Your best / worst Natural 20 / 1 stories.

[SangoProduction]

Most of the time, games like to have some sort of groundedness to them. As such, for the large majority of the time, nothing especially spectacular happens.

But then those moments where someone rolls the magical numbers, and fantastical things can happen. And they can create stories that are remembered better than the campaign itself.

Why not share a few of your own? Hell, go ahead and make up a couple, because literally no one can fact check...I stand corrected, but point remains!

I'll start off with my Best Natural 20:

I was DMing a custom Pokemon game, with the reality itself slowly succumbing to some sort of corruption. They come across a clearly evil, powerful gem containing a malevolent presence. The soul channeler tries to link up with it. Much craziness and panicking ensues with the party trying to save her, which eventually forces it to manifest as a literally a small twister of razor winds.
The team just kept hammering away at it, taking an intense beating themselves (and needing a new set of clothes). Finally, with half the party downed and the demon was on its last...winds... The fighter has a flash of brilliance, and throws down his weapons, and says he's going to grapple it.
"It's...it's a spirit that's simply animating the wind around it. It'll be one hell of a roll, as ghost types are immune to these maneuvers." Natural 20. Yeah....it was going to die if he legitimately hit it, and it was a neat way to let it go down. I let him describe his successful defeat by wrestling it.
So he grabs the demon by the raw essence, curls it up, and slams it back into the gem. I give him a custom "Ghost Wrangler" feature, and say that he collapsed the demon into a pokemon, and can use the gem as an improvised pokeball. Of course, when rolling what random pokemon it was, it is the flying scorpion one. The dynamic between the fighter and the begrudgingly obedient demon was rather fun, all things considered.



Worst Natural 20:

"I want to strike nonlethally." Rolls 20.
"You reach into the chest of the guard and rip out his heart."
"...."
"Oh, and for killing him, you lose your paladin powers."

[Batcathat]

I'm not sure how funny or interesting this one is, but for some reason it has stuck with me despite happening like twenty years ago (geez, when did I get so old? :smalleek: ) so I might as well share it. I was playing a Swedish RPG (Drakar & Demoner Chronopia, in case anyone's curious) as a character who specialized in throwing knives and doing magic to improve said knives. The party was tracking an evil necromancer (unique premise, huh?) to his lair and found him sitting on his throne. Just as the necromancer was about to do some pre-battle monologuing I decided to throw a knife at him.

It ended up being a critical hit for maximum damage, plus some extra damage from my knife-improving-magic and it hit him straight in the head. Que a very dead necromancer sitting on his throne and a baffled GM that I'd robbed of his carefully prepared final battle.

EDIT: Just realized this thread was in the D20 forum and not the general roleplaying forum as I thought. In my defense the game in question does have natural 1s and 20s (though if I remember correctly the meanings of a 1 and a 20 are switched around).

[SangoProduction]

EDIT: Just realized this thread was in the D20 forum and not the general roleplaying forum as I thought. In my defense the game in question does have natural 1s and 20s (though if I remember correctly the meanings of a 1 and a 20 are switched around).

It's fine. It's the spirit of the story that counts.

[Khedrac]

My best Natural 1 story comes from a 3.25 campaign. We had finally reached the final battle against some sort of demon-demigod that was trying to take over in a big way. We were on a ship (and I think we may have had a fleet with us for all the good it would do) but this gave the DM some NPCs to demonstrate on. Needless to say the BBG won initiative, swooped over our ship grabbing two crew and soared off with them dropping their bodies into the sea.
My mage cast what was pretty much her signature spell - baleful polymorph, I managed to overcome SR so I asked the DM to "roll a 1". The DM replied "what happens when I do [roll a 1]?
The BBG, now in the form of a dove, then retreated out of sheer embarrassment...

Another good natural 1 was what finally started convincing the GM to tone down his Fumbles rules - the death knight specialising in 2-weapon fighting and entirely built round the concept started a fight by throwing its offhand weapon away!

