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Bartmanhomer
2020-04-07, 07:15 PM
What were your luckiest moments in any RPG that you've played. If can be combat, non-combat or anything else in between. :smile:

Jay R
2020-04-07, 11:20 PM
It was near the end of a timed D&D tournament, and our team had not yet found the quest item. (This was original D&D, in 1978.) We were hurrying, trying to gain a lot of xps (which included gold value).

The tourney designers had added a very basic critical kill rule. If you rolled a natural twenty, you then rolled a d8. If it came up 8, the blow was an instant kill.

We were hurrying, attempting to play with extreme precision and discipline.

A balrog appeared in the hall in front of us. (In original D&D, this wasn't a demon. It was a generic 10 HD monster.)

Don, running our fighter, said, "I slice through him, and we keep going, running between the two falling halves of balrog." He rolled a d20 and a d8 six feet down the table, where they stopped in front of the DM.

The DM stopped, looked at them, paused for a moment, and quietly said, "You keep going, running between the two falling halves of balrog."

We managed two or three encounters after that, in the last three or four minutes.

[Incidentally, my hobbit thief stopped to pick up the balrog's whip. The 2 copper pieces it was worth put us over the top in total experience points, so we won the tourney.]

The Fury
2020-04-08, 02:46 AM
The best I can think of is when a boss used an AoE insta-death spell and managed to get most of the party in the effected area. He also got one of his stronger minions, (an ilithid that specialized in grappling,) in the area. Pretty clearly, the boss was banking on his ilithid being able to make the save and was sure that at least one of the player characters would fail. As it turned out, all of the player characters survived and the ilithid was the only one killed by the spell. This was only the first round as well, so the overall encounter ended up being a lot easier than planned.

Other than that, my luck tends to not be very good. There was a moment where I managed to outwit a player who is much smarter than me in a PvP scenario, but I'm not sure that I'd consider that luck.

Quertus
2020-04-08, 05:15 AM
Ooh, I've answered this before! Let's see what my senile mind remembers, without trying to look it up. Hmmm…

Well, there was the time that my brother decided to take a brand new 1st level character and go dragon hunting. His character shops around for a (cross?)bow, ammo, poison, and rumors of a dragon, and heads out. Roll for chance that the dragon is asleep? It is. (Roll move silently? Success.) Roll to hit? Success. Roll save vs poison? Fail. The dragon dies in its sleep. IIRC, the XP let him level up to 7th level (house rules - no leveling cap). But he didn't stop there, oh no. He went shopping for more poison, and more rumors of dragons. He eventually found another rumor (living off the first dragon's treasure hoard, he had time, and ability to travel), and set out. Roll for chance that the dragon is asleep? It is. (Roll move silently? Success.) Roll to hit? Success. Roll save vs poison? Fail. The second dragon dies in its sleep, too. My brother retired the character.

Or the time that my brother tried to assassinate something that shouldn't have been a valid target, and I said, "fine. If you roll 3 natural 20s in a row, I'll let it work". Of course, my brother proceeded to do just that. So, 1-in-8,000 odds on that one.

There was the time that an NPC Wizard left a maggot-ridden corpse around to use a maggot as the initial target for their Chain-metamagic'd spell, and the maggot actually made its save, protecting the party from being hit by the chain spell effects.

There was the time that Raymond, my telepathic vampire (functionally, an Illithid Savant about a decade before such was published) decided to help out the party's (and especially his own) benefactor, an NPC godling. Raymond asked what it wanted, and was told that it wanted to succeed its "rite of passage" of connecting to the divine telepathic network; the side effects of failure were death. So, a) with an overly literal interpretation of the results of both failure and Raymond's undead state, Raymond considered himself an ideal candidate to investigate; b) Raymond had just picked up a special probability manipulation "power" (really just the result of boosting his intelligence in this system) that gave him a +1% to d100 rolls, which turned out to be important because c) he proceeded to roll a 99 - critical success - on attempting to probe the hypothetical divine telepathic network, to learn how it worked / what would be necessary to connect sometime to it. Evaluating what he saw, and believing himself technically theoretically capable, Raymond powered up, and attempted to make the connection. 100 - critical success! So, something that should have only had a 1-in-10,000 chance of success, with likely fatal results for failure, Raymond succeeded first try. Of course, this was, tactically, a bad thing, as we lost the aid of our super powerful NPC. No regrets, though.

There was this time when I rolled straight 1's for HP (for Lt. Daryl Fontaine, a Cleric of Ao (who does not grand spells)) something like 1-in-a-billion odds on that one.

Ikou, the Valiant Hero, was a generally able but lackluster character. However, whenever he faced a "boss" monster, he would invariably a) win initiative, and b) score critical hits, c) generally defeating the boss before it got a turn. Ikou was also lucky enough to survive drawing from a Deck of Many Things (getting the services of a 4th level knight, a valiant and beautiful elf girl whose name I have sadly forgotten, and some wishes), and surviving using multiple wishes (wishing to be instantly and accurately recognized by all sentient beings, and for said knight to be immortal).

In the "system of fail", WHFRPG, where your average stat was around 30, and that was your % chance to succeed a roll, Darian the Grey, Norseman mutant and cultist of Tzeentch (mechanically; technically, he was closer to "chaos united"), not only told a lengthy series of lies to an imperial investigator, he even started delivering beastman corpses to get in good with them. He also rolled on the d1000 Table of Doom™ mutation table, and got the 996-1000 "invent your own". After much deliberation about fun and game balance, I decided to go with Darian having the ability to sense and identify mutations, although he would turn "transparent rainbow" while the ability was active. He was also known for "teddy bear armor", because he bought… I forget the Warhammer term for "lucky tokens"… styled them as teddy bears, and used them to negate critical hits on himself.

So, offhand, nothing that fulfills all of a) something I rolled myself b) that one would call good luck, and c) that I can calculate the probability for.

Guizonde
2020-04-08, 07:01 AM
two different times, both involving crits (natural 10's and 20's respectively).

so, we're in a tank in a totally-not-a-dark-heresy system, and we're driving pelle-mêle to get away from a horde of very angry velociraptors. we stumble upon what can only be described as a building-sized mound of meat and tentacles. not a cool place to be. i'm manning the machine gun, and i roll to hit. natural 1, meaning critical success. it equals to dishing out 9 damage dice. 8 of them are critical 10's, meaning i have to confirm my hit. i do. i reroll the 8, 8 tens. i reroll and stack the damage. 6 tens. i roll damage and add again. i keep doing that, ending up at i think 257 wounds on the monster. i basically drew a tank-sized hole in the thing in one salvo. the dm was too flabbergasted at my luck to be angry.

second time, playing pathfinder. our oracle gets kidnapped in what boils down to a cutscene. not knowing that, i roll acrobatics to catch up by wall-jumping (pretty much so i can keep up while keeping an eye on the kidnapper). i rolled 5 20's in a row, to the point where the dm just said "stop, she's getting kidnapped and that's it. you followed her to a port warehouse. now wait for the group and quit rolling so well!" our monk who's plagued by bad rolls was crying in the corner at my luck.

just to be clear, for the first, i had borrowed all but 2 dice since i don't own 9 d10's, and i rolled openly in the middle of a yahtzee board for the second. i still can't believe my luck. no weighted dice, just one in a zillion chance.

farothel
2020-04-08, 08:36 AM
We were playing Vampire Dark Ages with the secondary party (we each have 2 characters of different XP levels, one group is the childes of the other (with nobody playing his own childe)). We were in Sevilla and there we had to stop a demon from being summoned into the body of a 4th generation Gangrel (giving said demon access to both his and the Gangrel's powers, not something you want). We managed to get some assistance from local groups, but the bad guys were running interference as well and it all came down to a mass battle.

While my coterie members were fighting the bad guys, my character (a true Brujah thief and absolutely not good in combat) couldn't do much to help. But in the middle of the square we were fighting in, the head bad guy was doing the ritual to summon said demon while holding a cup with blood in. This was quite important as we actually had been tracking the theft of this cup out of a cathedral (the cup had some magical powers of its own and was needed). So my thief went into Obfuscate, sneaked through the battle (succeeding only because people were fighting and not paying attention to others) to the head bad guy (who was pre-occupied with the ritual). There he snatched the cup out of the bad Guy's hands and with his potence power crushed it.

That interupted the ritual and won us the day (we still spend some time mopping up the bad guys). The fun part was the way we did it.

Me: I go into Obfuscate and sneak towards the summoner.
GM: OK, you can do that as they are not paying attention to you.
Me: I grab the cup (rolls legerdemain, which I have all but maxed).
GM: you grab the cup. The cult leader looks around and sees you.
Me: I crush the cup with potence
GM: (Looks at his notes). Well, that stops the ritual.
rest of the party: (characters all quite heavily wounded by then. Look at me and GM): That's it???
GM: basically, yes (goes in long explanation on how to stop this ritual, either by killing the head summoner or by disturbing them, of which removing the cup is one of the options).

