Flame of Anor
2015-10-27, 11:32 PM
This is not my work; it's a duplicate of this (http://community.wizards.com/forum/previous-editions-general/threads/1222046) thread. Since the Wizards forums will be disappearing soon (bad form!) I wanted to preserve a few of these threads. Feel free to continue discussing the thread's topic.
(posted April 5, 2008)
I enjoy the 1001 threads, so I decided I'd make my own. I'm not sure how many of you will be able to use it, but we'll see.
For this one let's hear your best critical hit (or failure) "animations". In our games, whenever someone scores a critical hit or failure, the DM (usually me) comes up with a funny little way to describe what happened. The better the crit, the more outlandish the "animation" is.
Example: Our Fighter critted a boar for somewhere around 40+ something damage (I cannot remember how she managed that) and the boar had under 20 hit points, so the crit nicely sliced up the boar into bacon while the speed and friction from the swing fried it up, leaving a plate of cooked bacon where the pig had been.
Second Example: One of the characters, who was pretty wounded already, attacked a dragon and critically failed. The DM felt bad for him though and declared that while he still hurt himself, the dragon choked on its breath weapon while laughing and died.
Critically Failed Move Silently check: "I DON'T THINK THEY CAN HEAR ME!"
Critical Success on same check: "YOU CAN'T HEAR ME! HA-HA!" But this time they actually can't.
So that's the idea, let's hear what others you might have.
We were in a underground dwarven city, and there were 3 flying warlocks in the air waiting to blast our PC asses while we tangled with the main boss, a hamatula. DM rolls 3 natural 1s in a row for their attacks. So our NPC friend suddenly reveals her hidden moves and leaps into the air and keeps the warlocks busy, so none of them are actively blasting us while we tangle with the hamatula.
This just happened a few weeks back, the WHOLE night my one friend kept quoting that simpsons episode where they go to Japan and are in the fish factory 'Knife goes in guts come out'.
Just randomly throughout the night.
We end up tangling with a Hydra (6 heads, reg. hydra) in a swamp.
as a ranger i'm the main melee machine of the group so myself and the warforged fighter rush forward to attack. 4 other party members HIDE in a rope trick cast by the party mage. and the thief hangs back to pelt the hydra with arrows.
ok long back story now the good stuff.
My group uses a crit. hit and fumble table. (based on d100 rolls when a crit is scored).
I attack the hydra, score a crit. I roll. description reads 'slashing: disembowel enemy +1/crit dmg. modifier'
and of course my friend just looks up laughing n says 'Knife goes in... guts come out... Literally'
had us laughing for about 15 min.
and im at work and bored so this post had no purpose lol
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0090.html(x)
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0090.html(x)
Yeah, the Move Silently thing is far from original, but it's classic and we've been doing it for so long, lol. Maybe that's where I first found it, not sure.
As a side note, you know you've created something truly wonderful when people reference it (relevantly, mind you) in nearly all situations. I love Oots. http://i.imgur.com/oNzsmju.gif
There has been a few other move silently natural 1s we have come up with. Like "AAAAAACHOO!"
My druid got a natural 20 on a survival check to hunt/forage. My DM ruled I brought back a purple dragon.
One of the current players agreed to go on a quick 10-minute adventure to showcase the rules for the new player. He's lvl 4 sorcerer.
Me: You see an orc by the table, rummaging through the chest.
Sorc: I cast Scorching Ray. *rolls*
Me: You hit, roll damage.
Sorc: *rolls* 17.
Me: ...*thinking* Orcs have 5hp... *out loud* Okay, your beam hits the Orc and penetrates. He begins to glow faintly, then brighter and brighter. He's white hot! He explodes in a flurry of barbecue and gore. Congratulations. Why the **** did you cast scorching ray on a weak orc? That was more than triple his hp; the equivalent of using an exploding and flaming chainsaw on a human. WTF?
One time my half-orc ranger epicly failed a move silently check in a nobles mansion and knocked over a suit of armour that led to all the guards to come running... but then i rolled a natural 20 on a bluff check to immitate the noise of a bird knocking over the armour and flying out the window.
we then heard ' its only a bird we can sort it out in the morning'
In one of my games a night hag critically failed a save vs the stomp power when right next to a staircase. I ruled that she ended up falling down all 3 flights of stairs. I can't remember how much damage it was though.
That was more than triple his hp; the equivalent of using an exploding and flaming chainsaw on a human. WTF?