[Kurald Galain]

A case of never living it down is when our party's tough guy called for a drinking contest against his teammates. They keep drinking until I call for a fort save, and tough guy rolls a one. I rule he's now intoxicated, but they find the contest isn't over yet, so they keep going. The next fort save, he rolls another one, so I ruled that he passes out (while his teammates were tipsy but fine). Of course, he would forever be known in that campaign as a guy who can't hold his liquor... :smallamused:

[Quertus]

Had an evil NPC wizard all set up to deliver some devastating Chain spell to the party. Not wanting the spell to fail because the primary target somehow resisted, he had even set up a maggot-filled corpse on the battlefield.

Party walks in, Wizard casts his chain spell, targeting a single maggot as the primary target.

Maggot rolls a natural 20.

Wizard facepalms.


It's fine. It's the spirit of the story that counts.

Oh, in that case...

Long ago, in a distant land, playing a homebrew RPG that was like Rifts, but good...

I built a telepathic vampire - basically, an Illithid Savant, over a decade before there was such a thing.

The party - and, especially, my character - is aided by and befriends this demigod lizard NPC. After it has provided so much assistance to us for so long, my character finally asks it what *it* wants.

It explains that it is a baby god, and it wants to become a full-fledged deity. OK, sounds reasonable - how does that happen? NPC explains that it needs to connect to the divine telepathic network to be considered a deity.

Well, this sounds right up my ally!

Step 1: reconnaissance. My character attempts to detect and analyze this "divine telepathic network". d100 roll (my character has just purchased a "power" (namely, Intelligence) that gives them a +1% luck ("make your own luck") bonus to all rolls) - critical success!

OK, my character perceives this network, and understands how it works. It's... not exactly a trivial thing. Do I understand what it would take to connect to it? Yes? It's just telepathy, but I can see that failure in the attempt would be fatal? OK.

Step 2: attempt to make connection. No better time than the present! :smalltongue::smallbiggrin: d100 roll - critical success!

My character had done the all but impossible (OK, one in 10,000 odds, not even "one in a million", but still) and hacked the divine telepathic network :smallcool:

With that, the NPC was accepted into the ranks of the divine... and we never heard from them again.

Not sure if this was a critical success or a critical failure. :smallconfused:

[Shirow]

My players have dice that are nice to them, most of the times. However...

Once we had a new player who was an experienced table top gamer so she started from level 5 as a paladin, and the rest of the party (around level 3 at the time: wiz, clr, fig, mnk), though jealous, welcomed the extra help in melee. In order to make them respect the new girl, and give her a chance to show how tough she was, the fighter challenged her to a one on one non-lethal damage duel in front of her organization. Unfortunately she kept getting low rolls after low rolls after low rolls until she finally got a 1 and we declared that the fighter had beaten her, and by virtue of her extreme clumsiness she had tripped hit herself with her sheathed weapon in the process...

Different story, same fighter: the next day this player rolled a one on survival when tracking the party's cleric and ended up in a completely unrelated mountain spa with a cohort. The cleric was surrounded by a scouting party of an enemy army and got slaughtered. Of course no other party member or nearby cleric could cast raise dead or anything remotely similar at that point (lvl 3 or 5).

[Seto]

Long ago, in the land of D&D 3.5, when we were first experiencing the joy of RPGs where anything could happen...
We were fighting an evil Ranger. This being level 2 and all, character death could happen if he so much at looked at us the wrong way, so the Bard went down pretty quickly. A bit later in the fight, the NPC rolled a natural 1. Our DM had a table of critical failures. I'm not sure if it was on a d20 or a d100, but he rolled a natural 1 again to check what the result would be. It said something like "you fail so epically that bards shall sing tales of it".
The GM looks at the fumble table. Looks at the Bard's corpse.
"The enemy stumbles on the corpse and falls, sticking his sword in the Bard's chest. At that moment, out of nowhere, lightning falls down and strikes the sword. The Bard gasps and opens his eyes: the electrical shock started his heart again! He shall sing tales of it. By the way, the ranger is dead from the electricity damage."