Quertus
2020-04-08, 12:44 PM
How about…

This one time, in WoD Mage, I tried to do something, and the storyteller responded, "diff 10". Now, for those of you who don't know, the rules (in that edition) say that that translates to "roll a number of d10s (usually a pool of somewhere between 1-10 of them) based on what ability you are using; results of the difficulty or higher on any given die add successes; results of 1 subtract successes". And we were using a variant rule that, if you roll a 10, you can not only count the success, but can also roll an additional die if you want. Next tidbit: this was a magick (sic) roll, where a starting character can get a max of 3 dice, and it's prohibitively expensive to increase that with XP. I thought for a moment, made some notes, grabbed my dice, and rolled. And rolled. "6 successes", I announced. And I couldn't tell you the exact odds of actually pulling that off (only that it's at least slightly better than "one in a million"), even before adding in the complications to the math specific to how he expended resources to make the roll easier (which is something that he's only done twice in his career).

Actually, the other time that he expended resources was also a bit of a probability fluke. So, an angel told him to kill his friend. His friend took off running. Shrug. Sounded like either his friend didn't trust him, or knew that he had just cause to fear divine punishment. So, he said a quick prayer, pulled out his Saturday night special (purely as a coincidence), spent resources to lower the difficulty down to (if I'm doing the math right) 3, and rolled his at that point mighty 5 dice for magick (sic). 0 successes. Very fortunate, as the angel then backpedaled, was all like, "you passed the test", quoted scripture, and was never heard from again. But I couldn't give you exact odds on that one, either (although, if you ignore the "reroll 10s" rule, I think it should be calculable, and better than one-in-100,000 odds).

Telok
2020-04-08, 07:57 PM
I was running a DtD40K7e game, the players decided to try space piracy. On a molasses smuggler, at dock, in Sigil.

The party got on board and ran around slaughtering crew on their way to the bridge. That took several minutes. About half way through the captain fired up a data-slate and live streamed security camera footage and his last stand against the party, to the police and the dock owner. Then the party dickered long enough with the dock owner (who was keeping blast doors and the elevator locked down) for the police to arrive in force.

Later, for the court scenes, I had the players do opposing sides at each trial. Who ever was on trial got to roll for themselves and their lawyer, the other players got a lawyer stat block and a list of charges+evidence and played prosecution. It worked wonderfully. Rolling something like 6d10, keep best 3, 10s explode, the prosecution players would get 50 to 80 rolls for no good reason. Defense kept rolling in the 20s. They started throwing the guy who missed game under the bus to save themselves (he moved away two week later so it worked out ok).

I put them in a penal battalion with exploding collars and sent them on a deep rescue mission in Carceri.

Ninjadeadbeard
2020-04-08, 10:13 PM
We were playing Orzhov tax collectors (this was back around early Pathfinder btw), using a 3.5 modified ruleset called Trailblazer. We got interrupted by Boros Legion attacking our tax base, and had to fight our way out through a thirty story apartment block. A highlight of the battle was when I summoned a swarm of zombies (ex-Boros members :smallwink:) and had them grab hold of the attackers, then leap to their deaths out of the holes their swat teams were putting in the building.

We fought our way down to the street level, where... an Angel stopped us. Hoo boy. Bad times ahead. We fled back into the building, using smoke to cover our escape. The whole party, plus NPC allies, got ready to attack the Angel as it came back into the building. It was quite sure of victory, and with good reason. We were all level 8. It was an epic-level threat. This was supposed to be a wipeout.

But then, the fighter had an idea. Due to Boros firebombing the place, the bottom dozen or so stories had been gutted. Meaning, with a good climb check, he was able to crawl up to 40ft above the door. When the angel came in, he dropped down on her, swinging his magical flail. His player rolled...

Critical Hit! On the floor, so it didn't count. Rats.

Rolls again... ANOTHER CRIT!!! Off the table again.

So, he rolls again. And he rolls a crit, again. But, this time it's on the table. The DM calls for a confirmation.

And he rolls another crit. It was... beautiful.

The fighter then added all his little buffs and bonuses, and threw all of his "Hero Points" into the hit as bonus damage (Trailblazer was fun).

One Hit KO. The angel drops down to some ludicrous negative number. And just to make sure, my sorcerer dropped a magic missile on it as a double-tap. We beat an immortal, and caused the Boros legion to fall back in disarray. A good day's work, all things considered.

Bartmanhomer
2020-04-08, 10:22 PM
We were playing Orzhov tax collectors (this was back around early Pathfinder btw), using a 3.5 modified ruleset called Trailblazer. We got interrupted by Boros Legion attacking our tax base, and had to fight our way out through a thirty story apartment block. A highlight of the battle was when I summoned a swarm of zombies (ex-Boros members :smallwink:) and had them grab hold of the attackers, then leap to their deaths out of the holes their swat teams were putting in the building.

We fought our way down to the street level, where... an Angel stopped us. Hoo boy. Bad times ahead. We fled back into the building, using smoke to cover our escape. The whole party, plus NPC allies, got ready to attack the Angel as it came back into the building. It was quite sure of victory, and with good reason. We were all level 8. It was an epic-level threat. This was supposed to be a wipeout.

But then, the fighter had an idea. Due to Boros firebombing the place, the bottom dozen or so stories had been gutted. Meaning, with a good climb check, he was able to crawl up to 40ft above the door. When the angel came in, he dropped down on her, swinging his magical flail. His player rolled...

Critical Hit! On the floor, so it didn't count. Rats.

Rolls again... ANOTHER CRIT!!! Off the table again.

So, he rolls again. And he rolls a crit, again. But, this time it's on the table. The DM calls for a confirmation.

And he rolls another crit. It was... beautiful.

The fighter then added all his little buffs and bonuses, and threw all of his "Hero Points" into the hit as bonus damage (Trailblazer was fun).

One Hit KO. The angel drops down to some ludicrous negative number. And just to make sure, my sorcerer dropped a magic missile on it as a double-tap. We beat an immortal, and caused the Boros legion to fall back in disarray. A good day's work, all things considered.

Wow that's a lot of critical hits. :eek:

Bulhakov
2020-04-09, 05:46 PM
It was one of my first Vampire the Masquerade games in which I was the GM.
I had a nifty plan of getting the party captured by an evil corporation that started hunting newbie vampires for research purposes.
Everything was going smoothly, almost all of the party was immobilized by a mercenary team with liquid nitrogen "freezethrowers". Until one character decides "you're not taking me alive!" and attempts to blow himself up with a grenade. Luckily he throws all 1s. I ruled the grenade rolled into a storm drain and the railroading proceeded as planned.

Ninjadeadbeard
2020-04-15, 04:53 AM
Wow that's a lot of critical hits. :eek:

It was a once-in-a-lifetime sort of thing. Never seen luck like that before or since. Just... crits, man... :smalleek:

OnceIWasABard
2020-04-16, 10:27 PM
Mind Flayer had the barbarian grappled and was directly after me in initiative. Luckily I was hidden, and managed to roll a 20 on my one short bow attack. With the sneak attack damage on the crit, managed to just kill the Mindflayer by about 4hp before the barbarian lost his brain.

teyileda
2020-04-17, 04:26 AM
I love RPG, but I have a family and not much free time now.
So the answer is Time ... I'm happy if I have time to study the ENT of the game, go through all the side quests, and so on.

Avista
2020-04-26, 03:55 AM
We were running a oneshot with some crazy builds. Our ranger had a special cat familiar that could transform into a tiger at will.

During the dungeon we came across a series of traps we had to get through to escape. We needed to pick the person who had the highest DEX in our party, and we decided to let the cat try. Our DM refused. They said. "I don't care if it has the highest dex! It's a cat! It's not smart enough to diffuse the traps!" I suggested we let the cat roll an intelligence check to see if it was smart enough, and the DM agreed. If it rolled 10 or lower, it wouldn't understand the mechanisms of the trap.

The cat rolled an 11. We disarmed the trap and got through. :smallbiggrin:

EggKookoo
2020-04-26, 08:39 AM
Call of Cthulhu, back in the mid-90s. We were investigating lycanthropes in Michigan, and my investigator got bitten. When I asked if my character would survive the night, the GM shrugged and said there was a 5% chance. I don't know if there was ever an actual printed rule or if he just made it up on the spot. Regardless, I threw down my d% on the table in front of everyone -- 05. The GM was a real PC-killer type and couldn't believe I made the roll. I wouldn't go so far as to say he was upset, but I think he was looking forward to taking my PC and turning it into a monster for the rest of the party to kill.

We moved on to another GM shortly after (a former player) and I got to use that investigator for a while. We did the thing where he had to be locked up three nights a month. Eventually, to maintain the horror spirit of the game, he and I agreed the PC should eventually run off into the wilderness as a beast. Which I didn't mind, since I got some fun gameplay out of him.

