Although most adventuring parties are presumably extremely stalwart and competent champions against (or for) evil, we have all had those encounters or even entire adventures where our characters where entirely hapless for some inscrutable reason. This thread is for commemorating those moments.
One of my earliest moments like this was way back in 3.0 if I remember correctly. Our reasonably low level party was traveling by boat across a lake to confront a necromancer, when suddenly the water froze solid and the necromancer's ice zombie minions began shambling towards us. We were able to keep them off of the boat for the most part with the judicious use of alchemist's fire and polearms. At that point our wizard decides that the best thing to do would be to cast Aganazzar’s scorcher, the old spell that makes a line of fire to a creature which lasts for a round. Using this he manages to somehow light the boat on fire, forcing our characters to bail out and run across the frozen lake through the zombie horde. If I remember correctly the wizards was the only one who survived.
Later I may tell the tale of the CR 4 polar bears who killed two lvl 10 characters.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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2e game.
My character had a DM created item, the hat of absurdity. Basically whoever wore the hat wouldn't be taken seriously.* We go to fight the BBEG who's instigating a riot. I get the brilliant idea to toss the hat on the BBEG, to diffuse the riot. My dice, which had been rolling hot (I still call 'em my 'bardsavers') go cold and I miss completely.
Same battle, we try to dive back into the maze to avoid evil undead things that can rip their way through beads of force.
I'm the only one who makes it. Cue party fighting for their lives while my bard runs through the maze, trying to find a spell that is useful in the Book of infinate spells. Went through 10 pages before I got one.
I played a warmage a while back. He was supposed to be a LN, militarisic sort who should have been leading the party (based on his high CHA and his poorly-thought out backstory), but I was too new to roleplaying and too whatever to play such a serious chracter. So really the character itself was a pretty big fail for me - I ended up switching characters after a few levels...
But that's not the fail. We were in a dungeon looking for missing miners and we got to a door. My character (completely counter to character) said "I'll pick the lock. I just learned how." So he gets to work on the door (WHICH WASN'T LOCKED!) and opens it just to receive a large club to the face from the ogres who were behind the door guarding the prisoners. His fiddling with an open lock had alerted them. My party was pretty bugged with me that night and I felt like a huge tool.
Back in ye olden days of the Red Box D&D. My Elf, my very first character ever, had just drunk a potion of giant strength and he was feeling mighty! The party was besieged by at least one Roc that seeed to be wearing a headpiece that we thought was controling it. All we did was guessing, no way we could know either way. My elf, Funterlies the great, leapt to grasp the mind-controling device, but got beaked by the roc and was killed by the mighty bird :( Know the rulez is what I learned from that :D
I could tell another story from 2ed where Gworeth the Half-orc ate lightningbolts en masse... Didn't die, but....
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Sit back and let me regale you with the tale of the demise of Barazahn the Orc Swashbuckler.
(warning, this is a long one)
Long story short we found that we could get round this contract by harming ourselves with the sickle of Crom Cruach the Celtic god of distruction. We had travelled to a prime material world where the sickle resided and came to a city. We found an inn whilst our cleric went to scry the location of the sickle. This is where things started to go wrong.
The cleric's divination was spotted and he started to leave only to be confronted by some annoyed cultists. In desperation the cleric utilised his only combat spell, frying said cultists in a 40' column of flame. This being the middle of a city everybody saw this, so we came running on the (correct) assumption that this could only be our cleric.
We reached the site at the same time as the head of the city guard (a chap called Tempus which was not a good sign) and a dozen guardsmen. Thinking quickly our Kensai engaged Tempus in a psychic duel, a tactic we had never seen fail. Of course this time the Kensai had bitten off more than he could chew and the duel was won by Tempus who promptly "Warp Spasmed." Being the brave adventurers we were we ran away.
Tempus pursued and hacked to death our Teifling due to the fact that he was weighed down by the armour and equipment he had stolen from other PC's (poetic justice). Then Tempus pursued me.
In a panic I fled in random directions eventually coming to a city wall with an enraged demigod (as it turns out) breathing down my neck. In a combination of desperation, terror and adrenaline I somehow climbed the wall, flopping down onto a mound of hay on the other side. To my horror I realised that instead of climbing the wall to get out of the city I had instead climbed the wall into the palace and was now hiding in the stables.
Exhasted and unable to move a stable boy came across me. The conversation went something like this:
STABLEBOY: Who are you?
ME: I'm... er... Barazahn?
STABLEBOY: What are you doing here?
ME: I was running away from this huge scary guy with an axe, I climbed the wall to escape.
STABLEBOY: Oh that was Tempus, you must be a criminal. Wait here whilst I find some rope to tie you up.
ME: Wait! Don't do that, I'm from Mannannan Mac Lir's realm! I'm on an important mission.
STABLEBOY: You're from Mannannan Mac Lir's Realm?
