes around. Long story short, I broke both arms on consecutive critical misses.

Luckily, after that encounter, we had a chance for some bed rest.

SpiderBrigade
2007-02-07, 04:43 PM
I don't know why people like fumble rules so much. Or at least, if you're going to use them, use a table. Somehow a system where rolling a nat. 1 gives your DM free license to come up with something that screws you over doesn't sound fun to me.

Matthew
2007-02-07, 04:49 PM
True, but Fumble Rules can also be fun when the DM is reasonable. The last time I used fumbles, there was a table with the majority of results being 'nothing happens'.

Indon
2007-02-07, 04:51 PM
Agreed. I've played in games in which I roll a critical 1, hurling my weapon away... into a different hostile enemy. Disarmed, yes, but that's why you always carry around a secondary weapon.

LotharBot
2007-02-07, 04:52 PM
The problem with fumble rules is high-level fighters have 4x as much chance as low-level fighters of rolling a 1 during a full-attack, due to the number of attacks they get. And don't get me started on whirlwind! That seems backwards. A highly trained fighter shouldn't be four times as likely to throw his sword in the ocean as one just starting out.

Some day I'd like to play with some fumble rules, but I need a better mechanic than "you rolled a 1. Sucks to be you."

Though, I have had some great occasions to have some really bad rolls come up. I remember our level 3 party fighting a CR5 green dragon, and whatever it was we were doing to it, it had to roll a 3 or higher on its save or be incapacitated. Our DM threw his die right to the middle of the table, where it showed a big fat "2". We then proceeded to kill a defenseless dragon. (Though, IIRC, our DM was something of a noob; I think it was a sleep effect, and dragons are supposed to be immune.)

A while back, our halfling cleric blew her spot check on a dinosaur. I guess the bottom 3 feet of a dinosaur just look like scaly tree trunks...

OzymandiasVolt
2007-02-07, 04:54 PM
A one-in-twenty chance PER ATTACK to humiliate myself and possibly kill myself and/or party members? Wow, so much fun. Also, it only applies to people that use weapons.

AmoDman
2007-02-07, 04:56 PM
I ctrl + f'd TPK. I'm dissapointed nothing came up...

Marius
2007-02-07, 05:10 PM
The problem with fumble rules is high-level fighters have 4x as much chance as low-level fighters of rolling a 1 during a full-attack, due to the number of attacks they get. And don't get me started on whirlwind! That seems backwards. A highly trained fighter shouldn't be four times as likely to throw his sword in the ocean as one just starting out.

Some day I'd like to play with some fumble rules, but I need a better mechanic than "you rolled a 1. Sucks to be you."

Though, I have had some great occasions to have some really bad rolls come up. I remember our level 3 party fighting a CR5 green dragon, and whatever it was we were doing to it, it had to roll a 3 or higher on its save or be incapacitated. Our DM threw his die right to the middle of the table, where it showed a big fat "2". We then proceeded to kill a defenseless dragon. (Though, IIRC, our DM was something of a noob; I think it was a sleep effect, and dragons are supposed to be immune.)

A while back, our halfling cleric blew her spot check on a dinosaur. I guess the bottom 3 feet of a dinosaur just look like scaly tree trunks...

What I do in my games when a player rolls a 1 is to roll a d20 myself and if the result is lower than 5 bad things happen.

Matthew
2007-02-07, 05:11 PM
A lot depends on how the Fumble Rules are implemented. There obviously has to be a limitation on how it works. Nobody should use a 1 in 20 fumble rule any more than a 1 in 20 critical rule.

Saph
2007-02-07, 07:45 PM
A one-in-twenty chance PER ATTACK to humiliate myself and possibly kill myself and/or party members? Wow, so much fun. Also, it only applies to people that use weapons.

The most common fumble rule is that you have to "confirm" a fumble the same way you have to confirm a critical, making fumbles sort of anti-critical hits. So after rolling a 1 you roll again, and only if the second roll is a miss is it a fumble.

The exact effect of a fumble is the GMs call, but none of the GMs I've seen would ever do anything as extreme as "you critical hit yourself", though. The most common fumble results are "provoke an attack of opportunity" or "fall over", which are annoying, but not lethal. It's only when you start using fumble charts that you get the potential for really nasty mistakes.