Not long after this I started up an oWoD Werewolf: the Apocalypse campaign. I decided my PC had been a late-change Garou whose first change was prompted by the bite, and had been taken in by the Sept that the PCs were associated with (many of the same players). It was a bit of a fudge as that's not quite how Garou work, but it served to tie the two game universes together, with the werewolf game set decades later and the events of the Cthulhu game remembered as legend. We still play in that W:tA game world today.

farothel
2020-04-26, 03:25 PM
We had another Lucky moment in the Warhammer first edition 'The Enemy Within' campaign.


At one point the group had to go up North in Kislev. There at one point we entered a temple and you are turned into a sort of undead by some chaos gods (not the big four, but some others). They agree to turn you back if you swear an oath never to reveal anything about them to anybody, on pain of death (and as gods, they can enforce this). We swore this oath (except one player who decided that his character would rather die) and went back to the capital of Kislev. There we had to find a way around that oath, but it would be difficult. Thinking that the only one who could remove an oath enforced by a god was another god, we decided upon Morr, who didn't like undead and was probably the most likely to help out.

There exists a rule in the first edition warhammer that if you pray to a god in a specific way, there is a 1% chance this god will hear your request and answers. You could improve that percentage by donating to the temple, by having a priest join you in praying and by length of prayer. All these had maximums of course and the maximum you could get was 15%. So we donated the maximum amount of money, got the local High priest to join and prayed through the night to get the maximum.

The two characters left both got a roll and an 11 and a 05 later, Morr broke the oath and we were allowed to tell the high priest about the undead and chaos infestation in the city we just came from.

When the third player made a new character, a priest of Morr, we were only too happy to escort her wherever she wanted to go.

calam
2020-04-26, 09:46 PM
In a warhammer 40k ork one shot about a month ago I for fun decided to force recruit a gretchin (essentially a goblin but altogether far more pathetic). As a test I told him if he wanted to roll with a group like mine he had to prove himself by assassinating someone else's gretchin without them knowing, two low chance stealth rolls and an extremely good damage roll later he's in the squad. The plot itself is about storming a bigmek's (tech obsessed giant ork in power armor) base to win his favor enough to join our side. The gretchin is once again able to stealth his way across any battlefield and land grenade throws that meant that at the end of that map he probably had the more kills then the PCs including destroying a killa kan (buzzsaw equipped small mech) and a squad of kommandos (commandos).

Finally we get to the base and the most impressive part of this NPCs string of luck. The big mek says that he'll join us after a four wave battle royale, us against his guys. the first two go too well to mention but then the third has us facing a meganob (ork supersoldier in power armor). After a couple rounds of doing zero to chip damage against him the gretchin runs up and throws one of his at this point trademark grenades. The main weakness of the meganob is that his face is much less armored than the rest of the body so of course the gretchin happens to roll to hit exactly that. Still he probably loss at most a quarter of his hp and the grenade has to get multiple criticals in a row to kill him (every time you roll a 10 for damage in warhammer you get to roll another d10, this can go on forever) and the gretchin rolls probably 5 10s in a row blowing the meganob's head right off.

sadly he was killed in the last wave by a looted mechanicus deathbot.

PintoTown
2020-04-27, 11:17 PM
This reads a bit like Rimmer describing a game of Risk, but here goes...
Back in the 1st ed days of old, my buddy played a monk is this long, epic campaign. We were finally squaring off against an evil party that had been dogging us for months. This was back when at higher levels, a monk had to defeat a more powerful opponent to progress, and my buddy’s rival was one level higher.
They were both crazy fast and rolled the same initiative (which was unlikely). With their crazy movement and leaping, they dove over all the pits and catwalks separating us and struck each other simultaneously as they passed in the air. They both rolled high enough to stun (which was pretty bloody unlikely). That meant there was a very small chance of a straight up unarmed kill (which was VERY bloody unlikely - I think it was AC% back when low meant good). My buddy rolled 02% and the other guy didn’t. Both monks landed on their faces. One stunned (and strangely a level higher). The other dead.
I think the battle stopped while both sides just slowly clapped in awe.

RNightstalker
2020-04-28, 11:36 AM
Back when we played 1st/2nd D&D, the DM was getting angry at the "power" characters we were all rolling up and so made me roll in front of her. Using a pink die (she allowed D10+8 to avoid the 3D6 method and rerolling 1's & 2's, something my dad came up with) for my fighter, I proceeded to roll 3 18's, 2 17's, and a 15. Exceptional strength score? You guessed it, 100! Right in front of the DM.

This eventually turned into my favorite character and about 4-5 levels in our magic-user was kidnapped and held hostage as a body shield by an ogre I think it was. It wanted us to put down our weapons, yadda yadda yadda. So my fighter goes ahead and lowers his two-handed sword to his side and then flips it up really quick. I was going for the end-scene of Dirty Harry where he lowers his gun only to quick-draw it up and shoot the bad guy. Only problem is I have a sword. So I'm allowed to throw it: NAT 20!

Spore
2020-04-29, 11:52 AM
Thinking pretty hard on the subject, but oddly enough in 5 years TTRPG, and 5 years of PbP, I can only recall being lucky. Ever since I quit my very extremely unlucky rogue. So listen to the tale of Ferrin.

Ferrin should have been a very typical adventurer. Like Indiana Jones. Skilled, lucky beyond recognition, happy and jolly (so no edgelord rogue). But his story is one of loosing, of being defeated, of triggering traps, and being the likeable (?) loser. Ferrin started off in a small desert town. Our sorcerer's adoptive father had an illegal bar being raided by the townguard, led by our paladin. Against all odds, the heroes united to free the high judge's only son from his goblin captors. Right before departing though, my character try to flirt with the hot bard NPC in town. Rolled a 2 + 3 = 5. So I blurted out: "wanna ****?" The cleric's tracks ended in the sewer. I led the way. Perception roll failed, he stumbled head-first into an Otiyugh. Beaten unconscious, he was then healed up by a potion the paladin had. To make the story short. I did not find any of the traps. I was beaten unconscious in every battle. After being fed up by thankless dwarves we tried to rescue from a zombie + ghost apocalypse, he decided to rob a rich merchant, taking matters of payment into his own hands. The DM designed a pretty fun mini dungeon just for me. I did every difficult check. I won. Right until I failed to spot the mimic weapon rack. Running outside with my loot, I ran over the merchant's son, knocking him unconscious.

My rogue lost three fingers that night. I lost the will to play him anymore. In sum, he was a rogue that never successfully disabled a trap (in 9 months of play). A womanizer that shouted for coitus to the first women he met, and could not get anyone beyond that. An adventurer, that was regularly beaten close to death by monsters. At least half a dozen times. Also almost died being drained by shadows. Ferrin was the very fiber of what is wrong with 3.PF. Skill challenges having hard cutoffs (I regularly rolled 1 or 2 below DC). Usefulness being tilted towards the magic users. Combat being stupidly dangerous once you are in melee and have low to middling AC and not a simple trick to hide yourselves in plain sight.

KorvinStarmast
2020-04-29, 12:04 PM
What were your luckiest moments in any RPG that you've played. If can be combat, non-combat or anything else in between. :smile: The time I rolled an 18(98) strength in AD&D 1e. I ended up making a ranger. My dice were insanely hot that day, since it took rather hight stats to make a Ranger in those days. Luckiest day ever.


A balrog appeared in the hall in front of us. (In original D&D, this wasn't a demon. It was a generic 10 HD monster.) Yeah, Balrog came from Chainmail, and IIRC was in the table in Greyhawk (not Monsters and Treasures) and didn't have a great description. The first time we were high enough level to fight one, Eldritch Wizardry had come out and it was a type VI Demon.

Love what you all did with that. Cool! *Slice*

Heh, the original "alignment" (Chainmail) table had Balrogs on the side of Chaos

GENERAL LINE-UP:
It is impossible to draw a distanct line between "good" and "evil" fantastic figures. Three categories are listed below as a general guide for the wargamer designing orders of battle involving fantastic creatures:
CHAOS
Goblins
Kobolds
Orcs
Anti-heroes
Wizards *
Wraiths
Wights
Lycanthropes*
Ogres
True Trolls
Balrogs
Giants *
Dragons
Basilisks
* Indicates the figure appears in two lists.

vasilidor
2020-05-01, 11:17 PM
actually rolling the stats required for a paladin on 3d6 in order. DM killed it, never played with that guy again.

Spore
2020-05-02, 08:59 AM
actually rolling the stats required for a paladin on 3d6 in order. DM killed it, never played with that guy again.

