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View Full Version : The Dice are Out to Kill Me!!!!



braveheart
2014-08-29, 11:26 AM
I Just thought it would be fun to tell the stories of all those times when you really should have been successful but a single, or a series of bad die rolls ruined it, and the painful repercussions of it.

My second game that I ever played I ran as an Dwarf inquisitor in pathfinder, using some archetype shenanigans I managed to get my lv.1 character to have a +16 on bluff, and +8 on diplomacy so my character was the party face with a charisma score of 8. first session one guy in the group manages to get himself arrested so I offer to act as a lawyer for him. we get to court and while trying to defend my fellow player I rolled 3 bluff checks, a 2, a 1, and a 3, all of them failed (the GM later told me that all of the checks were set to 20, I needed a 4 to pass them) so that character was exiled from the city, where the next 5 sessions took place.

TheCountAlucard
2014-08-29, 12:20 PM
Rarely to me personally (unless I'm GMing, but even then it's usually that the PCs' dice are bloodthirsty and mine just aren't very good on the defensive), though one of my players had a nice, amusing death scene.

He was playing a Gnome rogue, and when the party encountered an illusionary ogre, he decided to poke it with his dagger - unfortunately for him, the illusion was laid over a balloon full of toxic spores, which dropped his Strength significantly.

Later the party came face-to-face with a Red Dragon amidst some lava - one by one, the PCs jumped the lava to fight the dragon. The Gnome's player makes his Jump roll... and fails by exactly the amount his Strength modifier had decreased. He ended up dying horribly, burned to death in the lava - but not before the party's arcanist used Mage Hand to snag his Handy Haversack. :smallamused:

Amphetryon
2014-08-29, 01:13 PM
I once watched a half-orc barbarian player fail three times in a row to break a swing-arm gate made of rotted wood. The DM was forced to include a metal bar supporting the rotted wood to justify three consecutive failures at a DC 10 STR check, by a raging half-orc with a base 20 STR.

bjoern
2014-08-29, 01:35 PM
A few years ago, I had a guy that was boosted for initiative. I had
+4 (dex)
+4 improved inititiative
+5 nerveskitter
That's +13 at level 1

Still managed to gp last out of the party for the first 3 encounters. I never rolled above a 4.

lytokk
2014-08-29, 01:48 PM
in one game I played, I had to use an ancient dwarven warhammer to smash some orb of darkness while the rest of my party held some devil at bay. It was a simple inanimate object, and was like a DC 5 to hit. I had a 12 str, base attack of 7. Unfortunately, the hammer was exotic (-4), tied to the lineage of the dwarves, so anyone who isn't of that lineage (-2) or a dwarf (another -4) couldn't wield it properly. So I had a simple -2 to attack. Need a 7 to hit it. 7 rounds, 14 missed attacks, and party members who couldn't hold onto the devil any longer killed me. Why they elected me, the weapon finessing ninja, to use the unwieldly hammer instead of the drow str based fighter to destroy it is beyond me.

Same game, later on. I was on watch when I saw two ettins out in the field. Now, it was my mistake to not wake the party, but I sneak out there, and with my +21 to hide and move silently, feel very safe. My dice, on the other hand decides to roll a 1, which the ettins pretty easily beat. Then my dice decide to not roll above a 10 in the ensuing combat, which again lead to my death, and eventual quest by the party to find at lease some part of my body to bring me back to life.

Yes, it was the same die. I crushed it in a table vice with the rest of my die looking on at the horror of any die that may ever fail me that hard again.

CarpeGuitarrem
2014-08-29, 01:54 PM
One of my friends has the worst luck when he plays RPGs. Then he has really great luck when he GMs. When he ran Burning Wheel for some other guys at his base, he one-shotted a dwarf with arm-rending traumatic damage.

Then he plays Dungeon World with me running. He has become the Worf of the party (and he's a paladin, which makes it extra funny). In fact, he's still got a lingering curse from his deity on account of failing a Lay on Hands move. Otherwise, he's been dogpiled by lizardmen, dragged into the river by a crocodile, almost depleted of HP twice, bashed on the head, bit in the hand, lost his sword, lost his rations, oh--and he's got a weak leg because he stabbed himself accidentally while trying to hit the crocodile that was clamped onto it. That's over the span of a pair of two-hour sessions. Four hours of gametime.

