[Any System] Bad Luck Battle

[falconflicker]

So, last night in our group's D&D campaign, we ran into a battle. Nothing special at the surface, just a giant spider. But it quickly went horribly, horribly, wrong. And hilarious.

The party consists of six characters played by three people (yes we're a bit lacking in players): a drow warlock (who has a grudge against spiders), a Dragonborn paladin (who does NOT have a stick class feature), a klutzy and deluded Eladrin wizard (who is actually secretly a goody-goody necromancer, but don't tell the Holies), a Tiefling bard (who tends to keep to herself), a half-elf cleric of Pelor (our other "Holy"), and a human ranger.

First off, when we were rolling initiative, the ranger critically failed. The DM ruled that he started the battle dazed due to an ongoing magical... issue. (He was in the process of changing race.) First round, first turn, the warlock goes to use Witchfire (an encounter power) and critically fails again. He ended up blasting the unfortunate cleric of the group, who threatened to thwack him for it. The rest of the round was spent whiffing every single move (even the spider failed).

Second round, the warlock tries a simple Eldritch Blast... and critically fails a second time in a row. The DM ruled that the blast hit a stalactite, which then fell and hit the spider, doing the first bit of damage to it in the battle, despite having previously been incinerated with acetelyne (long story). Next turn, the paladin tries to go. He tries a standard at-will, missed, got frustrated and tried a Dragonbreath. He then proceeded to critically fail on that, too. Since he was an acid-using Dragonborn, it was ruled that he ended up half-swallowing, half-vomiting instead. There was a puddle of acid left on the floor at his feet. Third and fourth turns of that round, we finally got a couple of real (not DM pity) hits in, for pitiful damage.

The third and final round started with the warlock again. The spider had jumped (and missed), and was now standing fairly close to the warlock. So, he stepped towards it and unleashed Otherwind Stride, and finally rolled a natural 20, a critical hit. He also rolled max damage on every die for 26 damage, when it only had 20 HP left.

So, to recap, there were only four actual solid hits the whole battle, all of them on our side (the spider never landed a hit).

Do any of you have any good stories of extremely bad luck?

[Critical]

When I was playing a ninja the DM decided to make my appearance as if I was climbing into one of the our PC's room in a tavern. Everything was going smoothly, but the bard has rolled a natural 20 on a passive listen. So I tell I jump out of the window ninja-style, and I roll 1. I crash on the floor unconscious. The bard throws me out of the window along with my backpack. I lost my backpack(happily, nothing good there). I decide that I climb back into some other room, I climb into a sleeping dwarf's room, everything runs smoothly, but he rolls 20 on passive listen as well. So, next I fail a reflex save and end up entangled. Luckily, the bard smooth-talked it out and they threw me out of the window again. That was probably my unluckiest session :D

[Project_Mayhem]

We were playing Vampire the Masquerade, and my character was a Gangrel, which are the shape-changing animalistic ones. I was trying to climb a slightly overhung cliff; normally difficult, but I was very physically adept, had blood buffed my stats, and had changed my hands and feet to claws, which gives a bonus. My dice pool was something like 14, and I needed to roll more successes (6+) than ones. The odds of failing were astronomically small.

I rolled 7 ones and no successes. The DM decided I dislodged a massive chunk of stone and the island collapsed.

[Dragoa]

First game I played, I was a rogue, and got into my first dungeon crawl where I was happy to find traps which I could go to disarm.

First trap, failure. Nearly killed me.
Second trap, failure. Nearly killed me.
Third Trap, failure. Nearly killed me.
Forth Trap, got fed up with failing disarms at this point just ran into the trap, and fell into a pit of spikes, and got to about -8 before the cleric had jumped into the pit after me to stop me from dying.

It went on like this for a while, the DM amazed that I didn't manage to disarm a single trap.

[Rhiannon87]

Last session of the game I'm about to leave for...

We're passing through a tiny, tiny hamlet, and find that it is abandoned. Poking around with magic/psionics, we discover about a dozen intelligent, hungry presences in a root cellar. We arrange ourselves around the door, have the wizard ready an action to cast fireball down the door, and yank said door open.

The floor collapses under us, and everyone but the wizard falls down. Two of the melee fighter types end up prone. The fireball still goes off, burning out two of the fifteen ghouls.

Long story short, we have three deaths due to paralyzation and coup de grace attacks on helpless defenders-- there were easily a dozen fort saves that had to be made, and below 5 was rolled for a startlingly high number of them. The survivors manage to finish off the ghouls on their own and haul the bodies out so the "cleric" (whose player was, naturally, absent that day) could cast raise dead, thanks to DM kindness.

[rayne_dragon]

This happens to me quite often. Sometimes I'll play a game where every other roll on my part is a natural 1. Other times I'd rarely roll under 10 the whole night.

The worst was playing an epic planescape game. We were shopping in Sigil and got ambushed by a bunch of imps that were somehow augmented with permanent level drain. I got hit first, critically, and was knocked unconcious. On top of that I was the only person who could have cast protection from negative energy. We only survived because of a Holy Word spell stored in a ring. I also had rolled three ones in a row earlier and every other roll was a 1, including the perception check to notice the damn imps.

[zoobob9]

ok, we were level 2, almost 3, and we had to fight what we later found out to be a lvl 9 elite metallic something dragon. Our only striker was not really good, he was an avenger with wis of 16. not really good. so he failed every hit, the dragon kept teleporting around making random attacks so our defenders couln't do anything, our leader was first to die, and everybody else hit, but honestly they had extremely bad damage rolls. I was the leader, so i couldn't do anything. the dragon eventually went away, and we couldn't follow, and our DM told us he was a reccuring villan. the next time we encountered it, our striker was better, we redid his stats, but his player wasn't there so somebody else took over. every time he rolled, he said "This is for Jack!" and he rolled a one 3 times in a row. there is a 1 in 8000 chance of doing that.