Funniest fumble I can remember was in a Star Wars game (Star Wars d6 doesn't have fumbles, but it has a "wild die" which can be much worse). I was piloting the starship on takeoff, rolled my 3d6 piloting skill, and managed to get a zero. The GM ruled that I got our ship about five feet off the ground, then sent it sideways to ram the control tower. I rolled again, got another zero. The ship went the other way and rammed a hangar.

Luckily our ship was tough, and we got out of there before the people in the control tower managed to reconnect their comms systems . . .

- Saph

Mikal
2007-02-08, 10:11 AM
Worst fumble? Rolling a natural one on two fairly plot-crucial knowledge:religion checks with my mid-to high level cleric with max skill ranks and an extremely high wisdom score (over 20). If our DM hadn't allowed our bard to use bardic knowledge to get the same information, we might never have made it out of Acheron.

...You do know skill checks dont autofail on a natural 1, right?:smallfrown:

Gamebird
2007-02-08, 10:14 AM
Although I'm normally all for pointing out where the rules are being misused and abused, if a zillion people are going to point out that you don't autofail skill checks on a 1, then I feel compelled to also point out that by the RAW you don't fumble an attack or save on a 1 either. You simply autofail. No chance of horrible crap happening (except that on a 1 on a save, your gear must check), no chance of provoking an AoO or falling down or hitting an ally...

Really, guys. If the thread is about something outside the RAW already, is it any surprise that some DMs expand the fumble rules past attacks and saves and over to skill checks?

Mikal
2007-02-08, 10:16 AM
Although I'm normally all for pointing out where the rules are being misused and abused, if a zillion people are going to point out that you don't autofail skill checks on a 1, then I feel compelled to also point out that by the RAW you don't fumble an attack or save on a 1 either. You simply autofail. No chance of horrible crap happening (except that on a 1 on a save, your gear must check), no chance of provoking an AoO or falling down or hitting an ally...

Really, guys. If the thread is about something outside the RAW already, is it any surprise that some DMs expand the fumble rules past attacks and saves and over to skill checks?

True. But it's still bothersome to see DM's who seem to enjoy screwing players over not only one way (fumbles), but two ways (anything but saves and attacks failing on nat 1's)

NullAshton
2007-02-08, 10:17 AM
I think the worst fumble ever is that we were being attacked by some demons in a shop, and my rogue rolled a 1 when attacking. The DM ruled that instead of hitting the demon, I instead sliced through a table of oranges. I eventually had to pay for the produce I destroyed... well, supposed to pay for it anyway. Yay sleight of hand!

reorith
2007-02-08, 10:21 AM
rolled a 1 on a tumble check after falling 80 feet in full plate. a cross class skill with -6 acp. not fun :(

Gamebird
2007-02-08, 10:23 AM
In my games, I use 1s on attacks or saves as a reason to describe a really poor manuever. There was a paladin who rolled 1s frequently and always while fighting alongside a particular party member. So I said when he rolled a 1 that he hit the other guy with the flat of his sword or banged him with his shield. No damage (not even subdual), but just an unexpected impact. When he did it three times in a row, I finally had the other guy take a point of damage from it (just one).

The players got a big laugh out of it and it became a running joke that the paladin would get so worked up about the enemy that he'd just get to flailing around dangerously.

KazilDarkeye
2007-02-15, 09:58 AM
I once DMed a group of 3 players. At one point they split up so the dwarf barbarian and aasimar bard head off and get ambushed by ghasts.

(Let's just say I enjoy making a fumble more interesting than "You attack yourself")

So the barbarian attacks and rolled a 1, so I decide that he forgot that you thrust the AXE forward - not your HEAD. If it helps he did have under 10 for mental scores.

Charity
2007-02-15, 10:15 AM
Heck, I seem to kill my players regularly as it is, without recourse to punishing their luck as well... It doesn't bear thinking about.

V heh, the earliest maglite to the bonce incident

ExHunterEmerald
2007-02-15, 11:17 AM
Not a fumble, but my local DM was once critted with a thrown sunrod to the back of the head.

Josh Inno
2007-02-15, 11:35 AM
Not exactly fumbles per say by the fumble rules, but in one game we were in, we were fighting some kind of wierd fiendish dire wolf... and everyone... I mean everyone... kept rolling ones, broken up by a few rolls of 3 or 3. The fighters, the sorcerers, the wolf, it was wierd, but hilarious because the first time, the DM said we attacked the ground by accident (missed that badly) and eventually everyone was attacking the ground until someone rolled high enough and said. "Enough with attacking the ground. It's dead. Let's get back to the real fight!" Then someone rolled a one not long after "No, wait, let's make sure!"