The ranger, meanwhile, has made it roughly unscathed, and the fighter now has a group of lizardmen prophets who seem to be friendly to him.

gom jabbarwocky
2014-08-29, 02:03 PM
This didn't happen to me personally, but it happened to one of my players. One of the PCs, a huge buff tank of a dude, got his massive arm clamped down on by a giant mutant rabid pit bull. It wasn't letting go, so he punches it. His attack roll is a hideous botch, but his damage roll was so high it was sufficient to kill it in one blow. But since he missed so bad he manages to punch his own arm clean off his torso, nearly killing himself.

The party then had to split up. While someone had to stay behind to stabilize him, the rest had to chase the dog to prevent it from getting away with the arm so they could attempt to re-attach it.

BWR
2014-08-29, 02:12 PM
In 3.5
Three of five party members died when my paladin, who in theory had a 70% -80% chance of hitting his targets, hit only two times out of thirty or so attacks, the wizard kept failing Concentration checks to cast defensively (only needed a 4 on the die to make it) and kept being brought to negative hp, and the druid got several crits in his face, and the duskblade missed most of her attacks. In what should have been a challenging but not deadly encounter ended up being a total route with not one goblin slain and the warlock BBEG just sitting on the side lines and not bothering to do much of anything.

And in another campaign for a period of a month and a half, 70% of my attack rolls were 6 or lower. Probably a bit higher percentage, but I didn't start keeping score until after a few sessions.

In AM.
In the space of one session: Botched a roll that got me in trouble with local authorities. Botched a spellcasting roll that gave me plenty of warping and made our boat slow down in the face of a pirate attack rather than speed up. Botched the next casting roll which should have teleported all the pirates into the water but ended up teleporting them on to the deck next to us (and giving me more warping). Then botched a spellcasting roll to calm a storm which got Poseidon pissed at me. Remember what happened to the last guy that annoyed Poseidon?

Grendus
2014-08-29, 02:18 PM
I had a character with extremely high DT. We go into a room with hydras that do a ton of poison damage, but not enough bite damage to penetrate my DT. I move forward to tank the hydras away from the rest of the part, commenting offhand that there's no way the hydras can hurt me.

First attack for the hydras, triple damage. I was knocked out in one blow. Lesson learned, don't taunt murphy.

Brookshw
2014-08-29, 02:25 PM
I'll go the opposite route if you don't mind. In a highly lethal mini campaign of expedition to castle ravenloft (14 total pc deaths, 2tpks, q 75% tpk and some one offs) the party, new characters, is stumbling through the castle. They roll up, unexpectantly, on the bbeg. What do they do? Claim to be insurance investigators looking into the death of the last party. A nice bluff check. Bbeg rolls a 1 on sense motive (we play with fumble skill checks). He buys it, hands them a stack of paperwork to fill out and sends them on their way. As soon as that Nat 1 came up the party (and myself) breakout in laughter.

braveheart
2014-08-29, 02:35 PM
I'll go the opposite route if you don't mind. In a highly lethal mini campaign of expedition to castle ravenloft (14 total pc deaths, 2tpks, q 75% tpk and some one offs) the party, new characters, is stumbling through the castle. They roll up, unexpectantly, on the bbeg. What do they do? Claim to be insurance investigators looking into the death of the last party. A nice bluff check. Bbeg rolls a 1 on sense motive (we play with fumble skill checks). He buys it, hands them a stack of paperwork to fill out and sends them on their way. As soon as that Nat 1 came up the party (and myself) breakout in laughter.

YOU FOOL YOU'VE UPSET THE BALANCE NOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooooooo

IllogicalBlox
2014-08-29, 02:53 PM
Hah, the strongest and second strongest characters in our game once failed about three times each to break the rope they had used to tie themselves to a mast. A little while later, the strongest character failed again to break a stool.