[aglondier]

This happened just a few sessions ago.

Our party was travelling down a corridor, when our goblin rogue missed a find traps roll, stepped on a pressure plate, and suddenly took off running. He had set off a poison gas trap that was about to fill the entire corridor with a deadly thick green fog.
As the next in line, my dwarf fighter shouted "Run!" and went after him, the rest of the party following suit. The corridor ended in a T-junction, left or right. The goblin rogue went right so did my dwarf fighter, the 'human' paladin, the gnome enchanter, the halfelf druid and his wolf...but the elven sorceror went left...moments later the billowing fog cut us off. A series of flubbed perception rolls later and none of us realise the elf is missing.

Meanwhile, 30-odd feet away, a necrophidius slithers out of its lair and attacks the elf, hitting and paralyzing him easily. Elf sorceror rolls a 1 to save. Necrophidius hits again, elf is down to 3 hp. It's at about this time we finally notice the creepy bone rattling noise and the absence of the Sorceror. So the druid turns and fires an arrow, blindly, back through the fog. Rolls a 1. DM says critical fumble roll to see if it hits...he rolls a 20...the elf sorceror, standing in the middle of the corridor, paralyzed, with a necrophidius wrapped around him, cops an arrow to the heart. And is now at -4 hp. As he is now dying, the necophidius witholds its attack.

Getting suspicious, the paladin raced back through 10 feet of poison, to fight the undead horror. Causing the rest of us to follow. Over the next 5 rounds of combat, the elf sorceror's player borrowed a d20 from every other player at the table for his recovery rolls...

And rolled a 1 every single round!!!

In the final round, lying there at -9 hp, the paladin finally managed to reach him with a lay on hands to save him. But, just for the record, we had him roll, one last time...you guessed it...a 1.

True story.

[Quertus]

Over the next 5 rounds of combat, the elf sorceror's player borrowed a d20 from every other player at the table for his recovery rolls...

And rolled a 1 every single round!!!

In the final round, lying there at -9 hp, the paladin finally managed to reach him with a lay on hands to save him. But, just for the record, we had him roll, one last time...you guessed it...a 1.

True story.

At least you didn't have the Paladin roll to actually succeed in touching him for Lay On Hands :smallamused:

[Batcathat]

At least you didn't have the Paladin roll to actually succeed in touching him for Lay On Hands :smallamused:

"You attempt to lay your hands on the elf but trip and shove your hands straight through his rib cage."

[rrwoods]

My DM uses a “chaining criticals” rule that almost never comes up but can make for sweet stories when it does. If a PC (not an enemy) rolls a 20 on a crit confirm roll, it confirms the critical and creates another threat, which the player also rolls to confirm. This can repeat with repeated 20s.

In twelve levels of play in this campaign, it’s come up exactly once. My character was chasing an NPC through a winding hallway, trying to stop him from killing an allied bound prisoner before that prisoner could talk to us. I get to him at the moment where, on that NPC’s next turn, he’s going to coup de grace the prisoner, almost certainly killing them. I have one standard action when I get there.

I roll *three consecutive twenties*, dealing quadruple damage — and not only that, but triple would not have been enough to get the kill. I needed a 1 in 8000 miracle to save our ally.

[the_tick_rules]

our group was fighting the drow underground. it was a railroad fight in the sense our defeat was going to happen. My character was on fire dice wise and outlasted how many troops the DM thought he would need to send. He decided to send out the clan's senior rulers to take us down. we were fighting some kind of rogue character and i got 2 or 3 nat 20's and confirmed every crit. I took her so far in the negatives the DM stop rolling halfway through she was already in pieces. He had to adjust the campaign because she was not supposed to die.

[RedMage125]

Mine come from when I was the DM. My house rule is that natural 1 rolls must be "confirmed", just like a critical hit. So if a player rolls a 1, but then "hits" on the confirmation roll, it is just a regular miss. but if they "miss" on the confirmation roll, it is a critical failure.