Maybe he did it cos he's a "new player" and maybe berating him for doing it wrong was not the best option open to the DM.
Also, anyone who says they wouldn't use an exploding and flaming chainsaw on a human given both the option and opportunity to do so is a frakking liar.
favorite critical fail as a dm: my happy npc band of halflings that the pc's were traveling with we playing darts in the bar with their daggers and they were all lined up perfectly one by one. each one hit the center of the hilt of the one berfore it till you see the dead center of the bullseye is blocked with a dagger blade. these daggers are flying so perfectly that they are in a perfect line from the bullseye to the halfling and is perfectly parallel to the floor. PC1 say, "i'll try a knowledge(arcana) to see if these daggers are enchanted by some sort of magic to allow them to do this." I tell him sure but its a knowledge and i'll roll it. rolled it behind the screen and it was a one. An evil and odd grin crosses my face. i tell him, "through your vast knowledge of the arcane arts you remember that its not the daggers that are keeping themselves parallel or flying so true. in fact its an army of tiny invisible acrobatic teddy bears standing in a line and making small pyramids holding each dagger in place."
my favorite critical miss: rolled one with a cross bow. confirmed with a 20. rolled an 8 for damage. DM-"You fire the bolt when all of a sudden with sneeze you notice that the bolt lodges itself up your wizard brothers ****** and come out his mouth." we were level one.
favorite critical hit: we were fighting a level ten binder at level 2 (apparently our dm is evil in thinking that a plain whistle in one room on the complete opposite side of the dungeon and a room full of docile dire bats at the room next to the entrance is obvious.) well one of the evil party members tries to seduce the binder and say that we are on his side. binder doesn't beleave so she tries to prove it by casting sleep on half the party. she being a beguiler and me being a warforged fighter and her ingame brother being the only ones up. her and her brother are sneaky sneaky so he tries to play along and puts his sword to me and says back down. my character thinks about this and goes maybe we are tring to bluff the boss hmm so he backs off. the sister then steps over to me and tries to hit me with her rapier and utterly misses. my character gets furious. completely ignoring the level 10 i tell her you are a fool and roll a nat 20 and confirmed with a natural 19 with my great sword 2d6+4+4 from power attack. roll two sixes which comes to a total of 20 then times that by two which equals 40 and she only had 12 hit points max. "after you call her an utter fool and stare coldly in her face. you cut her right down the middle cutting her perfectly in half right between the eyes and right when your sword hits the ground breaking some of the floors ancient tile all the blood in her veins explode with such excessive force the last thing you see is a red tear drip down her cheek before both halves go flying from the force of the wind that followed your blade."
One guy in my group, a half-orc barbarian, scored a crit on an -- I think it was an orc.. He (the victim) exploded in a mist of blood, and the PC got a free Cleave opportunity.
A drow archer PC I was DMing got three natural 20s (no we weren't using auto-kill rules), and dealt 16 points of damage to a 3 hp kobold standing in a tight corridor:
DM (Me): You shoot the arrow through the kobold's left eye, it bounces off the wall, goes through his right eye, bounces off another wall and lands dead center in his forehead.
My Dwarf Barbarian rolled a small string of crits, like above, but while grappling our party's(well, it was just me, the DM, and another PC) Halfling Rogue, and I tore him in half with my bare hands. This crit also led our DM to say that the crossbow bolt the Halfling hit me with earlier was poisoned and that it automatically killed me.
My crits caused a TPK. :D
in Star wars I was looking at a computer in a capitol ship that we were infiltrating. I open up the cargo and storage menu then procced to make it look like they never had what ever they did have by deleting the computers knowledge of it. I then find Air. I delete it. Warnings go off because the computer thinks there is no air. All the pasangers run to the flight bays to be mowed down by our troops that landed there.:D I know. I am SO evil.
The group's mage was hiding on Matilda's (the dragon) howdah to avoid the general melee around her. An enemy sorceror dived for cover behind the wall of half-ruined house. Low on spells, the mage tried to fire the mini balista (with which said mage was not proficient) mounted on the howdah at the sorceror before he could summon another monster. The mage's player roled a 20, followed by an 18. The damage was nearly 50 when the sorceror had 5hp left. I said the bolt missed the sorceror, took out a load-bearing wall and what was left of the house pulped the sorceror.