DontEatRawHagis
2014-08-29, 03:05 PM
Try having an ability that says as long as you don't crit fail you can take the lowest form of success. Then you roll only natural ones. :(

My hacker was never allowed near a computer by the team leader.

braveheart
2014-08-29, 03:28 PM
I forgot about this one, I had a female monk in another pathfinder campaign, my monk had a +7 on her reflex save, but I rolled a 2 on the check of 10. so I got stuck inside of a gelatinous cube, which dissolved her cloths, she was the female only character and after defeating the ooz the rest of the party stood by and did nothing as she lay on the ground paralyzed for about a minute, she then grabbed the magical cloak that was inside of the ooz and wraped it around herself, it burst into flame and she nearly died

Guran
2014-08-29, 04:13 PM
Ever since I learned to roll a die, the dice gods placed a horrible curse upon me for reasons unknown to any mortal man. At first it was hard to notice, but after playing D&D and Warhammer for a while, it became nigh impossible to deny. Only a few months ago the dm told me that I would be better of playing a character that would not need to make attack rolls.

You want a story? Well, here comes the tale of two carts, a bunch of goblins and a female albino warlock with loads of bad luck. Oh and don't forget the idiot party leader!

It all started with our party accepting to guard a merchants carts to the next town. We heard there were a lot of ambushes by goblins lately, so we assumed we would get into battle sooner or later. After a while, the road becomes heavily obsecured by mist. Before I - or anyone - can do anything the party leader orders the cart drivers to charge through the mist as fast as possible. Thus we rammed the tree that barred the way and the pandemonium began. I failed my skill check and was launched out of the cart, landing near the feet of a group of goblins. In an attempt to safe my hide and get to safety, I fail to land any hits until... finally! Chain of levistus hits and I roll minimum damage. Crap!
Then a party member shoots an arrow and he rolls natural 1. Our DM at the time was really annoying with critical fumbles. The arrow hits me in the back and I go down. The only reason that character made it, was because the party leader put her over his shoulder and brought her to safety.

YossarianLives
2014-08-29, 04:15 PM
One of my friends generally has OK luck except with melee attacks. I've been playing with him for about two years and he has only hit with a melee weapon ONCE. One time he was forced to retire a fighter in a 4e game because he couldn't hit anything. Not even the little puny kobolds that the rest of the party destroyed with ease.

comicshorse
2014-08-29, 04:35 PM
In a Star trek game where we are playing Federation Intelligence Operatives undercover as a trader ship. My character was the 'face' of the group and for sticky situations has a one shot stunner built into the ring he always wore.
I'm meant to be meeting a contact in a very rough bar and it turns out to be an old Klingon enemy of ours. He sits down next to me and I inform the G.M. I'm training the ring at him under the table. The Klingon informs me 'I've been waiting for this for a long time'. It was such a perfect feed line I couldn't resist, with a huge grin I reply 'I bet you have' and fire the stunner.
G.M. tells me just don't botch so I, naturally, roll a 100. G.M. rules I fire the stunner directly into the table and take half its damage as feedback, I roll maximum damage and stun myself unconscious !
As far as the mystified Klingon is concerned I give him a confident grin and then collapse unconscious. He shrugs and kidnaps my unconscious body

Marlowe
2014-08-29, 04:36 PM
I was once in a combat where I rolled 7 3s [1d20] in a row. I eventually got so annoyed that I walked up to the enemy leader ( only a level 2 cleric and already wounded) and used my 1/day Death Domain touch attack for the first and only time in the campaign.

I promptly rolled a 20 followed by a very high "damage" roll and killed him stone dead. Ending the battle at a stroke. It didn't make up for seeing that "3" coming up round after round though.:smallmad:

Jay R
2014-08-29, 06:41 PM
My 4th l3v3l 2E mage/thief was trying to climb a twenty foot pile of rubble, to examine a small hole. The DM said that it was so easy I would succeed on a 95 % or less. So with great confidence I rolled...

00.

OK, not much damage falling only twenty feet, so I climbed back up, and rolled ...

00.

It took three tries to climb the easiest climb he ever faced.

But it turned out that the dice were trying to save him. In the hole was a Grey Ooze.

Diachronos
2014-08-29, 07:30 PM
In a Skyrim-themed game I was in, I had a Thalmor soldier pinned under me. I called him crit-failing his grapple and me crit-succeeding mine.