So, the party, about level 6 or so, is attacking a kobold war camp. Less ridiculous than it sounds, these were civilized, organized kobolds (but still evil). Most of the camp was level 3 warriors in either scale mail with spears or leather armor with crossbows. The Players split the party (alreayd a bad idea), and some of them created a diversion at the gates while the others sneaked in, invisibly, to get the plans they were after.

So the party Paladin (a 1/2 elf), on his Celestial Heavy Warhorse, is part of the "diversion" group. He charges a group of kobold warriors (who are on foot) patrolling near the gate. So a 6-foot humanoid in full plate on a 2,000 pound clydesdale CHARGING a bunch of 3 foot tall humanoids on foot.

He rolls a 1.

I have him roll to confrim.

ANOTHER 1.

There is silence at the table. I look at my player, look at the die on the table, look at him again and say, "Okay. Here's what happens. Your lance dips into the ground, right in front of your target. Your horse skids to a halt, and you are vaulted from your saddle, landing prone in the square behind your target."

Now, mind you, that square was already occupied by another kobold. Which promptly had a creature twice its size, wearing full plate land on top of it at high speeds. Killed it outright. But now the paladin was on his back, surrounded on all 8 sides by nasty little buggers with spears.

[Jay R]

It's not a d20 game, but it's the best story I have.

The game was Flashing Blades, a musketeer game. The rogue in the party had decided to learn the Etiquette skill, which takes three months. He'd spent two weeks on it. To make a successful role, you have to roll your Charm or less on a d20. [So yes, a low roll is good; a high roll is bad.] And he had a low Charm of 8.

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

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

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

He rolled a 20. Critical fumble.

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

[mashlagoo1982]

In a game I was running the party was having their first encounter with a BBEG necromancer whom was currently invisible.

Everyone had negotiated a truce where the BBEG got some McGuffin in return for the party keeping some other spoils they had acquired. Additionally the party arranged for the BBEG to leave without trying to kill them.

One player was missing (wizard), but it had been arranged that in the player's absence the party could decide the vacant character's actions.

During the item exchange, the players were able to determine where the BBEG was located and decided our wayward player would fireball that location.

It was close to multiple other party members, but all had some type of ability to mitigate almost any possible damage (mostly through the Dodge line of feats/abilities).

Monk Player: My dex mod is stupid high. Do I even need to roll to see if I take damage?
Other Player: You can always fail on a natural 1, so you really should roll.
Monk Player: *rolls a 1*
Everyone: *laughs*

I start looking over the spell to see what is rolled for damage, another player found the info and we just let him roll damage.

Other Player: That is a lot of 6's.
Monk Player: That takes me down to below -10.

We called the wizard player to confirm the selected party action was aligned with what he would have done. He confirmed we were correct and was fine killing off the monk player (really a blessing in disguise). The monk player was fine with it too just because it was so funny and out of left field.

I had plans to bring the killed character back to seek revenge against the party.
They traded the fresh corpse to the necromancer so he wouldn't kill them for their transgression.
Sadly that didn't come to pass as the game ended due to real life issues.

[Bullet06320]

back in the early days of 3.0 i had elven mage ranger fighter order of the bow archery type that had taken favored enemy drow, bbeg happened to be drow so bonus for me, lol, bbeg was supposed to escape through a portal, but 3 arrows, 3 sperate dice, 3 20's later his corpse is being scalped by my drow hating elf, lol, DM couldnt believe it, but all 3 dice landed on 20, i had rolled all the attacks at the same time, lol

