This post should be self-explanatory in nature
Natural 20
I love playing with players that read into the skills really in-depth. We were starting a new campaign and I threw the PCs into a dungeon with all kinds of stuff. They had just barely killed some evils when they came across some wounded baddies. They were torn; should they kill the baddies right there, or should they just let em go?
BLESS THIS FIGHTER'S SOUL
This kid had decided that his character had lived in a soup kitchen most his life and so had a couple ranks in Proffesion, Cooking. (ok, seems legit. Let's get to the point) Anyways, in the middle of negotiations he got out his collapsable pot and began making a savory stew.
"Alright, roll for it"
I hear the clink of dice and the people around the table roar in approval, and the guy is sitting there with some recently put on sunglasses and a silly grin covering his face. A natural 20
"Alright everyone, make a will save"
His stew was so good that everyone had to make a will save or they would lose control of their body and attempt to murder anyone that barred them from getting the stew.
The only one that failed was the enemy captain, who had a sizable gash with dried blood running down their arm. The PCs just handed em a bowl of the stew and stepped back. As the soup touched the lips of the captain (as DM I rolled a percentile 99) the wound of the captain opened back up and the blood became wet again
(Angry sighs around the table)
-the blood is sucked back into her arm and her arm heals over without any trace of a scar. The PCs become lifelong friends with the Baddie captain. All is well
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My stoic monk and my friend's alchemist that barely speaks above a whisper when not under the effects of her Mutagen had stepped through a barrier and came face to face with the scenario's possible big-bad. He had something that we needed for the quest- and he didn't want to relinquish it.
Not hoping for a fight, we tried to barter and negotiate to come into possession of quest item.
Since my friend's alchemist was talking, despite my [Half-elf] monk's questionable "Skill Focus (Diplomacy)" with no charisma bonus, the GM had him roll Diplomacy and allowed my monk to aid.
*Roll & Groan*
He rolled a nat-1 and I rolled low enough to not assist.
Big Bad turns to us- "Leave now, or join my [dead] friend."
So we summoned our allies and engages in combat. not a pleasant fight.
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We were playing certain deadly module with out local PFS group and had some really bad luck in multiple fights. Then at one point there was really tough fight with high level enemy alchemist. We were almost dead and nothing we could really do, several friends down and our healer constanly thinking about running away and leave us die to save himself (and his character). Our gunslinger was prone at floor and with his final wish pointed the gun at alchemist and rolled nat 20 and critical hit enemy alchemist dead. We talked about it afterward, it would have probably been tpk if he didn't roll that crit.
We didn't finish the module. We were beaten multiple times and we were running out of resources. GM asked do you want to continue and we looked at each other and decided to run away and abandon our mission and save ourselves and our characters.
In a home campaign where the GM ruled that 1s and 20s on skill checks also fumbled/critted. My rogue was opening a locked door and I rolled a 1 on my Disable Device. GM goes, "Okay, roll for Stealth to see how loudly you f~+@ up." Natural 20. "Okay, so a tool breaks off in the lock, but you manage to conceal it. Try again." Another natural 1 on my DD. "Roll for Stealth again." Another natural 20. The GM's eyes went wide in disbelief. "Okay, so fish out the bits of broken tool from the lock, then snap your second set of lockpicks in exactly the same spot." Luckily, my third try went smoothly.
Same GM, different character. I was playing a Zen Archer. First round of combat, I Flurry, roll both dice at once, both natural 1s. We grab some fumble cards, the first is that I crit myself (this was level 3 or so), and the second gave me a lot of DEX or STR damage (I rolled max on that), I think. In that round, I hit myself for half my HP and lost a third of my DEX (or took massive penalties on damage, I don't know anymore). I didn't do much anymore in that fight. My to-hit was terrible, and my HP was so low I'd only be a liability on the frontline.