ME: Yes!
STABLEBOY: So you're a fish?
ME: Er... yes?
Needless to say the conversation went downhill from there. Tied up I was escorted towards the dungeon by two guardsmen only to bump into Tempus. "You!" he roared reaching for his axe. "Wait!" says I "I challenge you to single combat." Tempus looked at me like I'd just grown two heads before agreeing in a nonplussed kind of way. "Aha!" I said "But only to first blood!" "OK" says he, looking even more confused.
We roll initiative which I win. With all the grace a dextrous and agile Orc can muster I danced towards my hulking opponent and skewer him on my rapier... Or at least I would have done if it had not merely bounced off his skin. With a shrug Tempus hefts his double headed greataxe and slams it down on my leg. The GM picks up a d20 for damage and rolls a one. With a sigh the GM turns to me and says:
"32 points of damage"
With my leg almost severed and blood spewing everywhere, Tempus looks down on me with an impressed look on his face. It's at this point that I realise why Tempus was confused about the first blood thing because this was the first time he had ever hit someone who hadn't died as a result. With a smile the demigod lets me go and I limp out of the palace grounds leaking gently.
After trips to several temples I realise that the magical properties of the axe mean that my leg couldn't be healed. I was therefore a swashbuckler with the manouverability of a lump of wood.
After some time I made it back to the Inn and the session was winding up. However, the GM decided to have one more random encounter roll before we packed up. He rolled exactly 100. This meant that the two archmages that lived in the city chose this exact moment to start throwing magic at each other. All hell breaks loose and the entire party scatters. "It's fine" says the GM "you can get out the back if you move quickly." "But I can't move quickly because of my g$%*%*n f^*%£&g b!"^*^d leg!" I said.
A silence decended across the table.
"In that case" said the GM "take 33 points of damage from the exploding fireball"
I have never been more relieved to die in my entire roleplaying experience. That was a character that needed to be put out of it's misery.
tl;dr
1) Never pretend to be a fish, it rarely works.
2) Don't duel a demigod
3) Orc Swashbucklers are just stupid
Sit back and let me regale you with the tale of the demise of Barazahn the Orc Swashbuckler.
2) Don't duel a demigod
On the upside, bonus points for impressing the demigod in question as he fails to kill you.
My players' most epic hour of fail is a
The PCs had bypassed the army at Jorgenfist by using the secret entrance (and defeating the cardboard deathwebs, redcaps, giants and trolls) and fought their way down to the library level. They knew Mokmurian was a powerful wizard at this point, and were hyper paranoid about denying him reconnaissance. It was a good plan, but they didn't count on the Headless Lord, either.
In the end, it didn't matter, they just could not produce enough damage to get through the Hill Giant Zombies. What's worse, they had one player who insisted on pushing on because "the module isn't built to kill us, so we should be fine". Hoo boy.
They retreated with heavy losses after nearly TPKing against those hill giant zombies. That was only the beginning.
Mokmurian released the hounds to teleport-trace the players and harry them in Kaer Maga (to which they had fled). The giant armies marched. Towns were leveled (first Ravenmoor, then Galduria). The PCs tried to warn Magnimar and Korvosa to rally an army, but only Ilsurian was able to muster quickly enough to confront the giants at Ft. Rannick.
At this point the players know nothing about the sihedron ritual and its implications.
So now Mokmurian's principle motivation is to fight battles that cause as many deaths as possible. His own army is all marked with the sihedron and greedy, many of the remaining black arrows are marked, and whole bunch of Ilsurians are marked as well (since the Paradise pleasure barge would have plied all those inland waterways). Even the PCs themselves were bearing some of the runes (from capture earlier in the adventure). Literally every casualty in the battle was a victory for Mokmurian.
It was then, during the middle of this pitched battle at Fort Rannick, that one of the PCs finally made that DC 30 perception check to notice a sihedron tattoo on one of the black arrows. I kid you not, we had been making these rolls for months (and they knew they were failing on someting important). In the moments that followed, they had the horrible realization that the entire battle was Mokmurian's zugzwang.
Oh, and also, the Korvosan cavalry en route to the battle decided to sack Ilsurian while their army was out of town.
When they eventually went back to the library under Jorgenfist to clear out Mokmurian's loot, they just sealed off the passages containing those hill giant zombies, and tunneled around (though it took days). They're still down there, shuffling around.
It was one of those situations where they just had the right tool for the job.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading!
I once watched a level 15 party die to a lone Ice Devil, Because the Paladin decided not to heal, or use spells...and the Sorcerer only spamed fireball.
...Don't ask me how they made it that far.
Okay. The party was coming up against this undead beholder-thing. Gworeth ad gulped a potion of flying or some such and was charging in to put some hurt on the flying meat-ball...