This makes me curious. How did players back in the day deal with the inequality brought on by rolled attributes? Because feasibly one could end out with a meh Dex Thief, meh Str Fighter. Did you make ends meet or let the player reroll? Or is this some kind of rogue dungeon experience, where you play until you die?

moonfly7
2020-05-03, 02:41 PM
Not me personally but I have a player whose been in every game I've DMed and played in who is the luckiest man I've ever seen in my life. The dice never fail him. If he decides to do something awesome, stupid, or impossible, the Nat 20's flow like wine at a wedding. And it's not weighted dice, we've checked and substituted. Highest Nat 20 count in a row was like 5, in which his halfing wizard used a surprise round to pitch 6 javelins of lightning at a mechanical cracked. He had a -1 to hit modifier and he spent 0 luck points or portents and made no rerolls. He dealt 5 Nat 20's and 1 18 while screaming "I'm the god of lightning mother@$!#÷×! Zeus! Zeus! Zeus! Zeus! Zeus! Zeus!"
He one shotted that sessions big boss.
In my current mutants and masterminds game he averages around at least 8 nat 20's a session and routinely one hit kills PL14s at while he's at PL10 with his standard Rank 4 damage glocks and his fists.
He likes to play characters who's power is being "the luckiest man alive" but he doesn't need the rerolls, he IS the luckiest man I have ever met. Beyond even dice.

Quertus
2020-05-03, 03:51 PM
This makes me curious. How did players back in the day deal with the inequality brought on by rolled attributes? Because feasibly one could end out with a meh Dex Thief, meh Str Fighter. Did you make ends meet or let the player reroll? Or is this some kind of rogue dungeon experience, where you play until you die?

Deal with? It was awesome! :smallcool:

Tharvolis would use his meh Wisdom, and get into trouble that would make Jack Sparrow look positively thoughtful, and then desperately try to get out of it.

Armus would pull out his swords / dagger / frying pan, use his meh strength, and desperately try to contribute meaningfully with surgical strikes to key pieces.

Ji would use his meh Intelligence, and desperately hope that he learned the important spells, while doing the best he could with what he had.

Meanwhile, Quertus used his massive intellect to invent more custom senses than there are spells in core; Rage used his massive Strength to lead a jailbreak from Drow prison with nothing but his beggar's bowl; Sasha used her massive Agility to dance naked on the heads of angry crocodiles.

It was a built-in way to help make the characters' stories different.

It also meant you didn't exactly sit down to play a Thief or a Paladin; you rolled your stats, then looked at what your options were. Making the game much more dynamic.

Jay R
2020-05-03, 05:48 PM
This makes me curious. How did players back in the day deal with the inequality brought on by rolled attributes? Because feasibly one could end out with a meh Dex Thief, meh Str Fighter. Did you make ends meet or let the player reroll? Or is this some kind of rogue dungeon experience, where you play until you die?

The stats didn't have as much effect on the game as they do now. In original D&D, here is the complete table of adjustments (not counting charisma adjustments for numbr of hirelings and loyalty base).


Bonuses and Penalties to Advancement due to Abilities:
(Low score is 3-8; Average is 9-12; High is 13-18)

Prime requisite 15 or more: Add 10% to earned experience
Prime requisite 13 or 14: Add 5% to earned experience Average
Prime requisite of 9 - 12: Average, no bonus or penalty
Prime requisite 8 or 7: Minus 10% from earned experience
Prime requisite 6 or less: Minus 20% from earned experience
Constitution 15 or more: Add +1 to each hit die
Constitution 13 or 14: Will withstand adversity
Constitution of 9 - 12: 60% to 90% chance of surviving
Constitution 8 or 7: 40% to 50% chance of survival
Constitution 6 or Less: Minus 1 from each hit die*
Dexterity above 12: Fire any missile at +1
* minimum score of 1 on any die

So the difference between a STR 18, CON 18, DEX 18 Fighting Man and a STR 9, DEX 9, CON 9 Fighting Man was:
+10% experience bonus
+1 to each hit die
+1 for a missile weapon attack.

The difference between a INT 18 Magic-user and an INT 9 Magic-user was +10% experience bonus.

And that's all. The only thing that could make your player above average was above average play.

The first supplement, Greyhawk, added other bonuses. But they were nowhere near as important as they became later.

I remember one player who complained that my average-INT thief was routinely cleverer than his INT-18 wizard. He didn’t realize that the INT score didn’t include all of intelligence – it indicated how many spells you can learn, how many xps a magic-user earned, and not much else. But the word “intelligence" made him, and many others, believe that it could substitute for actual player intelligence – learning the rules and playing with good tactics. One of the big shifts in the culture was the desire to make the stats more all-inclusive.

Illogictree
2020-05-03, 11:11 PM
Well... I think the luckiest thing that's happened to me in an RPG had to be my first self-built D&D 5E character being the sole survivor of a TPK with 1 or 2 HP.

I believe the group was at either 1st or 2nd level, and this was on the second major quest we'd picked up. I'd built a Tabaxi dex fighter and was having fun playing up her cat-like attributes and trying to think like someone who can climb as easily as she can walk. The other members of the group were a dwarf barbarian and a human wild magic sorcerer.

Surprisingly, the TPK didn't happen due to a wild magic mishap, which is probably what some of you were expecting. In fact, we made the mistake of getting in melee range with a group of Troglodytes, which each have three attacks. We tried to play it smart at first, but the dice turned against us. We managed to take out all but one Troglodyte, but one by one we fell and started making death saves. My Tabaxi made her death saves by one save, reviving with 1 HP. The other two weren't so lucky.

To escape, my Tabaxi would have to get past the last Troglodyte. Fortunately, the Troglodyte hadn't looted the group yet, so she was able to find a healing potion on one of the other characters. She tried to sneak past, but the Troglodyte spotted her and she ended up literally fighting tooth and nail with him.

The DM and I were rolling out in the open in front of everyone. The Trog got her down to her last few HP, but flubbed the last round of attacks and the cat came out on top, gutting the lizard with her bare claws. The other players were cheering that I'd made it, one of them remarking that "This cat has 9 lives!" Personally I felt like she'd used up a couple of them.

It was kind of a bittersweet moment, both in character and out of character. She'd lost two of her friends in one night and been forced to retreat empty-handed. And out of character, that was the last time I played with one of the players; his health took a turn for the worse soon after and he wasn't able to continue with us.

That character has gone on to become the more-or-less leader of the party (totally contrary to my original conception of her) and adventured all over the world of Eberron on her quest to become rich enough to own an airship of her own, and has become a favorite character of mine. But it could have ended right there almost before it began.

LordCdrMilitant
2020-05-03, 11:35 PM
Well, uh...

I don't know for me. Here's one for my parties, though:

The Deathwatch are riding along on their bikes towards the next objective after a tough fight, all at 0 wounds, when a Canoptek Tomb Stalker phases though the ground to attack! Oh No! It swings, and swings, and swings, and swings, and swings, and.... never rolls less than a 96 in 6 rounds of combat, during which the party beats it down.

Kelb_Panthera
2020-05-04, 01:22 AM
It's not necessarily the biggest stroke of luck I've ever had but it's the biggest I can easily remember.

We were playing a Red Hand of Doom run adapted to Eberron in a 3e game.

We were headed up the road for the first encounter, right? My DM decided it'd be more fun for him if he replaced the gobbos with one of his favorite creatures of roughly the same CR; red caps.

Don't get ahead of me now.

Our group is only 3; a goliath barbarian/ warblade, a factotum whose race I don't remember, and my athasian human mish-mash of a character with prominent monk features.

The barbarian scurries up the ridge to start cleaving through the small-fries. The factotum starts taking pot-shots with his gun (imported from PF) and I decide to rush the one that looks like the leader. I flurry, whack the guy a couple times for moderate damage and then it's his turn. Now up to this point, I've only taken a piddly little 4 or 5 hp damage hit from one of the small fries on the ridge. The GM rolls for the advanced redcap's scythe attack; nat 20. Rolls confirmation; success.

I went from near full health to dead almost twice over on the very first melee attack ever directed at that character.

I checked the numbers later and found that the chance of that happening was only 2.97% or thereabouts. I was, as you can imagine, a bit miffed. Fortunately, there was enough time to get to a large enough nearby city that I could be raised and continue the adventure in-spite of that somewhat inauspicious start.

Hey, bad luck is still luck.

Raijinken
2020-05-04, 01:05 PM
D&D 3.5
- at only Level 2, I got to befriend a lonely Prismatic Dragon, who became my bestfriend forever. I got a Nat-20, and DM threw 2 handful of dices (obviously wants to me lose), and botched. (foiled by one of his own house rules: no do-overs, if a die falls off of the table its considered a 1; most of which fell off, and the rest are really low numbers)

Vampires The Masquerade
- I got to make a Lightsaber, and the Technocrats left me alone.
- Party got gunned down and captured in an ambush after failing a Perception Check (did not see the security camera), I walked away and got through unscathed. (character trait: cast no reflection in mirror/reflective surfaces, does not register in photographs nor live camera)

Cyberpunk
- I got to obtain and own a robot companion that looks like a real human (a prototype of a "secret technology").