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I've got a couple. First was from Waking Rune high tier (no spoilers). Circumstances... resulted in 3 party members being killed on the same action. We happened to all also be adjacent to each other. Our cleric lived and, after much thought, remembered me saying that my Sorcerer had a bunch of scrolls to UMD. So he Breath of Lifed me. On my turn, I retrieved my Scroll of BOL and chose my target. It was between the other (lower level) Cleric and the Magus. I rightly guessed that the Cleric was too far gone for a Breath of Life to help (we took a LOT of damage)), so I turned to the Magus. Calculating out the UMB roll, I needed an 8 or better (+21 UMB, DC 29. I had a high enough casting stat). I remembered the spend prestige for a +1 on a roll rule, though likely incorrectly. I'm still not sure if you're supposed to be in town when you do that or what. That brought the roll down to a 4 or better. There was much build up as I looked for anything else I could do to improve the chances. Finally, the group pushed me to just roll it and, after all of that... NAT 20 and an easy success. The Magus was saved.
Second story is from a campaign mode AP. We dimension doored into a tower that we couldn't find any other way into, and happened to appear inside the burial chamber of some kind of powerful undead. One of its effects was that we all had to roll Will saves or be blinded. It got half the party, including my Gunslinger/Inquisitor. Things are bad. It was a scroll that got us in with Dim Door, so no getting back out. All of our DPS was blind (there may also have been a fear or a paralyze effect), and we're starting to take damage. This is a powerful group of around 11th or 12th level characters, and it was starting to look like a TPK. Being unable to effectively gunsling, I went for one of my least often used known spells... Searing Light. My turn comes around, and I cast the spell blindly toward the square where I thought the undead creature was. Nat 20. Roll the miss change and score a hit. Roll to confirm, utilizing the Torture Inquisition ability to add +4 to confirmation rolls, and I confirm. 20D6 later we're out of danger. TPK avoided.
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As a GM (DM actually), I was standing up, walking around the table to move pieces and be dramatic when a baddie's turn came up. I grabbed a die and for the first time I rolled without a screen. "20", confirmed by a "20". The table gasped as I knocked the PC down to 1 from death.
Haven't used a screen for rolling since. :)
Had a player with an often struggling Barbarian. The party took on a cluster of wyverns above their CR, with the Barbarian having a banner day chopping her way through them, deeper into their cave. Quite separated, she nevertheless came out unhurt due to crits. Seeing as she often ended battles unconscious, this was a glorious success, though this battle wasn't over yet.
Hearing the shrieks of her kin, the wyvern boss returns to the roost and hovers just outside of the cave, high up on a cliff and poised to tear apart the fragile back row. The Barb charges across wyvern corpses successfully leaping, rolls a "1" to hit, rolls another "1" to balance on the lip of the cliff, another "1" to catch the lip. Karma wasn't through rebalancing though because the party killed the wyvern a bit too fast, who then plummeted onto the prone Barb, who rolled a "1" on a reflex save to avoid it. She went from full h.p. & dominating to dying under a wyvern corpse in one round. The cleric had to jump off the cliff (nearly killing himself) to get to the Barb in time to stabilize.
Another player leaped around, phone as calculator in hand to punch in numbers, all hyped up by the odds, though admittedly we were all quite amazed.
A third time, a diplomatic mission turned bad (due to treachery among the baddies, not player error). The campaign's big boss, way out of CR for the party, was curbstomping the semi-friendly baddies while the PCs fled (which they'd been commanded to by the dying baddie leader, so they could spread word of the betrayal.)
One of the players (wrongly) calculated that the party couldn't escape, so had his Cleric stay back to delay the big boss via martyrdom. A few rounds later, the boss charges into the Cleric's readied longspear, which he wasn't going to hit with unless he rolled a "20".
So he did. And confirmed. Now this was a melee Cleric so he did quite a lot of damage, but big baddies don't fall so easily.
Baddie swings 4 times (enough to have mauled a frost giant leader before their eyes in one round) so this mid-level PC had no chance.
Except the big boss rolls two "1"s. Doh.
Due to a house rule, two "1"s in a row is a fumble, so though he nearly kills the full h.p. PC with the two hits, he falls prey to the Cleric's spear, dying, pinned through his mouth to the roof of the tunnel.
Best laid plans of mice & GMs...
Of course, that just paved the way for him to become undead. :)
As a player (actually running a missing player's sorcerer), I tried to Disintegrate a fire giant grappling our frontline dwarf, and about to toss said dwarf into a fiery pit. Tried twice, with hardly a chance to miss, and the fire giant nearly dead. Two "1"s, and since the GM had picked up my houserule about two "1"s in a row, the sorc blasted the dwarf.
Oops.
(I think the dwarf survived...or maybe that was the other dwarf.)
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Not PFS, but 3.5, but still worth telling:
The setup. Our dwarven cleric's cleaning woman, the widow Orcsmasher had been kidnapped by the big bad to use as leverage against the party. I'm playing the party's main combat monster, a Duskblade with a greatsword.
We hunt the bad guys to their lair, sneak into the barn, rescue Mrs Orcsmasher from a deathtrap of alchemist's fire (leaping out of the door as it explodes behind us), and come face to face with the kidnappers.
Their leader, a dwarven beguiler (described as "a femme fatale with legs up to... not very far actually") starts tossing out confusion, charm person, solid fog and other horrors. The party are quickly running around in different parts of the courtyard like headless chickens (or helping the villainess saddle her pony to escape).
On the final round of my confusion, I roll the % chance and get "attack nearest person". Because of the headless chicken effect, the nearest person is... Mrs Orcsmasher.
I charge.
I roll a natural 20.
I confirm.
Not the best hostage rescue ever.
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This didn't happen to me but I did witness it.
My son, playing a ranged focused ranger, was covering the retreat path of the bad guys. The main party had already taken out the front liners so the casters run away. Right into the line of fire for the ranger.
Knowing that we would want to question these two, my son pulls out two sleep arrows and fires them at the two casters. He rolls two dice and hits a nat 20 on both. Roll to confirm. while not nat 20 they did confirm.
So the sleep arrows did but the casters to sleep permanently....
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My -1 character is a Cavalier. I didn't particularly build around mounted combat, focusing on being a hybrid fighter/party buffer that happened to have some niche bonuses while mounted. So I was happy to leave my horse (anyone who makes a cavalier with any mount other than a horse or camel is a filthy munchkin ;) ) behind on entire scenarios.
with this "meh" level of enthusiasm for mounted combat I didn't get my first oppprtunity for a mounted charge with a lance in hand until level 7. By then I had enough to-hit bonuses that a hit would be all but assured, to boot. I also had the rare occurance of getting to charge something that wasn't already engaged in combat with buzzkilling partymates, which was a big deal for my Order of the Cockatrice challenge bonus.
Of course, I rolled a nat 1.
I just GMed for a guy with a reputation for drawing crits from ghosts. As of now, he's been critted five times by an incorporeal creature, and died three times because of it, across two characters. It was sort of a running joke, but now it's like it's a curse.
*Rolls attack for the ghost.*
*Sigh.* "Hey, Leon, you know your thing with incorporeals and you?"
"Oh G&# d@$mit, it happened again?"
"Does a 26 versus touch confirm?"
*Rolls 16d6.*
It's so weird. We offer two tables a week, and he's managed to sit at the table with an incorporeal every single time. There have been two or three scenarios so far where he hasn't been critted, and even he seemed surprised by it. Heh, he even announced at the start of the adventure, "I hope there aren't any incorporeals in here, I've run out of Prestige to raise myself."
Ahhh .... the vagaries of a D20 system :D
Now ... when you get multiple natural ones or natural hundreds on a D100 in Ancients or Napoleonics ....
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Another story, this time about a nat 1.
I was playing my chained monk in an adventure that is known to be deadly.
I was out of tier but the party was such that we had the choice of playing up or not. Of course we played up, what bad stuff could happen from that?
During the course of the adventure, our big bad fighter is going toe to toe with a the raging barbarian. It starts to go poorly for the fighter and he retreats. From a barbarian with No Retreat. So the fighter runs back into and through the healers and softer targets. With the barbarian in hot pursuit.
My monk has the OOA so connects with a Stunning Fist. DC like 12 or 13. How hard can that fort save be for the raging barbarian?
GM makes the roll and sure enough a Nat 1!! Barbarian is stunned, drops his weapon, falls out of rage, party saved from a TPK.
Unfortunately I fell later in the adventure, but the party survived and I had to pay out some extra in gold for an unplanned expense.
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One of my characters, after spending an entire fight unsuccessfully attempting to hit opponents with a magic item that dazes on contact, complains to the city guard when they show up.
"Absolutely I would like to file complaint! The merchant on Merkel Street, the one with the funny hair! He is a fraud! Selling fake magic items! See! This does not work!"
<smacks item on palm> <rolls a 20, followed by another 20 to confirm>
The guards just walked away laughing.
-j
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We had a player who was reliable for rolling terribly. The kind whom other players were afraid to share dice with, lest they be cursed. So this player makes a Bard, and in the first game, when the party is initially meeting, he wants his introduction to be singing in the town square. We're all expecting his roll to indicate his performance is akin to drunken karaoke.
He rolls a 20... for the least consequential roll the character will ever make. The party was amazed by the golden voice issuing from the brightly dressed gnome.
I don't think he landed a single attack with the character the rest of the game. :P
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Graveyard ambush....party fighting undead of low and moderate challenge to us...doing pretty good.
Scary necromancer looking bugger pops into the fray...Master has arrived it seems.
Party has two melee folks, myself LG half-orc knight (using the 3.5 class in PF, before cavalier...;()
And dwarven paladin.
Dwarven paladin goes toe to toe with the master of the undead.
Starts to get beaten to hell, after poor PC rolls, and lots of enemy successes.
Lands a blow finally, then goes unconscious from a negative energy channel smite (the third or fourth he has taken).
Evil undead horde leading guy prepares to kill paladin in the next round, shouts "This beaded fool will make a most excellent new servant, and I shall savor his fall from grace!"
Me, the half-orc knight, gladly eats an attack of opportunity from a ghoul to save his companion. Ghoul GM rolls a nat 1 for it, narrates "you turn your back on the ghoul as you whip around to try and help Sir (cannot remember), as you do the ghoul lunges and...slams itself face first into your shield, and falls on its arse."
I move forward just enough so I can catch the undead's master in the range of...damn it already used my dagger to throw earlier. To far for a melee attack, have my bastard sword out, only a standard action to use.
I decide to eat all the associated penalties of throwing it without the Throw Anything feat, etc, etc...
Dice roll....nat 20... GM "ok, confirmation roll..."
nat 20... GM and I confirm the math, penalties and all, the modified confirmation roll JUST confirms the crit. The hit point damage puts our foe well past dead.
GM narrates "Ser Beernog charges 15 feet in the direction of the fallen (dwarven paladin's name I still can't recall ATM) and the necromancer, hurls his bastard sword in desperation, end over end it tumbles, and then it drives itself point first into the necromancer's left eye, and out the back of his head, he goes down like a sack of spuds!"
Me IC as Ser Beernorg shouts in the very proper but gruff-gravely Englishman voice I always used when playing him "Never gloat before your victory is assured...because THIS is what happens when your ego goes to your head!"
Good times...
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This was in a Dungeon World game, where you roll 2d6 rather than a d20 to resolve conflict. (In DW, an adjusted 6 or lower is a failure, a 7-9 is a partial/limited success, and a 10+ is a total success.)
The party had defeated a gang of wererats. We'd killed most of them, and had captured four lycanthropy-infected children that we couldn't bring ourselved to kill. According to the law of the city, any lycanthropes discovered re to be slain before the next full moon. (In this campaign world, there is no easy magical cure for lycanthropy: If you contract it, you're pretty much stuck being a were-creature for the rest of your life.)
Now, since these were children, the priests of the God of Justice weren't terribly keen on executing them. My character was a bard, and on a very good Lore roll, remembered tale of a lost holy musical instrument that could remove deep curses, such as lycanthropy. After consulting with the priests of the Goddess of Music, the PCs went off in search of its last known location. We had until the next full moon to complete our quest and attempt to use it to free the children of their curse.
Long story short, we recovered the Lute of Cetheria and brought it to where the children were being held... and got there about an hour before sunset/moonrise. We gathered along with the high priests of several gods to witness the first playing of the Lute of Cetheria in a thousand years... by my character.
Dice roll... Natural 12!
The GM ruled that the divine spirit of the Goddess of Music herself inhabited my character, and that the holy music broke any and all curses of anyone who had been in the room! My character was then hailed as a miracle worker!
I ended up advancing the character as a priestess of the Goddess of Music from that point onward.
Nice Hal!
You rewarded those 2d6 I hope, nice polish and new crushed velvet penthouse dice bag :)
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The dice in question was a pair of casino dice that my wife brought back from a professional conference in Las Vegas.
I have a House Rule that two natural 20's in a row on a single attack requires a third roll. If the third one beats the targets AC it is an automatic kill. If I do that for natural 20's there must be an equivalent rule for natural 1's.
So in our Rappan Athuk game the Magus rolls two natural 1's, on his third roll he doesn't beat the targets AC. So we decide that his Black Blade has become irritated with him and decides to decapitate him. I get to certify my Killer GM status and he enters his PC name in the obituary in the back of the book.
We had a player who was reliable for rolling terribly. The kind whom other players were afraid to share dice with, lest they be cursed. So this player makes a Bard, and in the first game, when the party is initially meeting, he wants his introduction to be singing in the town square. We're all expecting his roll to indicate his performance is akin to drunken karaoke.
He rolls a 20... for the least consequential roll the character will ever make. The party was amazed by the golden voice issuing from the brightly dressed gnome.
I don't think he landed a single attack with the character the rest of the game. :P
This is the interesting thing.
STATISTICALLY across a few thousand rolls everyone ends up with an almost identical numbers of ones and twenties as everyone else.
In PRACTICE though some people get those twenties when it makes no practical difference and have their share of the ones show up at the most inopportune time.
Go figure.
This is the interesting thing.
STATISTICALLY across a few thousand rolls everyone ends up with an almost identical numbers of ones and twenties as everyone else.
In PRACTICE though some people get those twenties when it makes no practical difference and have their share of the ones show up at the most inopportune time.
Go figure.
Actually, no. Those players with "terrible luck" simply enjoy and broadcast their failures, while those with great rolls crow about their nat 20s. Both roll the same, but react differently.
We were running a gmless campaign and occasionally an 'ok what happens now' would come up. We'd all roll d20 and high roll decides what happens. A pair of players rolled natural 20's against each other... Then did it again... and again one more time... 6 natural 20's in a row between two players.
What made it funny was how poorly these guys rolled generally in every other circumstance. To have guys who have a reputation for having dice that hate them wind up in such an amazing anomaly was pretty stunning.
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I was GMing a story where the characters were trying to stealth into an enemy fortress from the undergrounds. They had a guide with them who knew the fortress quite well and had told them that if the alarm was given they'd had about 5 minutes until the knights on the higher levels got assembled and put them through serious trouble. If the alarm wasn't given lower levels would be relatively safe as there were mostly rookies.
Even though characters were not the most stealthy people in the World it wasn't very hard. So they entered the fortress through some secret runnels and made their first checks to try and move without alerting any patrols.
Druid in quite stealthy animal form: natural 1
Invisible wizard: natural 1.
Armorless dwarf fighter with fairly high dex: natural 1.
So dwarf trips into some boxes, making a lot of noise, wizard yells at him for being so noisy, druid quickly and noisily opens the door so they can leave the room before the patrol arrives and steps directly into said patrol.
The stealth mission suddenly becomes a race against the clock mission.
In d20 Modern, we had to disable a device by cutting the blue wire after cutting the red wire. We weren't really paying attention and tried to cut the blue wire first. Rolled a natural 1, so we cut the wrong wire--which turned out to be the right wire!
In 2nd Edition, high level rangers got followers. Ours had a dwarf named Skraan who was really enthusiastic and fun. A few levels after the ranger got Skraan, Skraan finally got into a fight! He dual wields a hand axe and a dagger. And rolls two natural 1s! So he falls flat on his face, his weapons go flying, and his dagger lands in his but and his hand axe cut off his beard!
And hilarity got so ensued!
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In my last Reign of Winter session:
Enemy casts Confusion. Archer Ranger rolls Will Save: Nat 1.
Ranger full attacks Druid PC: -11 HP. He dies at -14.
Witch PC casts Break Enchantment: Nat 1 on caster level check.
Ranger full attacks Witch: 1 HP remaining.
Druid rolls to estabilize: Nat 1. -12 HP.
Witch casts Slumber Hex on Ranger. Will Save: Nat 20.
Fortunately, the ranger started to roll "Babble" in the Confusion table and all PCs managed to survive. Now they are making jokes about the repressed anger of our charming ranger.
I have to stop wearing the robes of a dead winter witch. She mistaked me for her. It hurt!