This was a while back, 2e I think. Our party was working its way through the hideout of a cult of magic users. While walking down a corridor, a sorceress in red jumped out of a doorway and lightninged the hall... After our initial surprise, we rolled initiative. As luck would have it, our big fighter with the big axe and my archer tied, rolling the best we could. We rushed forward to see the sorceress in the room waiting for us. The DM let us have a reaction check to see if we could do anything before she blasted us again... again, we rolled max. By straight mechanics the fighter would react a moment before me, but with the distance to cross, he had us both roll attack and damage rolls... we both crit'd for max damage... DM = http://i.imgur.com/LOrgoGM.gif
The DM described:
to Archer: you see your companion rush forward, his bounding stride carrying him across the room. His bulk blocks your view of the sorceress with her arms outstretched. You notice his body shift a little to the side with one step and let your arrow fly.
to Fighter: You see the lady standing toward the center of the room, and recognize that whatever she is about to do, is likely to hurt. You rush forward to teach this lady respect for others with the sharp end of your axe. You feel a breeze brush at your hair, and hear a strange buzz as you let the axe fall.
"The arrow slams into the sorceress' forehead, knocking it back ever so slightly before the axe descends, bisecting the arrow, the head, the body, and stops with the clang of cold steel on stone."
we were told later that she had been the bbeg of that particular dungeon adventure. The fighter and my archer each kept a half of the arrowhead as a memento of the adventure. The half arrowhead ended up become a standard for our party later. :D
Superhero game: the heroes had just about defeated the villain, so the charisma monster of the group gives a fine speech and DEMANDS his surrender (rolls really well for the speech). For drama's sake, I announce that he's going to try to activate his chronometric variation confabulator to escape, if he can resist the hero's oratory - and I roll it in front of the screen, for the first time that session.
Critical failure. Right there for everyone to see.
A pregnant pause...
"He pees his pants with fear, which shorts out his powersuit, and he faints."
Cheering erupts around the table.
THAT was fun!
Two of the best crit discriptions I've heard:
"The wolf is about to pounce on you and...explodes."
- The party's Barbarian/Druid/Beastmaster did 40 something points of damage to a wolf with about 2 hp left. Needless to say my character cast Create Water like 3 times over her head to try and get all the wolf bits off...
*sigh* "Well I hope you guys didn't want to interogate him."
- My Wilder dealt about 50 points of damage to a evil wizard with 5 hp left. All we found of him was his magic items scattered about the room.
An illustrative true-story from my Critical Hit Table webpage at http://melkot.com/mechanics/critical.html(x)
The PC's were adventuring in the WGA Falcon series. They were a small party, between 4th and 5th level on average (seriously underleveled and under-magicked for that point), and were at the stage where they were expecting an attack on the Temple of St. Cuthbert by the cult. They had planned a defensive strategy, placed all the temple forces at strategic places around and within the temple, and had split up the party with members accompanying all the major "squads". The assault began as expected, but was particularly brutal from one direction. Divided by the superior force, that squad was heavily damaged, some of whom fell back, others just fell. The party's thief (Ted Little's favorite character), a halfling with limited hit points to start with, had been heavily damaged and made a run for it into the temple proper. Alone. The squad leader of the attacking force went after the thief, intent on stopping him before he could reach any other defenders. Ted was horrified! His heavily wounded halfling thief stumbling down the temple's central aisle, no help in sight, being run down by a hulking 7th level human fighter that barely had a scratch on him, with long sword in one hand and a loaded crossbow in the other! Suddenly a twang... intense pain... and a failed dexterity check sent Ted's character tumbling, a crossbow bolt in his leg and 4 hit points left on his sheet. The fighter closing on the sprawled halfling tossed the crossbow aside and gripped his long sword with both hands raising it above his head as he ran forwards... 20 feet... 15 feet... The halfling, lying helpless on the ground and fully expecting to die that round threw his last throwing star out of defiant desperation. A weapon that in my campaign does 1d4 damage and could hardly stop the 60 hp walking tank bearing down on him. Ted rolled.... perfect 20!... a few more rolls (on my part - I always roll the critical hit stuff) behind the screen and with Ted shaking with anticipation I announce (and I quote)...
"You see in seeming haze-filled slow motion as your throwing star flies toward the fighter bearing down on you... you hear a dull 'thunk' as it digs deep into his forehead! A look of utter shock flashes across his face in the split second it takes him to realise that his life will be over before he hits the ground. His momentum carries him forward, his 200 lb body falling right on top you. You are now face to face, and see a tiny stream of blood running down his still face from your imbedded weapon."