Bartmanhomer
2020-05-05, 11:26 PM
D&D 3.5
- at only Level 2, I got to befriend a lonely Prismatic Dragon, who became my best friend forever. I got a Nat-20, and DM threw 2 handfuls of dices (obviously wants to me lose), and botched. (foiled by one of his own house rules: no do-overs, if a die falls off of the table it's considered a 1; most of which fell off, and the rest are really low numbers)

Vampires The Masquerade
- I got to make a Lightsaber, and the Technocrats left me alone.
- Party got gunned down and captured in an ambush after failing a Perception Check (did not see the security camera), I walked away and got through unscathed. (character trait: cast no reflection in mirror/reflective surfaces, does not register in photographs nor live camera)

Cyberpunk
- I got to obtain and own a robot companion that looks like a real human (a prototype of a "secret technology").
A prismatic dragon on Level 2?! Wow, that just a very rare event. How did you manage to meet this dragon at such a low level? I'm curious. :smile:

farothel
2020-05-06, 12:45 PM
D&D 3.5

Vampires The Masquerade
- I got to make a Lightsaber, and the Technocrats left me alone.
- Party got gunned down and captured in an ambush after failing a Perception Check (did not see the security camera), I walked away and got through unscathed. (character trait: cast no reflection in mirror/reflective surfaces, does not register in photographs nor live camera)


I made a lightsaber in Scion at Demi-god level. I had that power that lets you build just about anything. I had plans for a lambda class shuttle (thinking that the GM would give me that where he would refuse an Impstar II).

Telwar
2020-05-07, 12:53 PM
I remember way back in college, my roommate, when playing a game of Epic Space Marine (i.e. the really tiny scale), had an Imperial commissar kill a Reaver Titan in one shot, with his bolt pistol, with a variety of made rolls and failed saves.

Raijinken
2020-05-11, 01:41 PM
A prismatic dragon on Level 2?! Wow, that just a very rare event. How did you manage to meet this dragon at such a low level? I'm curious. :smile:

If I remember it right, it went.... My character was adventuring alone, unbeknownst to me (failed roll), I am already being stalked by the dragon disguised as a human. Initially seeing me as its prey, it decided to "play" with its food. I met with the dragon (in the form of a young female human), who then told me about a "monster" that lives in the ruins deep in the forest, and she can take me there. As we travel, she keeps on asking me things about everything (basically wants me to tell her stories), which I then complied much to her enjoyment. I also noticed that she seems to be somewhat limping (like she has a sprained upper leg), I also told her that I someday would like to meet a dragon, not to fight it, but with it as allies (or a pet). When we arrived at the ruins, we entered a rundown building that leads to an underground cavern. As we got in far deeper, we arrived what seems to be a treasure cove. When I looked at her, she was giving me a creepy-grinny look, then reveals her true form, and the ruins is actually her lair. As she charges at me, as I draw my weapon, I noticed that "limp" again. After dodging some of her rather "slowed" attacks, I kind of lost focus because I noticed something sticking out on her upper tail (on the side between her legs). She finally got to grab a hold of me (failed the Grapple Check). As she was about to toss me in her mouth, she asked if I have any last words? I asked why has she been limping all this time? She stopped for a moment and said "what about it?". I then said "I can help you with that.". She decided to trust me for a moment (but one wrong move, I die). When I went "back there", I saw a large arrow that looks like has been there for a while (which she said that has been bothering her for a while as well). I tried to pull it, causing her to scream (roar) in pain. I apologized to her that this will hurt more, but this is the only way. I cut deeper on her to loosen up the arrow, later on allowing me to remove it. I then used my last Cure Potion to close the wound. After that fixed her, she looked at me. I did a "come at me bro" pose and said, "ok, you can eat me now.". As she gets closer, I said "I have no regrets dying today, and in fact, I die happy. For I already achieved one of my goals, to meet a dragon (and briefly) adventure with one.". She transformed back to human, hugged, kissed and thanked me. And later on she decided (insisted) to come with me, but only having her under the condition that she stays in her human form (only turn back to a dragon when really needed).

My DM scheduled a one-on-one session because I had to catch up (had to leave the country for a while, so my character was on hold for a long while; other players were already CL13 and up). DM offered a free/fast level up and/or a new character altogether (in exchange for a somewhat backstory to cover it), which I refused (where is the fun in that?) and insisted in using my original character. Obviously not wanting to go through that drama, he decided to kill my character (and hopefully making me accept the offer).

The part where she revealed her true form, DM said "she turned into a dragon.". When I asked what color, he threw a dice (forgot what D#), looked at his book, and looked at me with an evil grin saying "She's a Prism Dragon.". I asked "What do those breath?". DM just simply said "Lasers".

DM also later on noted that she was taken from Forgotten Realms, whereas Prismatic Dragons are noted to be fond of humanoid company. He also indicated that the part when she was yakking-away and asking for stories, indicated that she was lonely (and somewhat clingy).

As I do my supposedly last words, that is the part where the DM had me do a Charisma Check (probably just for kicks before he have her chomp down on me), I scored a Nat-20. He then tried to wipe the gleam on my face, by giving me an even evil-er grin as he picks up 2 handfuls of D6 and toss them on the table. The result of which, making me return the evil grin back at him, reminding him about the "house rules".

In conclusion: I got a new weapon/friend/pet

Bartmanhomer
2020-05-11, 02:08 PM
If I remember it right, it went.... My character was adventuring alone, unbeknownst to me (failed roll), I am already being stalked by the dragon disguised as a human. Initially seeing me as its prey, it decided to "play" with its food. I met with the dragon (in the form of a young female human), who then told me about a "monster" that lives in the ruins deep in the forest, and she can take me there. As we travel, she keeps on asking me things about everything (basically wants me to tell her stories), which I then complied much to her enjoyment. I also noticed that she seems to be somewhat limping (like she has a sprained upper leg), I also told her that I someday would like to meet a dragon, not to fight it, but with it as allies (or a pet). When we arrived at the ruins, we entered a rundown building that leads to an underground cavern. As we got in far deeper, we arrived what seems to be a treasure cove. When I looked at her, she was giving me a creepy-grinny look, then reveals her true form, and the ruins is actually her lair. As she charges at me, as I draw my weapon, I noticed that "limp" again. After dodging some of her rather "slowed" attacks, I kind of lost focus because I noticed something sticking out on her upper tail (on the side between her legs). She finally got to grab a hold of me (failed the Grapple Check). As she was about to toss me in her mouth, she asked if I have any last words? I asked why has she been limping all this time? She stopped for a moment and said "what about it?". I then said "I can help you with that.". She decided to trust me for a moment (but one wrong move, I die). When I went "back there", I saw a large arrow that looks like has been there for a while (which she said that has been bothering her for a while as well). I tried to pull it, causing her to scream (roar) in pain. I apologized to her that this will hurt more, but this is the only way. I cut deeper on her to loosen up the arrow, later on allowing me to remove it. I then used my last Cure Potion to close the wound. After that fixed her, she looked at me. I did a "come at me bro" pose and said, "ok, you can eat me now.". As she gets closer, I said "I have no regrets dying today, and in fact, I die happy. For I already achieved one of my goals, to meet a dragon (and briefly) adventure with one.". She transformed back to human, hugged, kissed and thanked me. And later on she decided (insisted) to come with me, but only having her under the condition that she stays in her human form (only turn back to a dragon when really needed).

My DM scheduled a one-on-one session because I had to catch up (had to leave the country for a while, so my character was on hold for a long while; other players were already CL13 and up). DM offered a free/fast level up and/or a new character altogether (in exchange for a somewhat backstory to cover it), which I refused (where is the fun in that?) and insisted in using my original character. Obviously not wanting to go through that drama, he decided to kill my character (and hopefully making me accept the offer).

The part where she revealed her true form, DM said "she turned into a dragon.". When I asked what color, he threw a dice (forgot what D#), looked at his book, and looked at me with an evil grin saying "She's a Prism Dragon.". I asked "What do those breath?". DM just simply said "Lasers".

DM also later on noted that she was taken from Forgotten Realms, whereas Prismatic Dragons are noted to be fond of humanoid company. He also indicated that the part when she was yakking-away and asking for stories, indicated that she was lonely (and somewhat clingy).

As I do my supposedly last words, that is the part where the DM had me do a Charisma Check (probably just for kicks before he have her chomp down on me), I scored a Nat-20. He then tried to wipe the gleam on my face, by giving me an even evil-er grin as he picks up 2 handfuls of D6 and toss them on the table. The result of which, making me return the evil grin back at him, reminding him about the "house rules".

In conclusion: I got a new weapon/friend/pet
Wow! That's awesome you made a very powerful friend. Thank you for telling your story. :smile:

Wraith
2020-05-12, 02:58 AM
My luckiest day was technically an event where I got really bad luck, at exactly the right time.

We were playing Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play though a module called Shadows Over Bogenhafen; a fairly standard "the city has been corrupted by a cult and the players need to find them before they enact the big evil ritual" kind of story. I was playing as a Cat Burglar, which meant that I was something of a Jack-of-All-Trades - I could fight as well as anyone who wasn't a trained soldier, but mostly I would pick locks, disarm traps and conceal stuff that we needed to keep safe.