Back then we had to declare our actions at the beginning of the round and then we sort of had to stick to it. Kind of silly, I think. But I hadn't realized or noticed that the party's two spellcasters were preparing a lightningbolt each. So what happend was, that the poor Gworeth charged in right in line of the two bolts *ZAP* *ZAP*... that hurt... but the problem was, that back in the 2ed days, Lightning bolts rebounced on hard surfaces.. which they did.. They hit Gworeth on the rebound as well. The beholderthingie died though. Gworeth is made of harder stuff, he merely dropped below 0. His prized shield and probably a few other choice items died though.. The party insisted afterwards that it was the beholder that magic-zapped him somehow... Hah! Great fun!
This isn't as epic a fail as others in this thread, but it was a damn annoying fail. My L3 wordcasting sorcerer, Karalo, is facing up against the BBEG with his party companions, a rogue and a paladin.
I've saved my last level 1 spell slot for this BBEG, so I decide to shove a Selected Shock Arc (or as I say it ingame, Lectus Arcus Impulsae for a more epic sound) down its throat. I roll to hit the evil guy's touch AC, 19 on dice, sure success. I start picking up d4s for damage when the DM reminds me; roll for arcane spell failure chance, since I'm wearing padded armour for that extra 1 AC. Having never failed on a 5% chance before, I nonchalantly pick up my trusty d20 and... a few seconds of clattering later... there sits the 1.
The DM declares, "Fizzle fizzle, your spell fails". I let out a very frustrated noise......... and have to resort to shooting my crappy 1d4 fire cantrip for the rest of the encounter. Why do dice always screw up at the worst times??
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Ah yes. In a fairly recent campaign, I played an honorable and chivalrous paladin who was charged with escorting the child prince of the kingdom hundreds of miles away in order to protect him from those who would see him dead. My companion and I successfully escaped the elite King's guard, the Reclaimers, who needed to be kept in the dark regarding the danger the prince faced. We avoided their superb tracking skills, and on the way defeated all sorts of creatures and ventured into the plane of shadow and ran up against various minions of Lamashtu, defeating them all fairly handily.
Then we came upon a carnival being held by a local village. My paladin was taunted by an elderly woman who was operating some sort of spinning wheel which was suppose to test your strength. You'd roll a Strength check and then depending on how high you rolled, she would announce to all those present how strong you were. Some other bloke stepped up and rolled and after his result she stated, "Ahh, you are as strong as two men!" Tristan, being the manly paladin stepped up and grabbed hold of the wheel and spun it. I think I rolled a 1. The woman mockingly announced, "Ahhh, you are almost as strong as a single man!"
Yeah. His paladin ego was pretty much devastated. Poor sap.
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Well...
Tomlin, our group's gnome bard got mad at my drow druid, because I said that gnomes were only good for punting (suggesting to use him to find out how deep a hole was)...
So he tried to threaten me...
and rolled a 1
Oh and the Paladin and the gnome, later...
Both have high intl and pretty low wisdom... In other words, often have REALLY bad ideas... like trying to get a boat into a half burned building.
And then there was the time that my Slyph Ranger tried her hand at cooking a centapede we had killed. Tried to make soup, and the roll was pretty bad. It ended up with purple bubbling... stuff.
That we sold as a hangover cure.
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Oh and there was this one time, forgot to post it.
My first game ever, Dark Heresy. Played as a one night stint with premades at a local con.
I was the only chick in the group. I was also sleep deprived, and sugar high. And VERY hungry.
Oh, and I'm a bit of a... well making stuff go boom is FUN!
And they gave ME the granades.
Anyway... that's aside from the point.
We were fighting a bug monster, and one of the party finally managed to zap it into nothingness. Well less nothinness and more what the GM described as "caramelized"
now remember, I'm STARVING (I haven't eaten all day). So... in character I say that my character decides to taste the bug...
I ended up getting infected with some sort of parasites.
For my friend on his first time GMing:
We were playing LOF so this is spoiler
We get to the were-cat thing in the first book. We are all of level... 2? He jumps down and threatens us and starts to change... so the bard hits him with a tanglefoot bag. He rolls a 1 on the save throw and she rolls maximum time. Each round it ends up rolling a 1~2 on its escape attempt (all it needed was a three) and we end up dispatching it without taking a single hit. To make matters worse we end up making our saves versus the poison every time.
The paladin kept setting off the burning hands trap -- at least once on purpose.
In CoT we had a elven rogue in the party tell my sorcerer, "Go ahead and fire through me I have evasion and I'll make the save."
She didn't, and it hurt badly.
Later while playing a Magus I got hit with a disintegrate and failed the save -- took full damage and lived only to fail the massive damage roll. GM graciously allowed that I was dust (since the disintegrate didn't kill me the system shock did) and even allowed a breath of life to save me -- that was an extremely annoying fight -- no less so because our alchemist couldn't make a save against fear to save anyone's life. He started just wearing brown pants, "Because it's just easier this way."