I had rolled a critical hit, a 6 on the severity scale, and the head as the location of the hit. The cheers were deafening! The excitement and relief immeasurable. To this day, Ted still talks about that single attack roll. Events like that should be rare.
Denis, aka "Maldin"
Maldin's Greyhawk http://melkot.com(x)
Loads of edition-independent Greyhawk goodness... maps, mysteries, magic, mechanics, and more!
The two most memorable crits I can think of were done by the party's warmage and my arcane archer.
The first one was in a tavern, when the party was attacked by some cyric followers intent on creating a diversion to stage a bigger coup in another part of the city. Bad luck for the cleric leading the assault, as the (at that point rather grumpy) warmage took a look, took aim and critted him with a next to maximum damage scorching ray. Essentially he blew the cleric and a large part of the tavern's backside wall into the nearby harbor...
The second one was against some kind of devil BBEG in an underground complex. After some rounds of general meele and crappy rolls on my side the BBEG flew up into the air to reach his escape route (or maybe get reinforcements, not sure). Finally my archer got a clear shot and tried a rapid shot with the last few silver-tippd arrows I had.
To make it short, two of three arrows hit and both critted for a ****load of damage.
I literally nailed the BBEG to the wall, much to the chagrin of our DM! :D
Sadly he turned to dust before we could get him down and loot him... http://i.imgur.com/EO8Dh7V.gif
I usually slowmo the game when players score criticals. For example, this happened during my last session. The guys were fighting a Vrock, it was wounded badly, but only the rogue was left standing. He took my luck dice and scored a critical hit with his rapier:
"As the birdlike demon snaps it's jaw at you, you stab forth your rapier, piercing it's right eye. The rapier sinks down into the creature's head and it suddenly stops moving. For a moment, you look each other in the eyes, and the monster can't seem to grasp how a tiny creature could have wounded it so mortally. Then its eye turns up and it slumps down onto the stone floor, while letting out it's dying breath it dissapears into a cloud of smoke."
In a game I was in, there was a halfling rogue, a human duskblade (me), and a human swashbuckler. Well the swashbuckler said for us to not kill this doorman (Hobgoblin, I think) so we could pump him for information. In the same round she said that, she missed with her rapier, but scored a crit with her kukri. The description went something like this:
The [hobgoblin] manages to dodge your rapier blade, but his belly is opened on the backswing by the kukri, spilling his guts for all to see. He collapses in a heap, dead.
The swashbuckler had forgotten to take the penalty to try to deal subdual damage and killed the guy she just said not to.
This wasn't in D&D. A player playing a fire elemental was in a duel with a human controlling an air elemental through force, and fending him off well. After a fluke advantage(the fire elemental had put about half the sewers into the air, which is also why this was a duel. Nobody that didn't have an air elemental around their head was going to be out there, and the fire elemental forced the human to overexert with the air elemental, and he went into a coughing spurt). the air elemental revealed that he would turn on the human if he was able to regain control of himself, and that he was controlled in this little gem on an amulet. So the fire elemental tries to hit the gem next turn, and rolls maximum to hit, while the human is still coughing, and rolls poorly on defense. In this system, a better hit leads to higher damage, and the person usually wins by 1 or 2. In all the elemental won the hit with an 8 difference. So the gem just blows up, and sends the human flying into the air. At which point the air elemental took out 4 years of continued captivity.
This was right before the water elemental managed to start a drug war in the sewers with crossbows, which eventually escalated to greek fire, then fire comes spewing out of every grate in the entire city, although the earth elemental was responsible for getting him to the sewers in the first place, although not for being a gullible moron that started with both hallucinogenic dealers shooting each other and everyone else scrambling over the hallucinogenics. This was all to poison someone.
We were in a war campaign, and couldnt have been above level 5 or 6. Our DM had, in order to balance out the ridiculously hard enemies we fought, given us all magical equipment he designed himself. Our Goliath Cleric had a BIG hammer that none of us, even the PC wielding it, new what it did. Well, he crits with it while surrounded by a mass of people. The poor human who got hit with the initial damage (dont remember the exact number; probly 40+) exploded, and about 10 or 20 more went flying back. It was pretty epic at the time.