Long story short; Bogenhafen went south and so the party decided to leave the Chaos-infested craphole to its fate. Through totally legitimate roleplay, we messed up and somehow not only failed to impede the cult in any way but we also managed to get ourselves implicated in several ritualistic murders that they had committed, and since justice in WRFP can be rather inflexible we thought we'd try our luck in another city that wasn't a) out to get us and b) due to explode in the next week or so.

Pursued by the local militia, we fled into the Drakenwald - an ancient forest notorious for being the lair of bandits, mutants, beastmen and other ne'er-do-wells - looking for somewhere to lie low, and in a random encounter (later admitted to me by the GM who rolled it on a table of random events) we were attacked by werewolves.
It was a silly encounter because we were fighting werewolves, on a boat, at noon, for.... some reason. Still, it was meant to be inconsequential so we went with it, and ultimately we prevailed, but for the unfortunate fact that I was bitten and failed my Toughness test to avoid contracting lycanthropy - at the next full moon, or if put under extreme distress, I would Turn.

The party decided to keep going - surely this was all part of the GM's plan, right? There was a cure out there somewhere, and we just needed to explore enough to find it within the next 7 days, surely?
So we continued to flee, chased distantly by watchmen and the likes, deeper into the forest. As night approached we sought shelter, and found it in what appeared to be an abandoned tower - think like the watch-towers in Skyrim, except more Gothic - into which we broke and sealed the door behind us, hoping that our pursuers wouldn't notice and would pass on by.

Of course, this was WFRP and spooky towers in the middle of ancient cursed forests must have something in them, right? In this case, we found a vampire and he had just woken up to the sounds of his front door being kicked down.

Vampires, in WFRP, are HUGELY powerful enemies. Being undead, they double their toughness in order to reduce the amount of damage that they take from non-magical weapons, meaning that while a player rolls something like 1d10+3 for damage they automatically reduce that by at least 12, plus whatever armour they're wearing. So say nothing of their ferocious combat prowess, dark magic and the rest....

The fight didn't go well. In the first couple of rounds, we established that only 2 of the 5 party members could reliably cause even a small amount of damage - one of whom was the Trollslayer, who was virtually turned inside-out with the first attack and started bleeding out. The Elven Archer hit the Vampire several times, but rolled pathetically on his damage so no amount of accuracy was going to help. When it was my turn, I stepped forward and brought my sword down on the Vampire's forehead, to be rewarded by a terrifying little *dink* noise before being back-handed across the room, reduced to only a handful of 'hp'.

At this point, while the Vampire literally eviscerated another player (the Critical Damage charts in WFRP leave nothing to the imagination) the GM decided that now would be a good time to see if my character was feeling at all stressed out. As you can imagine, I agreed with him and rolled my Will-Power to try and keep the Beast Within on a leash.... And failed spectacularly.
By the time that my next turn came around, I had fully turned into a slavering bestial nightmare of claws and teeth, and with fresh blood in the air I did the only thing that came naturally by lunging at the nearest moving thing; the Vampire.

This is where my luck turned. Fighting unarmed and naked, I successfully rolled to hit the Vampire and then my damage dice exploded. Three times.

By the end of a mathematically-laborious turn, I had rolled something like 32 on 1d10, and because I now counted as a supernatural creature the Vampire lost his special ability to soak my damage. We decided in the end that I had formally declared Mortal Kombat on the guy and then peeled out his spine like the Predator claiming a trophy.

Unfortunately by this point there was only myself and one other party member still alive and I was borderline unplayable since No, there was no cure for lycanthropy - the GM genuinely rolled a random encounter and had no idea that any of this was going to happen, so there was no planned salvation for my Cat Burglar. We counted the fight as a TPK-by-technicality, but claimed a moral victory since the witchhunters never got their hands on us. :smallwink:

Ken Murikumo
2020-05-12, 11:01 AM
Not just a one time thing, but for my first long running (3.5) campaign with my current group, i had incredible luck but only when it was life or death. Any roll that was normal or inconsequential was the opposite, though.

Attack roll for this normal enemy during this routine combat; usually a low roll. Lotta ones here.

The BBEG grapples me and this is my one and only roll to get free before i get killed; nat 20, break his nose with a headbutt and drops me to cover his face and scream (nobody expects the headbutt).

The earth shakes when a being of power appears, roll to stay standing; nat 1.

Roll reflex to avoid a maximized fist of crushing spite; nat 20.

And so on. This became so expected that the party started forming do or die plans around my weird death defying luck. And they worked... This power of mine has long since faded and i am now rolling pretty normally for everything.

Jarawara
2020-05-13, 01:41 PM
I have a few stories from years past....

To start with, I present Reilah Essend, street urchin, brigand, and amateur vivisectionist. She was not known for any bout of amazing luck, but rather a consistent trend of "theoretically rare", but "expectedly common" overperformances of the blade. I had the chance to play her through several different gaming systems, each of which had critical hit systems, and she would regularly hit the top end of the range of what is humanly possible in damage output.

With only one catch.

The target had to have only a few hit points remaining.

We're fighting the big boss? She'd plink away with regular hits, occasionally getting a solid six points or so.

Fighting Mork the Routine Orc? She'd utterly explode the poor fool with a 35 point bomb.

Taking on that 40 hp Ogre? She'd miss, or score only routine hits, and the party would slowly wear the monster down. Once he was at 4 hp remaining, that's when Essy would unload a 40 hp megablow that splits him stem to stern, decapitate, kidney blow, and cut his ear off all in one hit.

And don't even talk about taking prisoners. "Remember, we want this one alive for questioning." KABLOOOSH!!!! "Uhhh... which part did you want to question?"

*~*~*~*

One of my players went on a hot streak in a fight once, which is not really that uncommon, but this case was unique because he totally called it all beforehand. Party is fighting some dudes, I can't remember the details now (it wasn't that important of a fight). Come to his turn, he announces "I'm rolling a 20!", and lo and behold he does. Drops his opponent. Play goes around the table, back to him, and he says "I'm rolling another 20!", and sure enough, he drops another. Fight begins to turn to the party's favor with those 2 baddies down. Rest of party presses the advantage, and play comes back to him again. He says "I'm going for a three-fer", and boom, another 20 to drop his third opponent in three rounds. Party starts to mop up as they surround and grind down the remainder. Play comes back around one more time. He scoops up the dice... shakes them for a moment... and says "Yeah, I ain't gonna risk spoiling this winning streak. I forgo my attack and let the party finish this fight." Hands the dice to the next player.

Gotta know when to leave the table while still a winner!

*~*~*~*

Same player, later game: He's playing Shoah the Archer. There was a PC class out of an early Dragon Magazine, the Archer, that massively overspecialized a martial class to be really really good at archery but not much else. The concept of the class was that of a Ranger that wasn't good at direct combat, (did have a few spells at higher level like the Ranger), but in the support role could nail a target across just about any size or kind of battlefield.

Which of course meant that Murphy's law took over and this poor bugger couldn't hit a broadside of a barn!

So anyways, they're in this fight with a Giant Scorpion, and given their low level, they're probably trying to punch a bit too much above their weight. They're in trouble, but they are wearing it steadily down, so this fight could go either way. Of course, 1st edition poison rules, a stinger hit means near certain death, so victory comes quick or victory comes costly.

Next up is Shoah's turn. He reaches back into his quiver... and remembers that I keep track of ammunition (and he apparently wasn't), and so he comes up empty. He knows the Scorpion gets the next move, and so goes into 'desperate times requires desperate actions' mode, and dives into the fray bringing his bow down like it was a spear.

A spear. A warped spear. A flimsy warped spear. A flimsy warped spear with no blade. I give him an incredulous look and say those dreaded words all players fear most: "Are you sure?" He thinks for a moment and says "Yeah. It probably only does a point of damage, and only if I roll well, but every point brings it closer to dropping, and I gotta do something."

And of course he then rolls a 20. I snort derisively and shake my head, and say "OK, you did a single point of damage, and your bow is ruined." And then I write a quick note and hand it folded to him, and tell him not to read it but just hold it in the open.

I then say "Up next would be Mr. Scorpion's turn." I pick four logical targets, roll a d4. "Tarya, you'd be target for the stinger." I roll the d20 in the open, it's a hit. She rolls a poison save. No good. She looks glum. But before anyone can respond, I point back to Shoah and say "Read that note out loud."

Shoah opens the note and says "This is what would have happened... HAD THE SCORPION NOT HAD ONLY ONE HIT POINT LEFT!!!!! I KILLED IT!!!!" Table erupts in cheers, and everyone agrees to buy the archer a new bow (and forever tolerate his poor hit rolls in nearly every other battle, a trend which continued on for months afterwards).

That story is still repeated today as the time Shoah killed a Scorpion with a bow... No arrows, just a bow.

*~*~*~*

Final story doesn't come from an RPG, but it's a worthy tale a woe. Taken from a game of Axis and Allies (original edition).

A player who we will simply refer to as "Dave" (because his name was Dave) is planning out the 1st turn for the Germans. He wants an easy kill on the British battleship off the coast of Gibraltar. He decides to get the job done properly (well, overwhelmingly), and sends his own battleship, two subs, three fighters, a bomber, and a transport to land troops on the rock.