Jabberwocky
2007-02-15, 11:51 AM
Heh, not exactly a fumble but still: I was playing a mentally very unstable drow but otherwise she was not Evil. The other character was a "darthiir" who was of course quite suspicious of her. We happened to be attacked by some slime/jelly/pudding and she instructed him to leap over the slime and run so that he has time to cast a spell while she is fighting. The elf rolled badly on jumping and ended up in the middle of the jelly puddle. It took quite a long time to convince him that it hadn't been an evil drow trick but his own lack of athletics skill. And well, the fact that my character laughed herself almost dead at the sight of the barefoot darthiir with still smoking lower parts of his robe didn't help either :-)

iceman
2007-02-15, 01:23 PM
I'm kind of surpised most of you only have one or two stories, I seem to have several.
This first character I actually have two stories. I was playing a half dragon fighter with an adamantine greatsword. In the second encounter with this character we found ourselves up against a crazed necromancer and his two flesh golems in a relativly small room. The wizard instructs both golems to block the doorway off so that he can cast spells at our party bunched up in the hallway. The dwarf battlerager and I were in front so we were to hack our way through the golems as quickly as possible. I went first and managed to botch, throwing my weapon into the room past the golems, the only adamantine wapon in the party and the only weapon that would bypass the damage reduction of the golems. My backweapons I had decided would be my natural weapons and I couldn't do enough damage to harm the golems so instead I used my breath weapon on them. I was a bronze half dragon, meaning lightning, and that particular energy type heals flesh golems, as a side note through the five encounters that that character went through he dealt a total of -12 points of damage. I did manage to bull rush through one of the golems allowing my allies inside to deal with the necro and golems.
The next story with this character was when we were fighting a red dragon, not sure about what age it was but I assume it was either Juvenile or young adult. IN this fight I started off the battle by botching my will save against fear. The DM ruled that I had to run far enough away from its aura before I could make another save to get back into the fight. This may not seem to bew that big of a deal except that I then botched my next three rolls with three different dice. On the next round my DM took my dice away from me set up a random number generator on her calculator from 1 to 20 and gave that to me to generate my d20 rolls. She also said that she was just going to allow me to get back into the fight so that the party wouldn't get eaten. I still managed to get a four on the "attack roll" of my next attack.
I'll have more stories later...

Kaerou
2007-02-15, 01:26 PM
My first time playing Cyberpunk i decided to start with a grenade launcher arm.

First combat, first attack i roll a 1. Now, in this system you use d6's and 1's were like.. either auttofails or autofumbls or something.. i forget.

Anyway.. my first attack ended in me blowing myself up with my own grenade.

Never played it since.

Gerrtt
2007-02-15, 01:52 PM
The worst execution of a fumble I ever experienced was when our party fighter fumbled trying to attack a troll and the DM had him roll an unnamed check followed by a reflex save and another unnamed check and suddenly the fighter, instead of attacking the troll infront of him, managed to jump in the air (higher than the troll's head), cut off a tree branch (a THICK branch) with a RAPIER, and do enough damage to kill the troll that hadn't been damaged (the branch fell all of a foot or two to hit the troll) without fire or acid to keep it dead.

The worst part is that I continued to play with this group after this experience.

Kids, here's a simple rule about fumbles: if you are going to play with fumbles then nothing good should ever come out of rolling a natural 1.

crazedloon
2007-02-15, 01:54 PM
Most impressive fumble was in the final battle of the last campaign I was in. To set the scene we are in a giant hole in the ground two gods are fighting and we the adventures are supposed to wait for the gods to weaken each other and kill off the last god alive. Our job until that happened was to kill the minions streaming into the hole from the nearby city. Well all of those minions where to far away for our party psion to do much to them so he said screw it and attacked on of the gods with a save or die. All the god needed to do was roll anything but a 1. The god rolls a 1 and dies then and there. Pretty funny for the group not so much for the DM who was hoping for an epic battle. Needless to say when another party member hits the god with gauntlets of uterdeath to cause the other god to make a save the DM rules that he doesn’t have to because he is a little cheater :smallwink:

TheThan
2007-02-15, 02:14 PM
It’s not so much a fumble but I once had an 8-strength druid that drowned while trying to cross a pond to get to a gold dragon that was supposed to give us a quest.