Later, our Minotaur Druid critted against a Red Dragon with a Greataxe. The DM had misjudged the CR, and it had been looking like the Druid and the Warforged Fighter with him were dead, until he sliced the Dragon's head off in one swing. He then grabbed the thing by the tail and dragged its corpse back to our camp a couple miles away. lol
(posted April 5, 2008)
I enjoy the 1001 threads, so I decided I'd make my own. I'm not sure how many of you will be able to use it, but we'll see.
For this one let's hear your best critical hit (or failure) "animations". In our games, whenever someone scores a critical hit or failure, the DM (usually me) comes up with a funny little way to describe what happened. The better the crit, the more outlandish the "animation" is.
Example: Our Fighter critted a boar for somewhere around 40+ something damage (I cannot remember how she managed that) and the boar had under 20 hit points, so the crit nicely sliced up the boar into bacon while the speed and friction from the swing fried it up, leaving a plate of cooked bacon where the pig had been.
Second Example: One of the characters, who was pretty wounded already, attacked a dragon and critically failed. The DM felt bad for him though and declared that while he still hurt himself, the dragon choked on its breath weapon while laughing and died.
Critically Failed Move Silently check: "I DON'T THINK THEY CAN HEAR ME!"
Critical Success on same check: "YOU CAN'T HEAR ME! HA-HA!" But this time they actually can't.
So that's the idea, let's hear what others you might have.
We were in a underground dwarven city, and there were 3 flying warlocks in the air waiting to blast our PC asses while we tangled with the main boss, a hamatula. DM rolls 3 natural 1s in a row for their attacks. So our NPC friend suddenly reveals her hidden moves and leaps into the air and keeps the warlocks busy, so none of them are actively blasting us while we tangle with the hamatula.
This just happened a few weeks back, the WHOLE night my one friend kept quoting that simpsons episode where they go to Japan and are in the fish factory 'Knife goes in guts come out'.
Just randomly throughout the night.
We end up tangling with a Hydra (6 heads, reg. hydra) in a swamp.
as a ranger i'm the main melee machine of the group so myself and the warforged fighter rush forward to attack. 4 other party members HIDE in a rope trick cast by the party mage. and the thief hangs back to pelt the hydra with arrows.
ok long back story now the good stuff.
My group uses a crit. hit and fumble table. (based on d100 rolls when a crit is scored).
I attack the hydra, score a crit. I roll. description reads 'slashing: disembowel enemy +1/crit dmg. modifier'
and of course my friend just looks up laughing n says 'Knife goes in... guts come out... Literally'
had us laughing for about 15 min.
and im at work and bored so this post had no purpose lol
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0090.html(x)
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0090.html(x)
Yeah, the Move Silently thing is far from original, but it's classic and we've been doing it for so long, lol. Maybe that's where I first found it, not sure.
As a side note, you know you've created something truly wonderful when people reference it (relevantly, mind you) in nearly all situations. I love Oots. http://i.imgur.com/oNzsmju.gif
There has been a few other move silently natural 1s we have come up with. Like "AAAAAACHOO!"
My druid got a natural 20 on a survival check to hunt/forage. My DM ruled I brought back a purple dragon.
One of the current players agreed to go on a quick 10-minute adventure to showcase the rules for the new player. He's lvl 4 sorcerer.
Me: You see an orc by the table, rummaging through the chest.
Sorc: I cast Scorching Ray. *rolls*
Me: You hit, roll damage.
Sorc: *rolls* 17.
Me: ...*thinking* Orcs have 5hp... *out loud* Okay, your beam hits the Orc and penetrates. He begins to glow faintly, then brighter and brighter. He's white hot! He explodes in a flurry of barbecue and gore. Congratulations. Why the **** did you cast scorching ray on a weak orc? That was more than triple his hp; the equivalent of using an exploding and flaming chainsaw on a human. WTF?
One time my half-orc ranger epicly failed a move silently check in a nobles mansion and knocked over a suit of armour that led to all the guards to come running... but then i rolled a natural 20 on a bluff check to immitate the noise of a bird knocking over the armour and flying out the window.
we then heard ' its only a bird we can sort it out in the morning'
In one of my games a night hag critically failed a save vs the stomp power when right next to a staircase. I ruled that she ended up falling down all 3 flights of stairs. I can't remember how much damage it was though.
That was more than triple his hp; the equivalent of using an exploding and flaming chainsaw on a human. WTF?
Maybe he did it cos he's a "new player" and maybe berating him for doing it wrong was not the best option open to the DM.