while playing a pyromaniac rouge, the party is in a wagon train, and attacked by triplet black dragon wyrmlings or maybe juvys, not sure, the dm had expected us to run away. the dragons was playing being robbers, just wanted to steal our wagons and let us run off in terror,(DM thought the 6 wagons we had was slowing down the game)
i had other ideas, gallon jug molatove cocktail, I wasnt giving up my wagon without a fight, lol.
the Dwarf barbarian in our party was nose to knee with the middle one arguing with when i decided to firebomb it.
rolls dice...20....oh within 30' and flanked, i get sneak attack bonus, lol
dm tells me to confirm....20...ummm....how much damage?
8 pints in a gallon, 8d6+8 for pyro feat+8 for craven x2 plus 4d8 sneak att, oh and pyro adds another 1 per die for the sneak attack right?
i think there was something else i could add too, and yes d8s for sneak att from a 3rd party party feat
Stop adding, the dm shaking his head covering his face tells u what he imagined in his head, the dragon reached out with his mouth and swallowed the molatove and he blows up from the inside out, its brothers see that and run away as fast as they can

[Elkad]

DMing for my nine players, after playing 3.5 under another DM for a few months. I'm converting ToEE on the fly from 1e - because I know most of it by heart, so all I have to concentrate on is the conversion. Key NPCs I've preconverted, most of the rest go on the fly.

We end a session with rolling initiative for the final fight at the bottom of the moathouse.
Next week we get to it. I'd added minions to match the party size, but didn't up-level the BBEG, just rebuilt slightly.


5 hours later. Everything but the BBEG and 2 party members are on the ground, dead or dying.

Paladin goes down. Now only 1 character upright. A sorc with no spells, no more throwing daggers, fighting with a spear she picked up off the ground. She whiffs.
BBEG hits, sorc goes to -4. "bad guys win!".
Player "I took Die Hard last level". "What?" Yup, it's on her printed sheet. And Endurance too. On a sorc.
Not that it will matter, she needs a 19 to hit, does 1d6-1 damage, and BBEG has 6hp left. I'm considering if I run a capture scenario, or if I make them reroll a whole new party.
Nat 20. 19 to confirm. 7 damage!

And then there is this one. I've told it here before.
Not a nat20. A 00 on percentile dice. I didn't witness the roll. Hell, it wasn't at my table. But I was still part of it.




<snipped stuff relevant to original thread>

Wandering semi-off-topic, I was playing at a gaming club in the late 80s. 18th-ish level, I'm playing a pretty well-optimized Paladin of Osiris with a bunch of Solar powers grafted on. We are in a gigantic fight which had been going for hours.

Another DM wanders in from the next room for a conference with our DM. Apparently his party (lower level, 12th or so) had done everything completely wrong, releasing the big evil instead of sealing it away forever, and was facing a TPK. With no better ideas, their cleric pulls out the percentiles, rolls for Divine Intervention, and turns up the big 00 for success. DM isn't sure how to handle it without either hand-waving their failure away, or hand-waving a win, so he'd come to consult with ours.

Our DM asks who the cleric's deity is.
"Osiris"
Our DM looks at me. "Paladin of Osiris, right?"
"Yessss?"
"Pick up your dice and go save their butts"

So with half my abilities used and a bunch of damage, I got dropped cold into a completely different fight. My "briefing" consisted of "Osiris just popped a gate. Osiris says "Stop the evil, save my loyal servant Joe the Cleric and his friends if you can""
DM parked me in the hall, went in the room, shut the door, collected character sheets descriptions from everyone (unknown to me), and made all the players move away from the table and remain silent.

DM lets me in, said "This is Joe, you appear next to him".
Giant map (most of an 8'x12' table), half of which was on fire. There had to be nearly 100 minis out, demons flying around, summoned creatures, corpses, etc. No idea who Joe's friends are. DM gives me exceedingly brief descriptions of each mini on the map.

"Your move"

I didn't even know who his friends were at first. They were all forbidden to talk until I'd taken my first round of actions.

In the meantime, my own party just lost a member mid-fight, causing them serious problems as well.

<more original topic snipped>

and my response to several "you have to finish that story" posts.