As a quick aside, if I ever saw a German player commit all this on turn 1 against just that single target, I'd celebrate my upcoming victory. The German player has to score as much damage everywhere on the 1st turn, before the allies can consolidate and build up their fleet. Dave was pretty much throwing the game by going for the "easy overwhelming" win, instead of striving to accomplish a more daring "riskier" plan of action. Shoot for the skies. Go big or go home. But that's unimportant to this story.

So, for those unaware of the game system, each unit rolls a d6 to hit, subs needing a 2 or lower, fighter aircraft needing a 3 or lower, battleships and bombers, a 4 or lower. A single hit kills the target (player taking the hit chooses what dies). Transport with infantry doesn't get an attack roll, but can be chosen as casualties.

Dave grabs his dice, rolls 2d6 for his subs, a 3 and a 4. No hits. 3d6 for his fighters, two 4's and a 6. Hmmm... Bomber and battleship? A 5 and a 6. No hits at all. Bob the British Battleship (I can't remember his actual name) rolls a 3, a hit. Dave takes it on a sub, the cheapest item to replace. Well, this is why you overcommit into a single battle, for times like this when dice go against you, right?

Next round: Subs roll a 3, near but oh so far. Fighters roll two 5's and a 6. Bomber and battleship rolls a pair of 5's. No hits. Bob rolls a 2, Dave decides to lose a fighter, as he has plans for that sub next turn.

Round 3: Sub misses, two fighters miss, battleship misses, bomber misses. Bob... does not miss. Down goes another fighter. What astoundingly bad luck, but this doesn't yet unravel his strategic plans. (What those plans were, I'm not sure, but Dave was still confident.)

Round 4: Sub misses. Fighter misses. Bomber misses. Battleship misses. Bob does not miss. You know what? Dave doesn't really need to take Gibraltar, so he takes the hit on the transport (losing the infantry with it). That keeps his combat units in the fight.

Round 5: Sub, fighter, bomber, battleship. All misses. If he was rolling a D&D character right now, he'd have exemplary attributes right now, but Axis and Allies needs low rolls. Like Bob's roll of a 1. That'll hit just fine. Dave loses the other sub.

Round 6: Fighter. Bomber. Battleship. No hits. Well, one hit. From Bob. Fighter goes down.

Round 7: Two dice, double sixes. No hits from Dave. Bob rolls a 3. Bomber is far cheaper than a battleship, so Dave reasons that the battleship should live. Honestly, I think he should have taken the battleship and retreated, as the bomber can help with the next dozen turns of land warfare. That battleship is exposed and surely will die soon either way. But bomber dies, battleship continues on in glorious combat!

Round 8: It's down to just mano a mano, a duel of battleships, for all the marbles (or well, the control of the straights of Gibraltar I guess). Dave rolls a 5... a miss. But then Bob picks up his dice, shakes it once for good measure... rolls... and it comes up a 6!!!

Dave leaps up from his chair with a mighty shout, prancing around the room in a triumphant victory dance, cheering wildly all the way. Bob has finally missed an attack. Dave's luck is finally turning. Victory is nearly in his grasp, at long last!

Dave calms down, but still grinning ear to ear, and he comes back in for Round 9. Rolls a 6. Bob rolls a 2. Dave sinks.


Yeah... TL/DR: Dave Sinks.

*~*~*~*~*

Knaight
2020-05-13, 04:08 PM
I'm basically a permanent GM, so as a player moment - there was a scene in my Modbots campaign which saw the most ridiculous dice luck I have ever scene. The players were playing strong-AI robots who'd broken out of their factory and were trying to avoid being shipped out as robot soldiers. They'd broken into a weapon manufacturer's factory, and specifically found a workshop doing some prototyping, where they decided to jerry rig a weapon out of the prototype parts and stuff on the shelf.

We were playing Fudge, using 3dF instead of 4dF. Those are dice which output 1d3-2, for a range of +3 to -3 at a 1/27 chance of either result. As the GM I roll a -3 for the guards showing up, giving the players a huge amount of time. All four players then immediately roll a +3.

It's the best possible result, at a 1 in 14348907 chance. We've rolled a lot of dice in our time, sure, but nowhere near fourteen million rolls.

Naturally this prototype weapon they put together was a terrifying thing, and remained the single scariest piece of technology the PCs ever got their hands on and the second scariest piece of technology ever seen.

Quertus
2020-05-13, 06:32 PM
*~*~*~*

Same player, later game: He's playing Shoah the Archer. There was a PC class out of an early Dragon Magazine, the Archer, that massively overspecialized a martial class to be really really good at archery but not much else. The concept of the class was that of a Ranger that wasn't good at direct combat, (did have a few spells at higher level like the Ranger), but in the support role could nail a target across just about any size or kind of battlefield.

Which of course meant that Murphy's law took over and this poor bugger couldn't hit a broadside of a barn!

So anyways, they're in this fight with a Giant Scorpion, and given their low level, they're probably trying to punch a bit too much above their weight. They're in trouble, but they are wearing it steadily down, so this fight could go either way. Of course, 1st edition poison rules, a stinger hit means near certain death, so victory comes quick or victory comes costly.

Next up is Shoah's turn. He reaches back into his quiver... and remembers that I keep track of ammunition (and he apparently wasn't), and so he comes up empty. He knows the Scorpion gets the next move, and so goes into 'desperate times requires desperate actions' mode, and dives into the fray bringing his bow down like it was a spear.

A spear. A warped spear. A flimsy warped spear. A flimsy warped spear with no blade. I give him an incredulous look and say those dreaded words all players fear most: "Are you sure?" He thinks for a moment and says "Yeah. It probably only does a point of damage, and only if I roll well, but every point brings it closer to dropping, and I gotta do something."

And of course he then rolls a 20. I snort derisively and shake my head, and say "OK, you did a single point of damage, and your bow is ruined." And then I write a quick note and hand it folded to him, and tell him not to read it but just hold it in the open.

I then say "Up next would be Mr. Scorpion's turn." I pick four logical targets, roll a d4. "Tarya, you'd be target for the stinger." I roll the d20 in the open, it's a hit. She rolls a poison save. No good. She looks glum. But before anyone can respond, I point back to Shoah and say "Read that note out loud."

Shoah opens the note and says "This is what would have happened... HAD THE SCORPION NOT HAD ONLY ONE HIT POINT LEFT!!!!! I KILLED IT!!!!" Table erupts in cheers, and everyone agrees to buy the archer a new bow (and forever tolerate his poor hit rolls in nearly every other battle, a trend which continued on for months afterwards).

That story is still repeated today as the time Shoah killed a Scorpion with a bow... No arrows, just a bow.

*~*~*~*

This reminds me of two stories, involving three "best in the land" archers. Both stories involve fickle Arangee, and so are mildly appropriate for this thread.

*~*~*~*

Story 1

So, two archers walk into a bar. Both order some ale, claim to be the best archer in the land. Two sightly drunk archers decide to take this outside.

DM: I still need to help some people with their characters… Any of you who are finished, go ahead and roleplay having your characters meet in the tavern or something. The rest of the party will be there shortly.

*Helps players with characters*

Several minutes later…

DM: OK, let's go around the table, give me your character's name, AC, and <whatever else he called for>

Archer 1: <answers>

Archer 2: … I'm working on that.

DM: …huh? What do you mean? You were the first one done!

Archer 2: yeah, but that character died, I'm working up a new one.

Table: ?!

So, the two archers - both 1st level Fighters - decided to determine who was actually the best archer in the land by emulating the famous story of William Tell shooting an apple off his son's head.

The first archer sticks an apple on his head, and the second archer rolls really well, shooting it off.

Then the second archer sticks am sweetie in his head, and the first archer… fumbles. Hitting the second archer. For… dead.

And that is how we set our record death at "~5 minutes before the game started".

*~*~*~*

Story 2

So, enter a third "best archer in the land". Same table, different party.

Two other big differences: not the best archer of *this* land, and not 1st level.

So, really long story short, archer ends up with a McGuffin "Arrow of Life". Later in the campaign, the party is fighting a Death Monster, and nobody in the party can seem to hurt it (including the DMPC Paladin duel-wielding Holy Avengers). Archer decides that this must be what McGuffin Arrow of Life is for.

Archery lines up the shot… and pauses. Yes, he is an absolutely phenomenal shot, unrivaled in his land or this one, best archer in two realms… but what if he misses?

He runs the arrow up to the front line, and manually stabs it into the creature (probably rolling a 19 or natural 20 on the attack roll - I just remember it was good enough, we didn't bother doing the math).

The Death Monster… "died", and the archer loudly (and proudly?) proclaimed, "And that is why I am the best archer in the land!".

Lunali
2020-05-25, 10:44 PM
We were using GURPS so 3d6, with crits being rather rare. Stealing a tank from a pseudo-military base, rolled an astounding series of critical successes for us and critical misses for enemies (with the same dice) a total of 5 out of 7 rolls being crits in our favor, the other two also going in our favor but not critting. The end result was two other identical tanks crippled, the bay for deploying more blocked with debris and us escaping with effectively no pursuit.