Also, anyone who says they wouldn't use an exploding and flaming chainsaw on a human given both the option and opportunity to do so is a frakking liar.
favorite critical fail as a dm: my happy npc band of halflings that the pc's were traveling with we playing darts in the bar with their daggers and they were all lined up perfectly one by one. each one hit the center of the hilt of the one berfore it till you see the dead center of the bullseye is blocked with a dagger blade. these daggers are flying so perfectly that they are in a perfect line from the bullseye to the halfling and is perfectly parallel to the floor. PC1 say, "i'll try a knowledge(arcana) to see if these daggers are enchanted by some sort of magic to allow them to do this." I tell him sure but its a knowledge and i'll roll it. rolled it behind the screen and it was a one. An evil and odd grin crosses my face. i tell him, "through your vast knowledge of the arcane arts you remember that its not the daggers that are keeping themselves parallel or flying so true. in fact its an army of tiny invisible acrobatic teddy bears standing in a line and making small pyramids holding each dagger in place."
my favorite critical miss: rolled one with a cross bow. confirmed with a 20. rolled an 8 for damage. DM-"You fire the bolt when all of a sudden with sneeze you notice that the bolt lodges itself up your wizard brothers ****** and come out his mouth." we were level one.
favorite critical hit: we were fighting a level ten binder at level 2 (apparently our dm is evil in thinking that a plain whistle in one room on the complete opposite side of the dungeon and a room full of docile dire bats at the room next to the entrance is obvious.) well one of the evil party members tries to seduce the binder and say that we are on his side. binder doesn't beleave so she tries to prove it by casting sleep on half the party. she being a beguiler and me being a warforged fighter and her ingame brother being the only ones up. her and her brother are sneaky sneaky so he tries to play along and puts his sword to me and says back down. my character thinks about this and goes maybe we are tring to bluff the boss hmm so he backs off. the sister then steps over to me and tries to hit me with her rapier and utterly misses. my character gets furious. completely ignoring the level 10 i tell her you are a fool and roll a nat 20 and confirmed with a natural 19 with my great sword 2d6+4+4 from power attack. roll two sixes which comes to a total of 20 then times that by two which equals 40 and she only had 12 hit points max. "after you call her an utter fool and stare coldly in her face. you cut her right down the middle cutting her perfectly in half right between the eyes and right when your sword hits the ground breaking some of the floors ancient tile all the blood in her veins explode with such excessive force the last thing you see is a red tear drip down her cheek before both halves go flying from the force of the wind that followed your blade."
One guy in my group, a half-orc barbarian, scored a crit on an -- I think it was an orc.. He (the victim) exploded in a mist of blood, and the PC got a free Cleave opportunity.
A drow archer PC I was DMing got three natural 20s (no we weren't using auto-kill rules), and dealt 16 points of damage to a 3 hp kobold standing in a tight corridor:
DM (Me): You shoot the arrow through the kobold's left eye, it bounces off the wall, goes through his right eye, bounces off another wall and lands dead center in his forehead.
My Dwarf Barbarian rolled a small string of crits, like above, but while grappling our party's(well, it was just me, the DM, and another PC) Halfling Rogue, and I tore him in half with my bare hands. This crit also led our DM to say that the crossbow bolt the Halfling hit me with earlier was poisoned and that it automatically killed me.
My crits caused a TPK. :D
in Star wars I was looking at a computer in a capitol ship that we were infiltrating. I open up the cargo and storage menu then procced to make it look like they never had what ever they did have by deleting the computers knowledge of it. I then find Air. I delete it. Warnings go off because the computer thinks there is no air. All the pasangers run to the flight bays to be mowed down by our troops that landed there.:D I know. I am SO evil.
The group's mage was hiding on Matilda's (the dragon) howdah to avoid the general melee around her. An enemy sorceror dived for cover behind the wall of half-ruined house. Low on spells, the mage tried to fire the mini balista (with which said mage was not proficient) mounted on the howdah at the sorceror before he could summon another monster. The mage's player roled a 20, followed by an 18. The damage was nearly 50 when the sorceror had 5hp left. I said the bolt missed the sorceror, took out a load-bearing wall and what was left of the house pulped the sorceror.
