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only1doug
2008-09-04, 10:56 AM
What entertaining fuumble results have you given your players / has your GM given you?


I have fond memories of a CoC game, one player had talked me into allowing him a specific pistol (mauser of some kind i think) that had a rate of fire 3 and high damage / shot (bit of a system breaker).
he finally managed to roll a missfire and was very upset with the result* and finally the broken gun was a broken gun.


* as he only normally fired about 3 shots before reloading i decided that the misfire result was actually due to the spring in the internal magazine having broken. constant wear and no maintenance: for ages he had used this gun (about 18 months real world, probably 1-2 years game time) and he always kept it fully loaded (internal magazine rather than a replaceable clip).

Kiyona
2008-09-04, 11:18 AM
An amazing string of natural ones ended up with two in our party almost drowning. :smallbiggrin:

We were fighting a huge turtle in an underground pool of some sort. The turtle started to grapple my poor sorceress. She managed to break free, (grease spell I think) but only to roll a one on jump ( I think) and hit her head on the side of the pool knocking her out.

The barbarian, trying to be a hero, jumped after me, but after to 1s in a row, slipped and knocked himself out. So two unconsios (sp?) PCs on the bottom of the pool. Our three remaining characters were busy fighting the turtle so they didnt notice our misfortune at first. Not until they had killed it did they realise we were missing.

More natural 1s on spot and search, and at this point we were dying.
The DM told them that the only place we could be were in the pool, so they jumped in and he gave them very low DCs on spot and search to find us.... More 1s. I have never seen such an unlikly string of 1s in my gaming life!

Luckily they finally managed to rill something else, and got us up out of the water just in time. A sorcerer cant make that many fort saves without failing eventually. =)

monty
2008-09-04, 11:23 AM
Some monster, I can't remember what it was, tried to attack one of the party members with a bite. It fumbled and rolled "kill self" on the fumble chart. Not sure exactly what to do with it, the DM just decided that it bit its own head off.

black dragoon
2008-09-04, 11:26 AM
A DC D20 (our homebrew superhero setting) Was notorious for this. My character actually had almost gotten shot by the same person five times, he was part of the party.

loopy
2008-09-04, 11:42 AM
I remember the party Paladin once fumbled and dropped his longsword 6 times in one fight with Ice Mephits. Rather embarrassing for him, I must say. My rogue needled him about it for weeks.

Prometheus
2008-09-04, 12:01 PM
One of my pretty standard fumbles for an archer is to shoot at the wrong target. They were fighting a hag at night and the ranger rolls a fumble with his arrow and accidentally hits the female rogue. I explain that the ranger had temporarily mistaken the rogue for the hag...she wasn't too happy but it was funny.

kirn
2008-09-04, 12:05 PM
I had a paladin that insisted on being a paladin of God for personal reasons. His holy sword was shaped like a crucifix and was nearly as tall as he was. Rolled a 1 followed by max damage. For kicks I rolled 1d4 for damage multiplier and got 4x. I couldn't think of another way he could do that much damage to himself, so his sword went flying into the air, came down on his shoulder and skewered his body. He basically crucified himself.

At the same time, I was making my mage player roll percentage to see how well he learned spells. He kept getting 00 for chill touch and shocking grasp every level, so the spells essentially backfired whenever he used them. He had an annoying habit of freezing himself in battle and gradually replaced all the hair on his body with scar tissue. He finally learned shocking grasp with a 01 so I gave him a bit of bonus damage and an ability to make his eyes crackle with electricity. He had a lot of fun playing the mysterious cowled mage until someone in the party healed him and he lost all of his scars.

One player was a male drow warrior/cleric (don't ask) who had recently acquired a magical double headed axe (don't ask). He critically fumbled while he was trying to pull a Highlander. I rolled a 1d4 and decided he disarmed himself. The axe went flying out of his hand, lopped off the head of the little duergar in front of him (wild cheering) and into the chest of Milo (who's Milo?) who pulled the axe out of his chest and wielded it. Milo was of the huge ogre/troll persuasion.

Fako
2008-09-04, 12:22 PM
In my first campaign I had two players that were in a constant cat and mouse situation. They knew I didn't like inter-party conflict, but I allowed them (relatively) free reign of what their characters did.
They were heading through a dungeon that eventually had a 100' descent to the next area, with a rope tied to one corner of the pit. The rogue (mouse) went first, and the fighter (cat) decided it would be a perfect opportunity to kill him. He drew his sword and attacked the rope, rolling a 1 in the process. I had him roll again, and he rolled a 1 once more. Because of the constant fighting, and the fact that the party needed that rope to get down (no one had bought any...), I simply told him he cut the "wrong rope"... :smallwink:
He stared at me stupidly for a second, then his eyes went wide with shock as he understood. He then had his character decapitate himself... :smallbiggrin:

Tsotha-lanti
2008-09-04, 12:35 PM
Therlain, Death Sword of Humakt, was facing off in a duel against a magical doppelganger of himself in a test of skill and bravery. He attacks, fumbles, and the table says he hits himself. He rolls, and - being a super-skilled Death Sword with a bastard sword, wearing nothing but cool black leather - lops his right leg clean off. Being an incredibly tough bastard, he easily remains conscious, and the player immediately shouts, "I'm just evening the odds!"