AntiAuthority
2020-05-25, 11:30 PM
Probably the time in D&D 5E where my Barbarian used Great Weapon Master on a Sphinx... IIRC, it was 3 Nat 20s in a row (or two Nat 20s another number and another Nat 20 right after that... I remember I could have gotten off another attack but I forgot how Great Weapon Master worked so misrolled one when I should have saved it and gotten more damage at the time)? My DM was pissed at how much damage I did to it, though it didn't kill the unaware Sphinx (I just wandered over and attacked it, unprovoked, because we weren't sure of the answer) it DID severely damage it... I didn't get another Nat 20 to beat the Save of its spell, so my character was sent to another dimension or something for a few rounds. The rest of my party did kill the Sphinx considering how roughed up it was from my surprise attack though (and my DM started thinking my character was OP because I got really lucky with my rolls).

As a bonus, we were playing on my birthday when this happened, so great birthday present overall.

Rerednaw
2020-05-28, 12:15 PM
Rolling d100 and having both of them stand on the ends (the top and bottom were flat and about 2 MM across, the die itself was 1.75 CM)

Spending 6 hours making a rolemaster character and the GM has me roll to wake up from a hangover. Rolled a 297 (that means 96+ on d100 followed by 96+ followed by almost another) slipped, tripped, did exactly damage enough to self to be knocked out and dying, bled out while the rest of the party was downstairs having breakfast. This was my first rolemaster experience.

Learning how to play poker. First hand dealt to me was a royal flush. The rest of the group said "wow, you'll never see that again." And they were right.

aglondier
2020-06-07, 07:54 AM
Playing Shadowrun, the team was in trouble. We were almost away when a Yellojacket popped out of nowhere. My Street Samurai leaned out the window of a swerving hotted-up step van, aimed his Ares Predator at the choppers rotors. The GM called for a target number of 35. My dice pool for the shot was 12. I rolled a 38. Bang. Down it went.

Lvl45DM!
2020-06-07, 11:46 AM
1e game. My fallen paladin gets kidnapped by a bad guy wizard. The DM has a plot in mind for him where he becomes a Black knight. I get teleported to the wizards masters lair. She is a level 18 Witch, with about 10 9HD knights and the aforementioned 12HD wizard vs my lvl 10 Basically-Just-A-Fighter.

The DM runs the game for me solo.

I kill the wizard first round by hitting every shot against a hard AC and doing 1 off maximum damage on my dice rolls. Then I start running and hiding. I spend 2 rounds putting wyvern poison on my sword, dagger, and arrows. Then I climb on top of a big skull statue so only 2 at a time can get at me. The knight find me and I come out swinging. I kill about 4 with poison, over 3 rounds while the Witch is slinging every save-or-lose spell she has at me
Hold, Charm, Magic Jar, Finger of Death, Web, Stinking Cloud.

I make every save and jump down. I find some prisoners and set them free with a 16% bend bars check. I crit another knight and break his leg, then throw my dagger at another and kill him with poison. More saves against spells. Hold Person used to have a -3 on it if you targeted one person so I made a few saves at -3.

her army of minions comes in but I pull out a relic from Hextor, the Trumpet of Acheron, picked up about 2 games ago. It was a mission to destroy it. I make an opposed Charisma check against Hextor to use it even though I wasnt a worshipper. He has +8 on the roll. I get 18, he gets 6. Army of Skeletons now on my side.

More saves.
The knights start hitting but I make it out, crossing the Glyph she has. Finally I fail a save and am dropped to 3 Hit points, but I get out. Im now outside, but 100 miles from my party.

I make a deal with Hextor. I will be HIS black knight, if he gives me A) paladin powers back and B) a mount, right now, and C) i get to keep my overall mission with my party. Another opposed Cha check, with only a +6 this time. Nat 20 and he rolls a 4.

I fly away on my new Wyvern while the Witch throws another damn Hold spell at me. I save again flip her off and cackle as my army of skeletons starts massacring her minions.



I could play that same set up 100 times and never get as good a result as that.

sktarq
2020-06-09, 04:10 PM
So option one.

we were doing character generation on a 3.5 Ravenloft game using the (4-lowest)d6 and arrange method. I was planning to be a rogue...but I rolled 2 18's and some mix with my low score was a 16.... my DM I just looked at the results for about 20 seconds before we did anything. "So I guess I'm playing a paladin then" .... "what?"..."only way to nerf this guy without a reroll and this is amazing".

option two.

I was playing a Ravnos in VtM. And I ended up fighting a small werewolf pack. Now this was an incredibly stupid idea. in VtM vampires get dusted by werewolves unless you are a combat monster and also outnumber them several to one. This also wsn't my idea....to fight 3 on 5. We had taken down one and the other two were tearing us to bits but we hadn't quite died yet and they was some effect (can't remember the details) that inhibited our own more magical powers. And we couldn't run. No Ravnos can basically cast sensory tricks, illusions, etc if you buy up that option. There is a lot of rigmarole here but basically it came down to a difficulty ten roll with 2 dice...now in VtM if you roll at or above the difficulty you call it success and if you roll a ten (and with special rules 9's etc but in this case tens only) then you mark down the success and can reroll the die again in hopes of getting an additional success and can keep going until you have no more rerolls available. So I rolled my two dice. Double tens. reroll again. 1 ten. reroll again. 1 ten. reroll and ...ten. And we call it...I'd won and and the game table was already in a freakout. Five successes is an "exceptional success" which triggers a whole sequence of events but basically matadored the two remaining werewolves into thinking that each was Spiral Dancer and commanding the wee vampires (us) are wyrmspawn....this allowed up regroup, heal a bit, and all shock kill the now gravely wounded winner.
I kinda hated that trick tbh....far far to big and bold for the character style (he was more you smell leaking gas at an abandoned gas station so the other vampires decide not to start shooting guns types) , but lucky dice? yeah it was a damn insane run of luck at the right time.

Both over a decade ago and the first closer to two

as a DM: My Players were a bunch of vampires (VtR) trying to figure out who was dropping blood drained bodies on their doorstep (and thus having to clean up before people started noticing)...Turns out it was a Tik-tik. who is basically a person who can turn into a monster at night that is part man, part bat, part mosquito basically. The crew had been not as sneaky as they should have been in their last mission in a project system that was full of immigrants so I had the TikTik notice them dislike them and basically start messing with their heads like a teenager is prone to do. Well these bunch manage to completely miss all the clues on the first two bodies by not actually using any of their own skills and powers...they have a basic clue that there is monster that looks like a large bat and that is it....So I'm starting to get frustrated a bit but shenanigans that are fun have been going on and one of the player gets the power to turn into a bat...like dracula....tame character can also talk to animals. Well she is exploring what it is like to be a bat and just figure out this new trick she has learned when she runs into a couple regular bats up in the sky and she asks them If they have seen a giant bat with a 25+ ft wingspan around. . . now when confronted with something that is basically random I tend to roll a "luck" die. High is lucky. 1's and 10's explode in extra lucky or extra unlucky. Mostly it gives me something to chew on as I make stuff up on the fly. Turn down a random street...High a great place to hide or whatever they are looking for..roll a 1 followed by another? your random turn brings you into the middle of a police bust of an explosive meth lab on this particular cul-de-sac. Well I was flumoxed about what is bat may have known about the TikTik. so to-the-luck die....rolls a ten...then a nine. So he knows of it and where roughly where it lives and is happy to share that knowledge. My friends just see confusion, slight concern hear a couple rolls.....then "oh yeah man-bat! you know him?" which has become a catchphrase within the players who were there.

BitVyper
2020-06-13, 03:02 AM
Pathfinder. I was running a Quick and the Dead sort of scenario where the PCs had gone back to their gunslinger's hometown so the gunslinger could get some revenge on a guy who'd killed his mother. So the final act comes and there's a big fight with all these local gunslinging thugs who worked for the bad guy. HE was actually a relatively frightening gunslinger I'd made; he was going to make one shot per round and his one shot probably would have incapacitated or killed any of the players. So the PC gunslinger rolls out, reveals his identity and just gets... I think it was three consecutive crits on my villain, and these are revolver crits, so x4 damage. Completely obliterates him, which makes for a pretty good scene, so I didn't try to pull anything tricky to get around it.

I had the incident come up much much later when the PCs were very high level. The party was dealing with a corrupt... high level official; I forget the title I gave him. The guy was absolute scum and to give everyone a laugh, I'd decided to have all his underlings desert him, ultimately forcing him to use a magic item he didn't understand and summon an unbound balor. Among the first people to desert him was a hired rifle-using mercenary. I had the mercenary say something to the effect of "you the one who did Sam Winston?" Which the gunslinger affirmed. "Heard there wasn't much left of him after." The gunslinger nodded to this to, at which point the mercenary took a drag off his cigar, paused, and told his boss he quit.