Suzaku
2007-02-15, 02:17 PM
It’s not so much a fumble but I once had an 8-strength druid that drowned while trying to cross a pond to get to a gold dragon that was supposed to give us a quest.

Next time wildshape :P

okpokalypse
2007-02-15, 02:34 PM
My worst fumble was as a L19 PC with a 41 Fort Save.

I had to make a Save-Or-Die against a Divine Meta-Magic Reach'd Slay Living, DC 19, from a L12 Cleric.

I rolled a 1. Normally that would be bad enough - but we (at the time) custom-ruled that a 1 on a "can't fail" save meant a reroll with +10 to the DC. So I had to save against vs. DC 29.

I rolled a 1. So then I had to save against a DC 39 Slay Living...

I rolled a 1. Yes. 3 times in a row. Now I could actually die, having to save against a DC 49 Slay Living - needing an 8 or better.

I rolled a 7.

It was one of the most disappointing experience I've ever had in the game of DnD. However, since then, I've made more than a dozen saves where a natural 20 was the only way to make it. So I guess things even out...

Douglas
2007-02-15, 03:13 PM
All the god needed to do was roll anything but a 1.
Deities of rank 1 or higher do not automatically fail on a natural saving throw roll of 1. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/divine/divineRanksAndPowers.htm#savingThrows)

JellyPooga
2007-02-15, 03:16 PM
Around level 3 -ish, I was playing a halfling rogue (of stereotypeness...high balance, tumble, open locks, etc.). Crossing the stereotypical rickety bridge which requires a balance check...fumbled (we use fumbles on skill checks)...DM allowed me to make a tumble to regain my balance...fumbled...DM allowed a reflex save to catch myself before plunging to my death...fumbled...we figured that my halfling wasn't destined to survive this particular challenge and let him fall after that.

Argent
2007-02-15, 04:12 PM
Worst I've seen yet:

Low-level campaign. Party is tracking a bunch of kobolds who've kidnapped the leading citizens of a nearby town. We locate their camp and, failing to have any good ideas about how to sneakily extract the townsfolk, execute a full frontal assault.

Which was working well until the archetypical TWF ranger fumbled. Both weapons (longsword/shortsword, I think). In one round. With that kind of colossal bad luck, the DM ruled the player had slipped and fallen prone... and that now a kobold was humping his leg like a rabid Shar-Pei.

Took him a fair while to live that one down.

Josh Inno
2007-02-15, 04:22 PM
I don't generally play in a campaign that's advertised fumbles. They're generally one of the worst rules sets I've encountered. I think many people here are the same. That's probably why most of us have stories that begin with "Well this isn't actually a fumble" and not to many of them.

KuReshtin
2007-02-15, 09:03 PM
Worst experience one of my PCs (rogue) had as a result of a fumble was when the ranger of the group rolled a natural 1 against a will save as a mind flayer tried to command us. He ended up turning around towards my PC, using his three attacks to fire his bow at me, critting two of them and 'only' hitting with the third one.

I think I was down at about -24HP after that, trying to impersonate a porcupine.
For some reason, that rogue of mine had an uncanny ability to almost die at least once every sesion we played.
Luckily for me, after the rest of the group had dispensed of the mind flayer, they found a magical item amongst the loot, and DM decided to give me a chance to roll a d100 to see what type of magical item it was. Result was a 'Staff of Life' that they used to ressurect my PC to be almost killed again the next session. But that's another story.

Ninja Chocobo
2007-02-16, 06:30 AM
In MERP, I was playing a Dwarven Animist (Cleric). I wielded a Morning Star.
Now, with a Morning Star, you get a +10 (+2 equivalent) bonus, but you fumble on a roll lower than 10 (2) unmodified.
Now, in one of the earlier fights, I swung the Morning Star around, and fumbled. It ends up that I broke my leg. Alright, not really a big deal, I could ride a horse, and fight (poorly) while mounted.
Now, we go to a town, and get my broken leg healed. Then, we head off and fight a Troll. I fumble again. I break my leg again. The same leg.
Laughter ensued.
From then on I wore greaves, which protected my legs from criticals, but impaired my spellcasting.

smellie_hippie
2007-02-16, 04:09 PM
Rolemaster. Playing a dwarven fighter with a warhammer. Fumbled and broke my weapon. :smallfrown:

That's the short part. Here's where it gets fun. The warhammer was a family heirloom, so I decide it's time to go berserk. :smallmad: Sadly, this is a skill I do not possess. Roll a 100, so off I go in a berserk rage to kill the Orc who broke my father's hammer... with the weapon shaft minus the "hammer" part.