He proceeded to kill the doppelganger.

Much, much later in the campaign, Therlain chopped off his leg again, in single combat against an enemy general (a Runelord of Yanafal Tarnils). Sure, it was only twice in at least as many years, but it definitely became his "thing."

I've linked this before, but for great (RuneQuest) fumbles, you can't beat Phipp (http://www.soltakss.com/fumbles.html).

skywalker
2008-09-04, 12:41 PM
Well, it was our first D&D game(first time role-playing for some, first time DM, etc. Bad juju there...) anyway, we encountered a winter-wolf who was tied to a chain(this was in a orc-fortress we had purged). He spoke to us and asked us to set him free. The party's inquisitive wizard declared "I inspect the chain." He maintains he meant he was going to look at it from a distance. However, inspect the chain seemed to imply to the rest of us(DM included) that he walked into the radius of the chain to look at the mechanism.

3 rounds later, the wolf was using its continuous bite-trip combo to keep him on the ground while it munched on him. The DM was allowing him to crawl/roll 5 feet as a move action(already bending the rules) and then was asked if he could also use a cure potion in the same round as rolling. DM's response: I'll let you do that if you roll anything but a 1. Guess what? One dead wizard :smallfrown:

only1doug
2008-09-04, 12:53 PM
Just remembered a Starwars (WEG) game.

Our group Jedi had decided to start with a lightsaber but wanted to learn to use it in-game so he started with only 2d skill...

so the very first time he tried to use it he rolled double 1 (fumble) then a string of 6's resulting in a self-decapitation.

(soon afterwards the jedi's identical twin took over, not our normal approach but it was the first combat of the first session of the game)

Samakain
2008-09-04, 01:13 PM
Zantharlia, Elf Gish, jumped on a pile of garbage to take down a fire beetle that was bothering the "real mage" and rolled a 1, fell prone. Firebeetle rolled a double 20 and had elf head for dinner :(

Halfling named Dunno Whatsyours ment to jump onto a table so he go go "eye to nipple" with an ogre occupying a space next to said table. He failed slamming himself prone over the table, ogre finished him off with a nice crit.

Same halfing, stone giant hurling a rocks at 150ft, double 20. splat halfling. Not a fumble true, but still as funny as hell.

Blackfang108
2008-09-04, 01:23 PM
One campaign, my friend was playing a Shadowsyft Rogue.

he fumbled several stealth checks and was eventually seen by the party.

he started running around us when our mage Stuck his Quarterstaff straight out.

He rolled a Dex check.

"Yes, a 20!"
The DM, "We're using 2nd Ed rules for Ability checks. You just racked yourself."

Every male reflixively cringed and covered.

once we got into the dungeon, we had to break some stone statues.

He rolled another 1, and broke his sword(only weapon).

So he finished the dungeon with a bone as a club.

later in that campaign, he ste off a trap and was blinded by GOD-Poison.(the effects resisted a greater restoration)

Lycan 01
2008-09-04, 01:36 PM
Call of Cthulhu last saturday.

A bit of roleplaying goes awry, and a drunk old man ends up bustin' out a double-barrel shotty on the investigators. They all run for their lives and leave the house, except for one. He tries to tackle the old man. He fails the grapple check, and the old man sidesteps his lunging character. I let him do a dodge check to avoid tripping, which he fails. The result? An investigator laying prone crying as an old man places a boot to his neck and two barrels to the back of his head.

Even better was the fact that one guy turned to draw his handgun and fire at the old man, only to fumble the pistol roll, leaving his weapon stuck in the holster. I felt merciful, so I said the old guy got distracted and raised the shotgun at the failed pistoleer. Another guy managed to succeed his pistol roll, which let him draw his pistol as he ran and get off a shot, which struck the old guy in the forearm, causing him to fire one barrel of the shotgun into the floor, deafening the prone dude. (No roll on the shotgun blast, I just wanted to freak him out. :P)

Another player then drew her pistol, fired... and got 2 points higher than a critical. She managed to wound the old man and drop him with a shot to the knee, but if she'd rolled 2 points lower, her shot would have blown his leg right off, and he would have bled out on top of the prone guy. I sooooo wish she'd have gotten those two points less. XD

Project_Mayhem
2008-09-04, 05:14 PM
Call of Cthulhu last saturday.