IIRC, I opened by bouncing my always-on Solar Globe of Invulnerability to 100' radius, which squashed a lot of Walls of Fire the friendlies were toasting in, and Detected Evil for a round trying to sort out the bad guys. Cleric dropped when the monsters went, I burned my emergency Wish (off a ring, last charge) to stand him back up with full health and spells. The big mobile Globe of Invulnerability was a huge help vs the hordes of demons saturating the group with low-level spells. Then I slow-marched toward the BBEG while the friendlies bunched up around me. I'd optimized AC (in 3.5 terms, upwards of AC50, and another +20 if I went full defense), and took half-damage from all melee attacks. The smaller demons tried to zerg us, which wasn't working well for them.

At some point a dual-wielding evil-radiating werewolf appeared next to me as the Holy Avenger Dispel Field disabled his Improved Invisibility. Not wanting to get backstabbed, I whacked him. Hard.
"That was a party member"
"Now he's a corpse. Osiris will sort him out. Or not."

Ended up with me tanking the BBEG (I think it started as a Gorristo before the DM upgraded the crap out of it) with the party clearing adds and/or keeping me healed. When the bad guy ran out of health, he teleported out, which was good enough. Fleeing in the face of Good doesn't get you many more evil followers.

As the party started cleaning up the remaining bits of lesser demons and evil cultists, I got dropped right back into my original party fight. At least Osiris tossed in a Heal on the way through the Gate this time.

[zfs]

Had a good double Nat 1 once. I was playing a Duskblade with a minor Minotaur bloodline. We faced off against a group of enemies that included a Minotaur. I tried to intimidate him...and rolled a Nat 1. DM ruled he had a +1 on his next attack against me because my intimidation attempt was so laughable. Minotaur charges me - and Nat 1's. Even his evil comrades laughed at how badly he whiffed. DM gave me the same +1 circumstance bonus and I murked him with a pretty hefty Arcane Strike.

[farothel]

We were playing the Drow wars a number of years back and we encountered a Hydra (we were lvl 7-8 at that time I think). First round of combat, our barbarian goes into rage and charges in with his magical two-handed waraxe. 2 natural 20s later, by-by hydra.

A bit further in that campaign we have another one, where me and a drow cleric do a Durkon-Redcloak. She casts slay living on my character, and I roll a 20 to save. Having the same spell, I cast it right back, get through SR and then she rolls a 1 on her save. 1 round, a small pile of ash and by-by high level drow cleric.


A third one is in Alternity. There the 1s and 20s are reversed. We are navigating through space and our navigator has to roll 18 or less to keep us on course. Our GM had made a list of a few items of where we could end up when going off course. After 3 sessions he was through his list. We had a crit fail on the navigation roll at least once per session.

[the_tick_rules]

One of our party members was a full orc fighter. He was wearing half-plate and dex was not his best stat, his hide check was in the negatives. He was trying to hide from something and rolled a one to begin with. Someone whose character was not there said she wishes she could see him trying to hide. I responded, "With a roll like that everyone can see him hiding."

[Quertus]

Speaking of divine intervention…

GM had given me a ghetto Necklace of Prayer Beads: a) the beads were all one-use; b) each bead was rolled randomly when used. So, you had absolutely no idea what you were going to get, you just prayed… and prayed.

Needless to say, I hadn't used the blessed thing. :smallwink:

End of the campaign, and the final boss fight is against a bloody castle. No, not the soldiers *in* the castle - *they* were the warm-up fight. No, once the occupants were under control, the bloody castle itself got up to fight off us invaders!

Of course, that was because the "soldiers" were cultists, and the castle was their (newly-resurrected) deity (all this dieing both sides' armies had been doing kinda powered the cultists' ritual, it seems (and made the castle quite bloody in the process)).

Well ****.

As *this* fight was winding down (by which I mean, just *the PCs* had dealt it over 1,000 damage, and roughly half of the PCs were down), my character casts a spell to manipulate probability, followed by using a bead.

Long story short, summons his deity. A war god. Enemy deity be all like "Oh S…” before my character's deity went Wonder Woman on his makeshift form.

Seemed a satisfying use of that ridiculous item, IMO. :smalltongue: :smallamused: