Bad times to roll a natural 20.

[Hypothetical]

So last night I'm playing the start of a brand new scenario with my buddy as GM, in a semi-homebrew setting.

The party:
Me, a lvl 1 Monk.
3 NPCs :
A lvl 1 Ranger
A lvl 1 Wizard
A lvl 1 Priestess.

We're on a mission to recover a caravan of stolen trade goods. The targets are going to be Kobolds, possibly Gnomes, and possibly a Goblin or two.

We get into this forest, and pull a reverse abmush on a group of 10 Kobolds, killing 4, Sleeping 5, and capturing one.

Interogating the captured one, we find that the group is from a small fort, with 18 Kobolds a little ways away, and the last caravan that got ambushed is still there, awaiting delivery.

Since the Wizard is out of spells, we decide to attack the next morning.

The Wizard takes Sleep twice, and we come up with the following plan.

The Ranger and I will appraoch the wall of the fort, and attempt to talk the Kobolds into believing that we are there to pick up the Caravan for their leader, a Goblin named Kristak ( or some such) aka Shiny Rock. INTRAGAL to the plan is for the bluff to fail, so that the Kobolds will send out a team to attack us, and the wizard will sleep the first group. And from there either they will send out more of them, or we will assault the now open fort.

So we walk up to the fort, hail the gaurds, and begin to make our bluff.

And I roll a natural 20 on the bluff roll. (Against a DC 25 bluff check, I learn after what happens next, for reasons that will become appearant.)Oops. I know, as soon as it happens that this is not a good thing, but it's a little hard to back off now, because our ambush is ruined, and we still need to get that caravan back. And it all goes downhill from there.

The Wizard manages to join the Ranger and I without being noticed, and we blithely walk in the now wide open gate. Good point, the Wizard still has 2 sleeps to work with, and the fort is small, so the Kobolds are going to be concentrated in a small area.

I have these Kobolds eating out of my hand. They would believe anything I say, even if I claimed to be thier mother. That's exactly how the GM put it.

And then, a slip of the tounge. I'm working on getting these Kobolds to release the carvan to me. And that "The Boss" Shiny Rock would send payment once the caravan had been varified. The Kobold gets this look on his face, says "I'll ask him" turns and yells "Hey Boss", and out walks Shiny Rock himself, a lvl 3 Goblin Barbarian. I yell for the Preistess, who was still outside, and it's on.

3 Rounds later, the Goblin is out, 4 of the Kobolds are dead, and the other 14 are snoring like babies. Unfortunatly, the Ranger is on the ground at -8 HP, and I'm down to 1. And the Preistess is nowhere to be found. I stabalize the Ranger ( Glad I took a rank of Heal) find a Healing potion on the Goblin, heal the Ranger upto 1 HP, and we go to find the Preistess, who it turns out was kidnapped by Gnomes riding War Pigs. 5 days hard chase later, we manage to rescue the Preistess.

Well, the Elvan Wizard now has a nice Magic Sword ( Unidentified but definatly magic) and I, the monk, now have a Shiny Rock around my neck that is so powerful that when the Wizard did a detect magic on it, it nearly blinded him. I have no idea what it does just yet, but I've got time for that. ( No, we weren't supposed to get either one yet, I derailed the GM slightly by actually deciding to attack the fort, instead of heading back to town and reporting what we had found out. I mean, 4 people against a fort? That has to be insane right? Mua ha ha.)

[Variable Arcana]

Ouch! (Sounds like it was fun, though.)

For future reference, I think you can deliberately fail a skill check...

... or perhaps more ICly, you could use Bluff to try to convince them that you are (badly) trying to trick them... (that should have a fairly low DC)

[Behold_the_Void]

Natural 20 on a skill check is not an automatic success, just as natural 1 on a skill check is not an automatic failure. So you'd have needed a Bluff modifier of at least 5 to even make that check. Just so you know.

[Ranis]

It sounds like you had an immense amount of fun for being the only PC, bravo.

[kamikasei]

Wait... how did you convince them that you were "there to pick up the Caravan for their leader" if their leader was right there?

[Daneel the Sane]

Natural 20 on a skill check is not an automatic success, just as natural 1 on a skill check is not an automatic failure. So you'd have needed a Bluff modifier of at least 5 to even make that check. Just so you know.

Actually, I am his DM... And his bluff modifier IS +5... +2 from Charisma, Skill Rank 1, and he has Sacred Vow as his feat (gives +2 perfection bonus, from the Book of Exalted Deeds). So he smacked the roll right on the head. Also, I use a house rule saying that on skill checks, a natural 20 reads as a 30. Not automatic success, but still pretty decent bump.

Also, in case anyone is buggin' about the fact that a goblin and kobolds were working with gnomes, my world had a nasty disaster happen to the gnomes, and they were saved by Graz'zt the demon lord in return for their souls... They always rode war pigs (anyone here Ozzy?), but now they ride abyssal war pigs... Spooky dudes, gnomes...

[Daneel the Sane]

Wait... how did you convince them that you were "there to pick up the Caravan for their leader" if their leader was right there?

Actually, I had given him a DC of 35 on the roll... We both figured he would fail it, being a first level character... see above about my house rule... not my original rule, I actually picked it up from these forums.

[brian c]

Yeah you definitely should have intentionally failed the roll. I'm not saying it was bad DMing or anything, but if I DMed a game where someone's plan was to fail a bluff, I wouldn't even ask them to roll it.

Incidentally, reminds me of my game yesterday. We were searching through some prisoners' belongings and the rogue rolled a nat 20 on search, even though we could all just take 20 if we wanted. One of the objects belonging to the prisoner was a magical box; we used an elixir of truth on the prisoner to determine how to open the box (magic words) and he also told us that the box was trapped. The rogue then rolls a 20 on search to find the trap, then a 1 to disarm it. This sets off the fireball trap, knocking him unconscious (group is lvl5, he's a Rogue-Wizard with 16hp). I was the only one to make the reflex save, as a monk with evasion taking 0 damage. Luckily the trap took a minute to reset and we opened the box before then.

[Hypothetical]

Actually, once the bluff started working, I thought there was a chance we might be able to get in, and get the caravan with no combat. Of course, that was before I found out the the Kobolds had eaten the horses.

Thinking back on it, had I been cold sober instead of about half drunk like I was at the time, I never would have even attempted it.

And yes, it was fun. My first thought when I saw the Goblin come out was, "OMG, I killed the party".

[ExHunterEmerald]

Someone I play with once accidentally crit on a thrown sunrod at another PC, to stop him from doing something.

[Assassinfox]

Bluff, bluff, bluff the stupid kobolds!

[Abjurer]

Aye, one of my players once slapped another one with the flat of his axe (to lightly penalize him for catching a ship on fire, which he didn't actually do... long story), scored a critical, and knocked the chap out cold. Took quite a while for him to come to.

And yes, you can always choose to fail a check.

[ExHunterEmerald]

Oh, jeez, how did I forget?
I'm changing up characters from a barbarian to a rogue, and we decide to off the barbarian by turning him evil with a helm of opposite alignment.
First person he goes to attack is the paladin. He fights with a scythe.
You can see where I'm going with this...

[daggaz]

I saved my friend from dying (barely), fighting off the two hobgoblin warriors single handedly while he lie bleeding to death, then bandaging, him, then dragging him to safety where I stayed up all night fighting off occasional predators while he rested.

When he woke up, I was really mad at him, as he had almost got us all killed by directly disobeying my orders/strong advice. He cracked some kind of joke, very unserious like... and I was like..

Me:'I b*tch slap him, across the face' (making a backhanded motion at his player).

DM: Ok, roll to attack...

Me: Wha? but I-

DM: -No! You are in character. You said you slap him, then you slap him.

Me: Crap, heheh... (roll a nat 20).

DM: Roll threat..

Me: Oh no..(18)

DM: Thats a crit. Roll damage... you are wearing spiked gauntlets, dont forget.

Me: Oh CRAP!

Long story short, I nearly killed him.

[Collin152]

A slap!= An unarmed attack; its incrediblyy inneficiant means of doing the damage. Besides, spiked gaunlets are designed for punches, and so do their damage there.

[Daneel the Sane]

Yeah you definitely should have intentionally failed the roll. I'm not saying it was bad DMing or anything, but if I DMed a game where someone's plan was to fail a bluff, I wouldn't even ask them to roll it.

Incidentally, reminds me of my game yesterday. We were searching through some prisoners' belongings and the rogue rolled a nat 20 on search, even though we could all just take 20 if we wanted. One of the objects belonging to the prisoner was a magical box; we used an elixir of truth on the prisoner to determine how to open the box (magic words) and he also told us that the box was trapped. The rogue then rolls a 20 on search to find the trap, then a 1 to disarm it. This sets off the fireball trap, knocking him unconscious (group is lvl5, he's a Rogue-Wizard with 16hp). I was the only one to make the reflex save, as a monk with evasion taking 0 damage. Luckily the trap took a minute to reset and we opened the box before then.

Heh... I will try not to take the comment on my DMing personally. lol
However, he straight up wanted to try the bluff, he just assumed he would fail. Don't ask me, I just work here...

Edit: Like your story, by the way. Evasion has saved the butts of many in the past... I use a critical fumble rule, too, and once had someone roll a natural 1 on her move silently check. She essentially tripped and dropped her shortsword down a flight of steps...

[Jack Mann]

I wasn't actually in the game, but I was sitting nearby (they were gaming in the student commons of the college).

Apparently, two players were in a duel. They were purposely doing nonlethal damage, having kept their swords sheathed. One of them apparently rolled two twenties in a row, and then confirmed it. The DM ruled that since he was using the triple threat rules, the one had managed to cut off the head of the other. Somehow.

For some reason, they then immediately went to tell everyone about it, as though they'd discovered the secret of life, or JFK's real killer, or the recipe for Coca-Cola.

[Collin152]

Bah! Even I know the recipie for Coca-Cola! it's water, sugar, an-
*Is shot by Abraham Lincoln, JFK's real killer*

[SumGuy]

So there we were...the caravan had been ambushed by slavers. It was a standoff; they wanted half our goods...to include half of the folks in the caravan! Being the good and rightious PCs that we were, the party fought off the slavers, only to have them retreat to their desert stronghold.

After tracking them to their wooden stronghold, we decided to free the slaves they had captured, since we were the aforementioned good and rightious PCs.

The fighter decides the best way to free the slaves is to burn down their holding cells...which are made of wood, in a wooden fort.

Yeah, he threw the alchemest fire before we could stop him, and the DM had a houserule for critticals with splash weapons.

Shortly thereafter, we decided that our image as good and rightious PCs needed an overhaul.

[Hypothetical]

Bah! Even I know the recipie for Coca-Cola! it's water, sugar, an-
*Is shot by Abraham Lincoln, JFK's real killer*

I hate to break it to you, but JFK was assassinated by JFK. ( No, I didn't stutter.)

You see, roughly 200 years from now, a Mining ship will experiance a massive accident. Only 2 living being will survive. One is human. He will survive because he will be trapped in a Stasis Cell, inside of which he will become a non-event mass with a Quantum Probablility of zero. The other will be his pet Cat, a pregnant female, who will only survive because she is deep in the ships holds, and protected from the radiation burst taht will kill the rest of the crew.

3 Million years later, the ships computer will release the human, and he will meet up with the lifeform that has evolved from the cat. After many months on board, they will find a way to travel in time, and using it will accidently save JFK from the bullets of J.H. Oswald. Discovering the mistake in the timeline, they will then go back, recue the new-JFK from his prison cell, and convince him that he must assassinate himself, from the much disscussed "Grassy Knoll". The Paradox will thus be undone, and the crew of the Mining ship will still die, leaving the Human and his cat to continue to lead thier lives 3 Million years in the future.

( ** The Above treatsie is a direct and blatent plug for the comedy series Red Dwarf, and has been presented free of all charges by me. Feel free to hunt down the DVDs and find out exactly WTF I am talking about on your own time.**)

[its_all_ogre]

the natural 20 roll killing you is quite funny.
i had a whole group affected by fear so they all fled from the monsters, who they would have struggled to kill anyway.
unfortunately the rogue rolled a 20 and did not have to flee. he was lawful so instead of fleeing or engaging in a suicidal combat he led all the monsters into some woods and lost them, then rejoined his fellow pcs a bit later.
with the monsters led astray they looted the lair unhindered!

[Lòkki Gallansbayne]

Yeah you definitely should have intentionally failed the roll. I'm not saying it was bad DMing or anything, but if I DMed a game where someone's plan was to fail a bluff, I wouldn't even ask them to roll it.

Incidentally, reminds me of my game yesterday. We were searching through some prisoners' belongings and the rogue rolled a nat 20 on search, even though we could all just take 20 if we wanted. One of the objects belonging to the prisoner was a magical box; we used an elixir of truth on the prisoner to determine how to open the box (magic words) and he also told us that the box was trapped. The rogue then rolls a 20 on search to find the trap, then a 1 to disarm it. This sets off the fireball trap, knocking him unconscious (group is lvl5, he's a Rogue-Wizard with 16hp). I was the only one to make the reflex save, as a monk with evasion taking 0 damage. Luckily the trap took a minute to reset and we opened the box before then.

This reminds of the time (not involving any natural 20s but oh well) when my party was in a tomb on the plane of Salt fighting a Drow wizard whom we'd encountered earlier in the campaign but had teleported away before we could kill him that time. We'd already dispatched his henchies (a couple of low-level Drow adventurer-fodder and a half-Troll fighter wielding a fullblade) and he got so pissed that he decided to fireball everyone in the room - including himself. Unfortunately for him, he was the only one in the room to not make his save and was promptly burnt to a crisp, having already taken a bit of a beating already as I recall. The saddest part is that the room we were in was big enough that he could have avoided getting himself in the blast, the only reason he did was because my character was directly below him (he was flying, my guy has a ludicrous jump skill so I attacked and ended my turn in mid-air à la a certain halfling). However, I was playing a monk, so I took no damage anyway due to my good friend Evasion.

As it happens, the wizard was there trying to break into a sarcophagus. We decided to crack it open to see what was inside and found two skeletons with everything from the waist down removed and the two spines stuck together and a single, perfectly ripe tomato. The rogue ate it and gained the power of tomato magnetism.

[josephbt]

Has anyone played the "Forge of Fury" module from WotC? It's an adventure for 4-6 lvl3 players. They are supposed to get to 5th level. Mine didn't. Why? Lucky rolls on their part killed them. How?

At one point, the party is supposed to diplomance a Roper(CR10). They only get a glimpse of the Roper devouring some fish on the other side of the underground river. Nobody knew what a roper was, they figured it was a dumb beast. A plan was laid out. It was a good plan, but i figured, once the rolls started, they'll figure out that the Roper is immune to them.
But, noooo. The gang storms out, the fighter rolls to-hit after chucking his ax and rolls a 20! He only hits on a 20! I start praying that he rolls a 15 or something, so that i can tell him that he missed despite his +10 bonus. He rolls a 3. Nobody hits with a 3, so the party still don't know what is going on.
Next is the wizzard. He casts Lesser orb of Fire, the only SR-ignoring spell he memorised. He rolls a 20 to-hit. Much happines within the party. He confirms. The druid starts summoning, the psion misses with a ray. Everybody is happy with the first round. Roper goes next.

2 round later, the druid is running away, the roper is munching on the wizzard, the fighter is resisting roper strands and the psion is lying on the floor with STR 0. The psion is still trying to blast the roper, but SR30 is kinda tough to beat with a +4 level check.

Damn 20.

[Draak_Grafula]

So last night I'm playing the start of a brand new scenario with my buddy as GM, in a semi-homebrew setting.

The party:
Me, a lvl 1 Monk.
3 NPCs :
A lvl 1 Ranger
A lvl 1 Wizard
A lvl 1 Priestess.

We're on a mission to recover a caravan of stolen trade goods. The targets are going to be Kobolds, possibly Gnomes, and possibly a Goblin or two.

We get into this forest, and pull a reverse abmush on a group of 10 Kobolds, killing 4, Sleeping 5, and capturing one.

Interogating the captured one, we find that the group is from a small fort, with 18 Kobolds a little ways away, and the last caravan that got ambushed is still there, awaiting delivery.

Since the Wizard is out of spells, we decide to attack the next morning.

The Wizard takes Sleep twice, and we come up with the following plan.

The Ranger and I will appraoch the wall of the fort, and attempt to talk the Kobolds into believing that we are there to pick up the Caravan for their leader, a Goblin named Kristak ( or some such) aka Shiny Rock. INTRAGAL to the plan is for the bluff to fail, so that the Kobolds will send out a team to attack us, and the wizard will sleep the first group. And from there either they will send out more of them, or we will assault the now open fort.

So we walk up to the fort, hail the gaurds, and begin to make our bluff.

And I roll a natural 20 on the bluff roll. (Against a DC 25 bluff check, I learn after what happens next, for reasons that will become appearant.)Oops. I know, as soon as it happens that this is not a good thing, but it's a little hard to back off now, because our ambush is ruined, and we still need to get that caravan back. And it all goes downhill from there.

The Wizard manages to join the Ranger and I without being noticed, and we blithely walk in the now wide open gate. Good point, the Wizard still has 2 sleeps to work with, and the fort is small, so the Kobolds are going to be concentrated in a small area.

I have these Kobolds eating out of my hand. They would believe anything I say, even if I claimed to be thier mother. That's exactly how the GM put it.

And then, a slip of the tounge. I'm working on getting these Kobolds to release the carvan to me. And that "The Boss" Shiny Rock would send payment once the caravan had been varified. The Kobold gets this look on his face, says "I'll ask him" turns and yells "Hey Boss", and out walks Shiny Rock himself, a lvl 3 Goblin Barbarian. I yell for the Preistess, who was still outside, and it's on.

3 Rounds later, the Goblin is out, 4 of the Kobolds are dead, and the other 14 are snoring like babies. Unfortunatly, the Ranger is on the ground at -8 HP, and I'm down to 1. And the Preistess is nowhere to be found. I stabalize the Ranger ( Glad I took a rank of Heal) find a Healing potion on the Goblin, heal the Ranger upto 1 HP, and we go to find the Preistess, who it turns out was kidnapped by Gnomes riding War Pigs. 5 days hard chase later, we manage to rescue the Preistess.

Well, the Elvan Wizard now has a nice Magic Sword ( Unidentified but definatly magic) and I, the monk, now have a Shiny Rock around my neck that is so powerful that when the Wizard did a detect magic on it, it nearly blinded him. I have no idea what it does just yet, but I've got time for that. ( No, we weren't supposed to get either one yet, I derailed the GM slightly by actually deciding to attack the fort, instead of heading back to town and reporting what we had found out. I mean, 4 people against a fort? That has to be insane right? Mua ha ha.)

I was wondering about your use of the sleep spell. You seem not to worry about the sleeping kobolts but at level 1 sleep would have a duration of only 1 minute. Do you guys rule that the speeping kobolts not nesceceraly wake up after the spell is over or did you just think the part where you slit all there throats was obvious enough so it didn't need mentioning here?

[Diggorian]

Whenever you're charmed or confused, and attacking an ally is a bad time for a natural 20; an even worse time to confirm

[Fax Celestis]

Gnomes riding War Pigs

Nice. Very nice.

[brian c]

Bah! Even I know the recipie for Coca-Cola! it's water, sugar, an-
*Is shot by Abraham Lincoln, JFK's real killer*

Reminds me of my history clas last year discussing conspiracy theories behind Lincoln's assassination (yes Lincoln, not Kennedy). One of the more outrageous ones is that the Pope had Lincoln killed. Yes, the Pope. The one in the Vatican, with the really fancy hat.



Back to D&D though, another thing that happened in my last game was that my monk decided to put on a show in a public square and asked for anyone in the audience to come up and shoot arrows at him. This is the first time I've played a monk in 3.5, I know in 3.0 even with Deflect Arrows you need ro roll a reflex save DC15 or so to deflect. So I look it up in the book to make sure, and no roll is required anymore! You just deflect them! The random NPC archer who shot at me ended up rolling a 20 on his second or third shot but it didn't do him any good. What I'm saying is, another horrible time to roll a 20 is when you're ranged attacking anyone with Deflect Arrows.

[Daneel the Sane]

I was wondering about your use of the sleep spell. You seem not to worry about the sleeping kobolts but at level 1 sleep would have a duration of only 1 minute. Do you guys rule that the speeping kobolts not nesceceraly wake up after the spell is over or did you just think the part where you slit all there throats was obvious enough so it didn't need mentioning here?

Actually, I think we forgot about it. After the ranger was healed, they looked for the cleric, did not find her, found out she was nabbed by the evil gnomes, and did the whole Aragorn, "We hunt some gnome!" bit. Overland chase for the next 5 days trying to recover the abducted cleric. The kobolds probably woke up a few seconds later wondering what the Sam Hill happened. Basically, we forgot all about them.

[Daneel the Sane]

Nice. Very nice.

Thanks. :) I'm his DM, and it just made sense to me. Local bards sometimes sing of the gnomish war cavalry and their pigs. Goes something like, "Generals gather in their masses... just like witches at black masses... Evil minds that plot destruction..."

Something like that.

[Tallis]

Thanks. :) I'm his DM, and it just made sense to me. Local bards sometimes sing of the gnomish war cavalry and their pigs. Goes something like, "Generals gather in their masses... just like witches at black masses... Evil minds that plot destruction..."

Something like that.

LOL. Even better, seems I've heard that before though..... gnomes riding war pigs must have invaded my world at some point too.

Collin152: spikes are on the back of the spiked gauntlets and he did specify it was a backhand slap. Seems to me like they should count for the damage.

We had a players that got into an arguement in my group, one pulled out a crossbow and declared he was shooting the table in front of the other (they were in a bar), an unlucky series of rolls ended with him shooting his companion in the head instead. The table survived without a scratch.