A bit of roleplaying goes awry, and a drunk old man ends up bustin' out a double-barrel shotty on the investigators. They all run for their lives and leave the house, except for one. He tries to tackle the old man. He fails the grapple check, and the old man sidesteps his lunging character. I let him do a dodge check to avoid tripping, which he fails. The result? An investigator laying prone crying as an old man places a boot to his neck and two barrels to the back of his head.

Even better was the fact that one guy turned to draw his handgun and fire at the old man, only to fumble the pistol roll, leaving his weapon stuck in the holster. I felt merciful, so I said the old guy got distracted and raised the shotgun at the failed pistoleer. Another guy managed to succeed his pistol roll, which let him draw his pistol as he ran and get off a shot, which struck the old guy in the forearm, causing him to fire one barrel of the shotgun into the floor, deafening the prone dude. (No roll on the shotgun blast, I just wanted to freak him out. :P)

Another player then drew her pistol, fired... and got 2 points higher than a critical. She managed to wound the old man and drop him with a shot to the knee, but if she'd rolled 2 points lower, her shot would have blown his leg right off, and he would have bled out on top of the prone guy. I sooooo wish she'd have gotten those two points less. XD

... I'm sure I recently heard something like this story - do you post on yog-sothoth?

Ravyn
2008-09-04, 08:32 PM
My personal favorite to inflict on my group was a knowledge botch in my Exalted game. Now, one of my STs had had a tendency to keep knowledge botches quiet and just have the person in question draw a logical conclusion from erroneous information, since that makes them ever so much more devastating, and I was following his example. And then one of the PCs got a vision involving... well, it was the Essence diagram for a gateway to Malfeas, and it was supposed to remind the group of a diagram they'd seen in one of the earlier sessions. Enter the Twilight, who looks at the sketch his teammate has made and promptly botches. So I take the next most reasonable piece of information and tweak it a little, end result of which being that he recognizes it as being similar to something that could hint at the existence of a gate... in Kejak's office. (Don't ask why they'd been there. It was my first game, and I was a little hazy on what's reasonable, and it made sense at the time.)

The best part? Despite the fact that said character was infamous for his botches, nobody figured it out for about six months. Particularly amusing was the fact that at one point over those six months, in another game, someone commented that it was a good thing the player in question wasn't very convincing. Fortunately, on the Internet, no-one can hear you snicker if you don't want them to.

Lycan 01
2008-09-04, 08:56 PM
... I'm sure I recently heard something like this story - do you post on yog-sothoth?

Nope. Never been there, and only just heard of it yesterday, I think.

I only just started late July. Its only my group's 3rd game. Saturday I'm letting a friend play Keeper, just so he can see what its like and I can play for once. He says we're going to Innsmouth. I say "bring it!" I'm also putting all my points in Hide, Sneak, Drive Auto, and other skills for running and escaping, rather than fighting. I know what sort of stuff we're gonna be up against! XD

bosssmiley
2008-09-05, 04:34 AM
We played RoleMaster. You can see where I'm going with this... :smallamused:

Kaihaku
2008-09-05, 04:49 AM
Not really the best...

I dismissed a near-death warhorse from under one of my Paladins, figuring I could easily hit the DC 5 Jump Check. Rolled a 1. Prone and surrounded by enemies. Thing is, next time it happened that the same Paladin dismissed his mount from under him, it happened again. :smallconfused: I didn't try it again after that.

Project_Mayhem
2008-09-05, 04:58 AM
I only just started late July. Its only my group's 3rd game. Saturday I'm letting a friend play Keeper, just so he can see what its like and I can play for once. He says we're going to Innsmouth. I say "bring it!" I'm also putting all my points in Hide, Sneak, Drive Auto, and other skills for running and escaping, rather than fighting. I know what sort of stuff we're gonna be up against! XD

Thats sensible. Remember the old Skaven adage, 'he who runs away, lives to run another day'.

Seriously, if your doing the Esape from Innsmouth campaign, then you can't describe how envious I am. I couldn't get hold of that.

Try Tatters of the King if you can, its good, and its recent, so should still be available.

Eorran
2008-09-05, 10:04 AM
Personal favorite, from a 2nd ed game years ago...
Our high-level party (14+) is fighting a big Troll/Giant thing on a cliff ledge. The ranger rolls a 1, I rule his sword bounces out of his hand and off the ledge. It's about 150' to the bottom of the cliff, windy, and cold. The Ranger has a cape of the bat, and it was his favorite sword, so...
He threw himself off a 150' cliff, hoping to catch his sword before it hit the bottom. After a few successful Dex checks, he's got the sword and turns to head back up to the fight.
Meanwhile, the fighter/mage also fumbles, loses his sword, and is reduced to stabbing this monster with a dagger. The troll/giant thing gets a crit on the single-class mage, knocking her off the ledge. She doesn't have any flying tools.
So the ranger drops his sword to catch the mage. Good times.