Fumble again... break the weapon shaft... again. :smallfurious: I ended up head-butting the Orc into a squishy pulp and having the family heirloom restored.:smallbiggrin:

spotmarkedx
2007-02-16, 04:48 PM
Perhaps not the "worst", but the most amusing "fumble" experience that I've been party to was in a game of Paranoia.

If you're unfamiliar with the system, the very quick version is that The Computer wants all humans to be happy, and employs cloned troubleshooters to ensure happiness in all humans under its employ. But there are commie mutant traitors all about, trying to destroy the happiness, that the troubleshooters must exterminate. All troubleshooters are mutants. All troubleshooters are part of a secret society of some sort (and thus are traitors). So everyone has two strikes against them already. And happiness enforcement is often painful/deadly. There is no win.

Anyway, in our group, we actually had a communist troubleshooter (so he was a commie mutant traitor), and his mutant ability was the ability to persuade people. Thus, he was working his way through our group, trying to forment open rebellion one by one.

He got to me, and pulled me aside for a private talk. And talk he did, ignoring my panicked and wide-eyed expression. Even if I didn't turn commie, I was sure I'd have to be sanitized (either lobotomized or killed) by the computer just from hearing this. Of course, he either failed his roll, or I resisted (I don't remember). I now had pretty much direct admission that he was a commie-mutant-traitor!!! His doom was sealed, too. Well, kinda. Only if I could somehow warn ... well anyone not also inclined. Now, being a devious CMT, he did his prostelytizing from within a powered suit with a large gun on it. As you can guess, his next action was to load a cartridge into the gun and fire it at me.

Here is where it starts getting weird.

He botched. Badly. Furthermore, he wasn't using regular ammunition. No, he was using some "special" ammo strait from R&D (I can hear the cringes from all the players of Paranoia now.) I think the round was green and purple candycane striped. It turned out to be a smoke round. Hallucenogenic. The GM rolled some random dice, hemmed and hawed a bit, and decided that he had overshot, by a significant margin. And pretty much dumped it right into the rest of our group.

Now a slight tangent (there is a reason for this, really). You see there is a secret society called the "Death Leapords" They like explosions. A lot. Now we'd arrived at our current location (tropical island) by means of a walker APC. As we crashed through the overgrowth, the Death Leopard PC in our group decided to find out exactly how large of an explosion would be caused by dropping his thermonuclear hand grenade into the housing for the fusion reactor. He then jumped out of the APC and hid in a ditch "for safety".

After our entire party's next set of clones were activated and sent to the significantly smaller island by means of the "1000mm clone insertion device" (i.e. we were shot out of a big cannon), our next APC was sent to the isle via remote control. So why is this all important? Well because just as the hallucinogens were kicking in, a large metal sixlegged beast was rising out of the ocean and walking towards the party.

Not being a group to back down from a challenge, the various (now extremely high) troubleshooters went to work. I think someone fled. Another declared their action to be "peeing my pants". The third, decided to try out his new R&D backpack-launched cluster-munition-dropping missile system. For those unfamiliar with R&D in Paranoia, it is assumed that a new R&D system will kill you about half the time. The other half, it probably wont work right. This time, missiles went all over the place, much like the handful of dice the GM rolled to figure out what was happening with all the munitions flying all over creation. Most were duds or expended themselves harmlessly on scenery. Some bouced off the APC, no effect. But this one glorious set of submunitions flew perfectly strait, deposited its munitions in a beautiful array, right around the powered suit of the commie mutant traitor.

Thus, due to an unfortunate botch, the CMT removed himself from existance.

Until his next clone was activated and sent to join us again.

Knight
2007-02-17, 01:06 PM
I'm currently playing a Half-Giant Pyschic Warrior using a Large Greataxe. I fumbled on an attack against a naga. The DM then rolled a 100 on the fumble table in Dragon Compendium, which is to reroll 3 times on the table. Two of the results were fairly harmless, fall prone and sprain ankle, but the first thing he rolled for me is "critical hit on nearest ally with +1 critical modifier."

So I critically hit the pary cleric who was next to me with my axe, 3d6+14 x 4 thanks to the +1. I ended up dealing 112 damage to the cleric in one hit, killing her instantly, as she only had 87 hit points.