This was a while back, 2e I think. Our party was working its way through the hideout of a cult of magic users. While walking down a corridor, a sorceress in red jumped out of a doorway and lightninged the hall... After our initial surprise, we rolled initiative. As luck would have it, our big fighter with the big axe and my archer tied, rolling the best we could. We rushed forward to see the sorceress in the room waiting for us. The DM let us have a reaction check to see if we could do anything before she blasted us again... again, we rolled max. By straight mechanics the fighter would react a moment before me, but with the distance to cross, he had us both roll attack and damage rolls... we both crit'd for max damage... DM = http://i.imgur.com/LOrgoGM.gif
The DM described:
to Archer: you see your companion rush forward, his bounding stride carrying him across the room. His bulk blocks your view of the sorceress with her arms outstretched. You notice his body shift a little to the side with one step and let your arrow fly.
to Fighter: You see the lady standing toward the center of the room, and recognize that whatever she is about to do, is likely to hurt. You rush forward to teach this lady respect for others with the sharp end of your axe. You feel a breeze brush at your hair, and hear a strange buzz as you let the axe fall.
"The arrow slams into the sorceress' forehead, knocking it back ever so slightly before the axe descends, bisecting the arrow, the head, the body, and stops with the clang of cold steel on stone."
we were told later that she had been the bbeg of that particular dungeon adventure. The fighter and my archer each kept a half of the arrowhead as a memento of the adventure. The half arrowhead ended up become a standard for our party later. :D
Superhero game: the heroes had just about defeated the villain, so the charisma monster of the group gives a fine speech and DEMANDS his surrender (rolls really well for the speech). For drama's sake, I announce that he's going to try to activate his chronometric variation confabulator to escape, if he can resist the hero's oratory - and I roll it in front of the screen, for the first time that session.
Critical failure. Right there for everyone to see.
A pregnant pause...
"He pees his pants with fear, which shorts out his powersuit, and he faints."
Cheering erupts around the table.
THAT was fun!
Two of the best crit discriptions I've heard:
"The wolf is about to pounce on you and...explodes."
- The party's Barbarian/Druid/Beastmaster did 40 something points of damage to a wolf with about 2 hp left. Needless to say my character cast Create Water like 3 times over her head to try and get all the wolf bits off...
*sigh* "Well I hope you guys didn't want to interogate him."
- My Wilder dealt about 50 points of damage to a evil wizard with 5 hp left. All we found of him was his magic items scattered about the room.
An illustrative true-story from my Critical Hit Table webpage at http://melkot.com/mechanics/critical.html(x)
The PC's were adventuring in the WGA Falcon series. They were a small party, between 4th and 5th level on average (seriously underleveled and under-magicked for that point), and were at the stage where they were expecting an attack on the Temple of St. Cuthbert by the cult. They had planned a defensive strategy, placed all the temple forces at strategic places around and within the temple, and had split up the party with members accompanying all the major "squads". The assault began as expected, but was particularly brutal from one direction. Divided by the superior force, that squad was heavily damaged, some of whom fell back, others just fell. The party's thief (Ted Little's favorite character), a halfling with limited hit points to start with, had been heavily damaged and made a run for it into the temple proper. Alone. The squad leader of the attacking force went after the thief, intent on stopping him before he could reach any other defenders. Ted was horrified! His heavily wounded halfling thief stumbling down the temple's central aisle, no help in sight, being run down by a hulking 7th level human fighter that barely had a scratch on him, with long sword in one hand and a loaded crossbow in the other! Suddenly a twang... intense pain... and a failed dexterity check sent Ted's character tumbling, a crossbow bolt in his leg and 4 hit points left on his sheet. The fighter closing on the sprawled halfling tossed the crossbow aside and gripped his long sword with both hands raising it above his head as he ran forwards... 20 feet... 15 feet... The halfling, lying helpless on the ground and fully expecting to die that round threw his last throwing star out of defiant desperation. A weapon that in my campaign does 1d4 damage and could hardly stop the 60 hp walking tank bearing down on him. Ted rolled.... perfect 20!... a few more rolls (on my part - I always roll the critical hit stuff) behind the screen and with Ted shaking with anticipation I announce (and I quote)...
"You see in seeming haze-filled slow motion as your throwing star flies toward the fighter bearing down on you... you hear a dull 'thunk' as it digs deep into his forehead! A look of utter shock flashes across his face in the split second it takes him to realise that his life will be over before he hits the ground. His momentum carries him forward, his 200 lb body falling right on top you. You are now face to face, and see a tiny stream of blood running down his still face from your imbedded weapon."