The EXACT OPPOSITE happened, and the massive werewolf ended up getting flipped onto her back and shanked by the severely-wounded elf. I couldn't get mad, though, cuz the whole thing was just too damn funny. Plus I nearly gnawed his head off over the next few turns.

There's also one friend in my group who's earned the title "King of Nat 1s". A title that he and his dice defend whenever possible.

DigoDragon
2014-08-29, 08:01 PM
I once DM'd a battle against a colossal red dragon.

The ranger managed to roll a 1 about six times in a row and it left him with his two favorite longswords broken, a dead animal companion, and a destroyed bag of holding which knocked him down when it ruptured. The wizard rolled a 1 twice. On two fort checks. The second was a massive damage check. The Rogue/Paladin proceeded to roll a 1 Eight times in a row. By the end of the streak he had three broken magic weapons (including his Holy Avenger), a broken magic shield, and he was sitting at -28 HP. Unfortunately the nearest cleric that could have saved him from such a fate had managed to roll three 1s of her own, leaving her at -6 HP... and invisible.

When the fight was over, only the second cleric and the fighter remained from a team of seven. :smalleek:
A large part of that were the six nat 20s I ignored that the dragon rolled.

Knaight
2014-08-29, 09:01 PM
A space opera game, in Fudge: One character is in a cloud of poison gas, which has gummed up the air intake on their jetpack. Another one tries to swoop in, grab them, and swoop out. They roll a -4 (Abysmal). So the other character needs to dodge the jetpack exhaust, to avoid burns, and rolls agility. Abysmal (-4). The first character then tries to heal them, which was a bad idea to begin with as they had a wound penalty to all action and weren't all that good as a medic to begin with, but the dice made it worse. Abysmal-1 (-5), so bad it's off the bottom of the scale, and actively harmed the person it was meant to help. So now they're both in a poison gas cloud, one of them is unconscious, and the tank firing canisters of poison gas was closing in.

All the characters eventually escaped, but the dice came pretty close to a TPK there.

Beige
2014-08-29, 09:08 PM
my worst encounter with the dice gods? rolling a character, 4d6b3

my highest stat was a 9...

bjoern
2014-08-29, 09:22 PM
my worst encounter with the dice gods? rolling a character, 4d6b3

my highest stat was a 9...

I felt that way after rolling my current guy. 4d6b3 reroll ones. Best stat is a 15 next best a 12. Rest of the group has 18s and 14s.
Its all good though. My guy is SAD so it ain't too bad.

DigoDragon
2014-08-29, 09:31 PM
4d6b3 reroll ones.

I remember one GM I was chatting with (first time I played in his campaign) and I warned him that i'm a bad die roller. He didn't believe me until he watched me roll for stats with that method. First roll was a 4. The reroll was a 5.

He asked if I wanted to join his GURPS game instead. :smallbiggrin:

Diachronos
2014-08-30, 01:42 AM
My favorite Story from the King of Nat 1s:
It was a homebrew setting, with Jake (the KoN1s) having magic that functioned like alchemy from FMA. He decided, while we were travelling through the Cloud Sea on a flying boat, that he wanted to try and transmute a cup using part of the boat's floor.

He nat 1'd.

The cup formed and promptly exploded in his face, launching him off the boat and onto the sky whale that was escorting us. The DM had Jake roll a Ride check to get up.

He nat 1'd.

So he slips on the whale...

And nat 1's his Reflex save to keep from falling off the whale.

If it weren't for the fact that his character was essentially possessed by a demon and an angel, he would have died. Fortunately, this DM doesn't like killing off PCs unless they actually want it to happen, so he had the angel teleport Jake back onto our boat while we were all watching the clouds he'd fallen into. Out of all of us, I was the only one to notice the angelic glow around him when he came back, since it faded after I noticed he was still alive.

No_Mark
2014-08-30, 01:55 AM
So here's a story of my first character death in pathfinder. We headed out, on behalf of the local church to retreive a staff of life from a theiving medusa, we went equipped with stone salves, knowing the dangers involved with fighting a medusa. We get to the general area relatively in tact, and it's getting dark. We felt we had a decent distance from the medusa's lair and camped out for the night. One of the clerics and I volunteered for first watch. Sure enough, the dm asked for perception checks, something was sculking about our camp. I roll a natural twenty, the dm gave me a ruefull smile and handed me a note. "Congrats, it's a medusa, Fort." I rolled a 7 all told, and am turned to stone. Moment's later the cleric rolls a natural twenty and I hand him the note. In the morning the rest of our party woke up with several items missing, including a ring of blinking, and a pair of statues where their comrades should be. It didn't take them long to figure out what had happened and used the salve on us, another fortitude save, and I'd be fine, Natural 1. I died in screaming agony.

Kid Jake
2014-08-30, 02:01 AM
I was DMing this game instead of playing, but we had a TPK at level 4 to a single Small Monstrous Spider. I never rolled anything under a 19 (minimum I needed to hit these guys) and they rolled almost exclusively 1s. The fight took nearly an hour real time and a Cleric, a Barbarian and a Fighter couldn't deal 4 damage between them. It was the saddest/most hilarious thing I've ever seen.

Diachronos
2014-08-30, 02:07 AM
So here's a story of my first character death in pathfinder. We headed out, on behalf of the local church to retreive a staff of life from a theiving medusa, we went equipped with stone salves, knowing the dangers involved with fighting a medusa. We get to the general area relatively in tact, and it's getting dark. We felt we had a decent distance from the medusa's lair and camped out for the night. One of the clerics and I volunteered for first watch. Sure enough, the dm asked for perception checks, something was sculking about our camp. I roll a natural twenty, the dm gave me a ruefull smile and handed me a note. "Congrats, it's a medusa, Fort." I rolled a 7 all told, and am turned to stone. Moment's later the cleric rolls a natural twenty and I hand him the note. In the morning the rest of our party woke up with several items missing, including a ring of blinking, and a pair of statues where their comrades should be. It didn't take them long to figure out what had happened and used the salve on us, another fortitude save, and I'd be fine, Natural 1. I died in screaming agony.

That damn Medusa nearly killed the rest of us later, too. Looking back I should've taken off the Ring of Protection and put on the Ring of Blinking, at least that way we wouldn't have had to play Whack-a-Mole with her when we found the lair.

Kol Korran
2014-08-30, 04:54 AM
The tale of Karandor, the unluckiest dwarf.

It was the first time we played in Forgotten Realms, and one of the players decided he really disliked the gods, and decided to play an atheist. He rolled up a dwarf with high constitution, a fighter by trade, and a fortitude save through the roof. But all the modifiers in the world won't help you if you roll a 1... and he did, on EVERY major occasion with a live-or-die fort save. He got petrified about 3 times, and died out of massive damage about 2-3 times, when he decided that maybe he does need to believe in some god.

He chose a god, and decided that he needs to craft his holy symbol. Only we were in the midst of an enemy controlled city. We were masquerading as mercenaries, but our ruse would only go so far. So we came up with a plan. A character better at deception will introduce Karandor as a MUTE and DEAF blacksmith who wanted to work in the forge for... just a little while. We thought that would be fool proof for his luck.

So the player is set, and he rolls the dice in his hand. "So how much do I need to roll?" The DM goes "Look, just don't roll a..."

Karandor was so enthusiastic about his new religion, that he started singing. :smallbiggrin: Cue in a big fight and retreat from the city. We still joke about it to this day. :smalltongue:

Zazax
2014-08-30, 07:01 AM
My group quite recently had this sort of thing spanning an entire encounter.

Despite gaming for years we'd never actually done a pre-made module before, so one day one of them shows up with a short one to try, because why not. We split up the pre-made characters, give brief introductions, and set off. Then comes the first combat encounter: the four PCs against five bog-standard goblins.