Lycan 01
2008-09-05, 11:00 AM
Actually, neither of us is using Escape from Innsmouth. He's just using all his Lovecraft reading and the rulebook to make up Innsmouth from scratch. I think he'll be quite capable of making up a good storyline on his own, although I fear he may try a bit too hard to kill us. Ergo, my guy's got some uber escaping skills. :P

I myself have constructed another Innsmouth from scratch, using years of Lovecraft reading, the rulebook, and several hours of playing the Call of Cthulhu video game. I just started a pbp game here on the site, which has yet to really get off the ground. One player dropped out yesterday, so you can join, if you like... :P



Back on topic, while not a fumble, one guy was so paranoid that he just cracked open a door and fired 4 shots into whatever was on the other side. I said "Well, rolls to see if you hit whatever might be on the other side..." He took this as meaning that there was something on the other side, so he was extremely elated when all 4 shots landed and did heavy damage. He then realized that he had spaced the shots, so whatever he had hit must have been huge. It took him awhile to muster the courage to open the door completely, only to spaz out when he found the room to be empty. "Where did it go?! Is it invisible?! There's no way I'm going in there now!"

He went in eventually. And had a bed frame thrown against him by a poltergeist, which threw him out a window and reduced him to 1 HP, not to mention broke his nose and cost him 1 Appearance point. XD Again, not really a fumble, but a funny story none-the-less...

Ascension
2008-09-05, 11:20 AM
We had a dwarf fighter in one campaign who set his beard on fire as a result of fumbling with a flaming greataxe. The same player also snapped so many bowstrings as a result of crossbow fumbles that the character started carrying at least three strings around at all times.

On the other hand, the gnome fighter in the same campaign had the exact opposite luck with dice... she had no stat under 14 and critted at least once per session, if not more.

EDIT: Oh, I almost forgot, I was playing in a one-shot anti-zombie d20 Modern campaign one time, and the ex-con tough guy on the team managed to completely total our getaway vehicle while attempting to pull a fancy driving maneuver in it. We stole a police car to try to get away in it, but I wrecked it while trying to run over some zombies. We ended up having to flee on foot.

black dragoon
2008-09-05, 12:04 PM
resident Evil D20 one of the party members was playing a rather overweight trucker and during our escape onto the roof of a building being overrun by Zeds he rolled a one to climb through the window and onto a nearby roof. He landed on the ground two-stories below which is infested with zombies....You guys can do the math I hope.:smallwink:

Artanis
2008-09-05, 12:07 PM
In Exalted, we were being employed by a good-guy Fair Folk (well, as good-guy as they get, meaning he wasn't trying to kill us at that particular moment), and he was lying through his teeth about his motives. We knew OOC that he was trying to screw us, and the ST let us roll a check to see if we had reason to be suspicious about his blatantly obvious ploy. The unofficial circle leader, being the closest thing we had to a social guy, rolled the check:

Fair Folk guy: So you'll help me set up a new branch of my hotel in Lookshy?
Player (OOC): *rolls fumble on 5 dice* Aw ****, that's a fumble.
ST: You believe every word he says. In fact, you are convinced that he is being more honest that many humans tend to be.
Player (OOC): ugh.
PC: By the Unconquered Sun, of course we will!


Yes, we helped a Fair Folk start a hotel in DBville. As Solars.

Jalor
2008-09-05, 10:14 PM
My Thri-Kreen once broke his gythka on a troll. The chunk of bladed polearm went spinning through the air and castrated our Beguiler.

arguskos
2008-09-05, 10:17 PM
My Thri-Kreen once broke his gythka on a troll. The chunk of bladed polearm went spinning through the air and castrated our Beguiler.
There's nothing about that sentence I disliked. :smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

-argus

drengnikrafe
2008-09-06, 09:23 PM
I know it's not very funny, but I feel like I have to tell this story, since it's the only one I've got.

Some monster summoned by a Summon Monster V spell appears. The DM rolls attack: it's a 1. He says it's my turn (he doesn't really like wasting time on second rolls), but I beg him to roll for fumble. He does. It's another 1. Rolls for damage, gets the max result. The decision, then, was that the poor beast charged at me, but got turned around for no reason, smashed into a wall, and had a rock fall on it. The rock then blocked the doorway...

Malfunctioned
2008-09-07, 11:28 AM
My players were fighting a Beholder and had brought it down to around 5hp, it started to fly away and the 46 strength (don't ask) Orc Barbarian, while raging, decided to throw his axe at it. He got a natural 1, rolled two natural twenties for his attack and confirmation, then rolled a 12 on his damage die.......essentially he raised his arm to throw the axe, it flew out of his hands backwards, impaling the Tiefling Sorcerer standing behind him :smallsmile:.