I had rolled a critical hit, a 6 on the severity scale, and the head as the location of the hit. The cheers were deafening! The excitement and relief immeasurable. To this day, Ted still talks about that single attack roll. Events like that should be rare.
Denis, aka "Maldin"
Maldin's Greyhawk http://melkot.com(x)
Loads of edition-independent Greyhawk goodness... maps, mysteries, magic, mechanics, and more!
The two most memorable crits I can think of were done by the party's warmage and my arcane archer.
The first one was in a tavern, when the party was attacked by some cyric followers intent on creating a diversion to stage a bigger coup in another part of the city. Bad luck for the cleric leading the assault, as the (at that point rather grumpy) warmage took a look, took aim and critted him with a next to maximum damage scorching ray. Essentially he blew the cleric and a large part of the tavern's backside wall into the nearby harbor...
The second one was against some kind of devil BBEG in an underground complex. After some rounds of general meele and crappy rolls on my side the BBEG flew up into the air to reach his escape route (or maybe get reinforcements, not sure). Finally my archer got a clear shot and tried a rapid shot with the last few silver-tippd arrows I had.
To make it short, two of three arrows hit and both critted for a ****load of damage.
I literally nailed the BBEG to the wall, much to the chagrin of our DM! :D
Sadly he turned to dust before we could get him down and loot him... http://i.imgur.com/EO8Dh7V.gif
I usually slowmo the game when players score criticals. For example, this happened during my last session. The guys were fighting a Vrock, it was wounded badly, but only the rogue was left standing. He took my luck dice and scored a critical hit with his rapier:
"As the birdlike demon snaps it's jaw at you, you stab forth your rapier, piercing it's right eye. The rapier sinks down into the creature's head and it suddenly stops moving. For a moment, you look each other in the eyes, and the monster can't seem to grasp how a tiny creature could have wounded it so mortally. Then its eye turns up and it slumps down onto the stone floor, while letting out it's dying breath it dissapears into a cloud of smoke."
In a game I was in, there was a halfling rogue, a human duskblade (me), and a human swashbuckler. Well the swashbuckler said for us to not kill this doorman (Hobgoblin, I think) so we could pump him for information. In the same round she said that, she missed with her rapier, but scored a crit with her kukri. The description went something like this:
The [hobgoblin] manages to dodge your rapier blade, but his belly is opened on the backswing by the kukri, spilling his guts for all to see. He collapses in a heap, dead.
The swashbuckler had forgotten to take the penalty to try to deal subdual damage and killed the guy she just said not to.
This wasn't in D&D. A player playing a fire elemental was in a duel with a human controlling an air elemental through force, and fending him off well. After a fluke advantage(the fire elemental had put about half the sewers into the air, which is also why this was a duel. Nobody that didn't have an air elemental around their head was going to be out there, and the fire elemental forced the human to overexert with the air elemental, and he went into a coughing spurt). the air elemental revealed that he would turn on the human if he was able to regain control of himself, and that he was controlled in this little gem on an amulet. So the fire elemental tries to hit the gem next turn, and rolls maximum to hit, while the human is still coughing, and rolls poorly on defense. In this system, a better hit leads to higher damage, and the person usually wins by 1 or 2. In all the elemental won the hit with an 8 difference. So the gem just blows up, and sends the human flying into the air. At which point the air elemental took out 4 years of continued captivity.
This was right before the water elemental managed to start a drug war in the sewers with crossbows, which eventually escalated to greek fire, then fire comes spewing out of every grate in the entire city, although the earth elemental was responsible for getting him to the sewers in the first place, although not for being a gullible moron that started with both hallucinogenic dealers shooting each other and everyone else scrambling over the hallucinogenics. This was all to poison someone.
We were in a war campaign, and couldnt have been above level 5 or 6. Our DM had, in order to balance out the ridiculously hard enemies we fought, given us all magical equipment he designed himself. Our Goliath Cleric had a BIG hammer that none of us, even the PC wielding it, new what it did. Well, he crits with it while surrounded by a mass of people. The poor human who got hit with the initial damage (dont remember the exact number; probly 40+) exploded, and about 10 or 20 more went flying back. It was pretty epic at the time.
Later, our Minotaur Druid critted against a Red Dragon with a Greataxe. The DM had misjudged the CR, and it had been looking like the Druid and the Warforged Fighter with him were dead, until he sliced the Dragon's head off in one swing. He then grabbed the thing by the tail and dragged its corpse back to our camp a couple miles away. lol