Everyone rolls for initiative, and three of the PCs don't even break 5, including bonuses. My Wizard goes first and proceeds to roll minimum damage on his attack. Then all five goblins go in a row, and this is where the tale of woe becomes a comedy of misfortune. The first goblin shoots the Wizard, crits, and rolls 11 on a 2d6, killing the Wizard outright and almost twice over. The second goblin fires, he crits too, and rolls 12 on a 2d6 and outright kills the Cleric before he'd even had a chance to act. The third goblin fires, reduces the Rogue to a single hit point, and the others pile onto the Fighter. The Rogue dies on the next round, and the Fighter lasts a bit longer before he goes down, and to another crit. TPK'd on the first encounter against goblins.

The DM even rolled all those crits and at-or-near-max-damage results on *my* dice. They never do that when I use them. :smallannoyed:

Made even worse by the fact that the module even said "in the unlikely event that the goblins defeat the players..."

Jay R
2014-08-30, 07:42 AM
I was DMing this game instead of playing, but we had a TPK at level 4 to a single Small Monstrous Spider. I never rolled anything under a 19 (minimum I needed to hit these guys) and they rolled almost exclusively 1s. The fight took nearly an hour real time and a Cleric, a Barbarian and a Fighter couldn't deal 4 damage between them. It was the saddest/most hilarious thing I've ever seen.

And when they were nearly dead and still hadn't damaged it, they still didn't run away? Why not?

The dice may be out to kill them, but the party members are at least accessories to the crime.

Dundee15
2014-08-30, 10:01 PM
Kinda re-posting this from another thread here, because it fits.
In 4e, the party was going through a long dungeon crawl and encountered a room with a large obsidian statue in the middle of it. Our Half-Orc Spellsword decides to roll arcana to determine if it's a golem or just a plain statue... and he rolls a 1. The party rogue decides that because it's so obviously a statue, he was going to examine it for hidden switches. Suddenly three ninjas jump down from the ceiling in an ambush and the golem comes to life. Being a rogue and in front of one of the heaviest hitters in the room, he decides to use Close Quarters to move into the same space as the golem and use him as cover against the ninjas. He rolls a stealth check and manages a very high roll. Golem goes next and activates an ability where any time you make contact with the golem, you take 10 damage (if you hit him or he hits you). Cleric goes next and uses Command to force the golem to the ground, not knowing that the rogue was under it. Rolls a nat 20, DM asks the rogue to roll a reflex save... nat 1.

Rogue's player "So, what happens?"
DM "You'll take 1d4 damage for every 10lbs... but with the crit the cleric got and the crit fail you got it'll be max damage."
Rogue's player "Fair enough, so... how much did the golem weigh?"
DM completely deadpan "Nine tons."
Rogue's player does some math "7200! I take 7200!!"
Spellsword "Actully it's 7210 with the golem's ability..." *whole table glares at him* "What, I like being accurate."
Cleric "I've got Recall Ally!"
DM "You don't know he's there." *turns to Rogue's player* "I'm sorry but, you're dead."

*after the fight*
Cleric "So, how much EXP was the fight worth?"
DM smiling "5210 for the enemies, and 2000 for the rogue"
Rogue's player "7210..."
Spellsword "Hey, that's just enough to level!"

Seeing as death is permanent in that game, it's a pretty memorable way to go.
My rogue will forever be known as the party's tank as he's taken more damage then the entire party combined, and the Cleric is now the DPS as he's dished out more than anyone.

Kid Jake
2014-08-31, 12:16 AM
And when they were nearly dead and still hadn't damaged it, they still didn't run away? Why not?

The dice may be out to kill them, but the party members are at least accessories to the crime.

I think they just couldn't believe it was happening until it was over. The spider's poison kept draining their strength, they kept stepping into its web and by the time they actually started dying it was just too late. They were trapped and being crushed by their own clothing.

Kol Korran
2014-08-31, 07:33 AM
And then there was the tale of the player who had 3 characters die in the same session. The first was a 2nd or 3rd level barbarian that died to a lucky crit by a glaive.

Luckily, the player likes building characters, and had a rogue in reserve. He met the party before they wanted to hijack an Empire ship (This was a pirate campaign). The rogue was caught sneaking, and died to a bunch of soldiers.

The next character, a sorcerer, helped them take the ship, but another ship got on their tale, and the warmage captain launched some area damage spell. Which the sorcerer failed to save against, by 1 point, and died again.

The player never names a character unless it survives a whole session ever since.