When the dice do their own thing

[Barracuda]

I remember a game a while back. Our party was severely weakened after a fight with some orc ninjas (yes, orc ninjas,) when we hear a roar and look up to see a flesh golem approaching, at least 10 feet high and much more powerful than any of us can handle in our current condition. (It was made from dead giants.) Being a cleric, and desperate, I cast my last Summon Monster spell. The DM determined what I summoned by rolling a dice. So, he rolls.....and a large iron golem appears and attacks the flesh golem. We barely had anything left to do.

[drunkenwildmage]

This happened last Sunday, actually.

Warhammer FRP:

Our party consists of 3 humans, a Dwarf, and 2 Elves. 1 of the Humans can deal good damage at melee, and the 2nd one could if his Dice didn't hate him so much. The other human and Dwarf really don't do much damage. Of the Elves, i'm an Archer type, and the other one is a Magic User so we tend to be more lethal from ranged combat, although I can hold my own in melee.

Come to a room with the man bad guy. Some kind of humanoid that is 8 ft tall, and 7 feet wide. He's across the room, and we get their just has he is getting out of a chair to come after us.

Roll Initiation First round: I'm first, other elf second.. 3 shots with Bow do something like 35 points total damage. Other elf hit with Magic Missiles. and does around the same damage. rest can't attack or miss their rolls. Bad guy comes strait towards me on a charge

Round 2)
I hit with another 25 or so points, the wizard does another 30 total one of the humans manages to disarm the bad guy but not before he does 9 points of damage to me. The rest of them do around 20 points of damage total.


Round 3) The wizard goes first. He opens up with a new spell. Roll 9 D10s for damage. 2 of them come up with as '0' Rules state if you roll a 0 on a D10, you roll to hit again, and then if you hit, add the next damage roll. He does, out of one of the 2 he rolls another '0' then tops that off with a '9' in total he did about 50 - 60 points of damage. My turn. I drop the bow, and pull out my Elven battle Ax. I roll to hit and hit. Then I roll damage. Since it's impact damage I get to roll 2 D10s and take the highest. Both D10s come up '0's Roll to hit a second time, and hit. Roll another '0'. Add a third damage roll, and in total I did 29 points of damage. Drops the Bad guy to -1 hit points. Get to roll on the Critical Chart, (percentage dice, lower is better) One of the other gamers said "Don't worry, he won't kill him' just as I rolled a '01' on the Chart. . Look up on chart, result is, Instant Kill I cleaved the Bad Guy in half with my roll.

Gamemaster's repsone was and said "That battle shouldn't have been that quick"

[Seraph]

I have a horrible track record with dice. Bad. Bad bad. I'm infamous in our old group for it. I tend to roll critical fails at the WORST times, and its always messy.

This is one of my favorites.

Dark and his Darkest Night...of Darkness. Dark Stuff.

For instance, one night, we had a new player. He rolled a dark elf rogue, who wore black, and was called...well...Dark. (I'm fairly sure half of us sprained our eyes by rolling them). He pumped the most he possibly could into Hide and such, and we carried on with the campaign.

Well, we ran into the evil wizard's lair, completely by accident, that very evening, and decided as a group that to try and make a sneak attack, we'd go up the mountain at night, and launch a sneak attack.

As we are making it up the mountainside, DM calls for a spot check, I'm the only one who makes it. I spot a small strange looking bird, who is "staring at your group intently, with an intelligence not normal for his kind." Oh hey, spy. I shoot said bird, and kill it instantly. (Hand crossbows are fun)

"Suddenly, an agonized scream pierces the night."

Yeah. I'd shot his familiar. Woops.

Suddenly, orcs and such start pouring out of everywhere, and the wizard himself shows up, flinging fireballs and generally trying to make us KFC sides.

Dark pipes "I'll sneak up and get the wizard!"

He rolls an amazing hide check (on top of being a rogue, in dark clothing, at night), dives into some of the foliage, and slowly makes his way to the wizard.

Its at this point that I roll my crit fail. With hand crossbows, this is BAD.

GM makes me roll for the direction it pings off in, and...his face goes slightly pale as he states "Well, its headed in Dark's direction. Roll to hit."

I roll a natural 20.

Dark squeaks, DM facepalms. "Its a hit. How the frick you hit him, I have no idea, roll for damage."

I roll again, wincing....maximum damage. And then I roll a natural 20 on the crit.

Everyone goes dead silent as they realize what's just happened. The DM slowly brings over Dark's character sheet, and lets out a few expletives. "You just HAD to make con your lowest stat. HAD TO."

"Dark...you are dead. She has instantly killed you."

The whole group is still, Dark is just sitting there, stunned. Unfortunately, I break the silence by trying to stifle a giggle. I'm sorry, it was just tremendously hilariously bad luck. I mean, REALLY bad luck.

With this, Dark immediately storms out of his seat, and walks straight out of the store. We never saw him again after that. =/

[Crossbow]

I don't know how you stifled the giggle, Seraph. I'd have been laughing my ass off! Sucky luck as it was, that was beautiful!


"Enemy of Normalcy," and apparently enemy of cliche characters, too.

[Mytical]

The best example of how lucky 'Lucky McGraw' is, happened not in the past .. but the future. The group had been transported to a spaceship years into the future. The DM had decided to end the game, but wanted to at least give the characters a slim fighting chance. So..nobody but our group to fly the spaceship (and they were from the past so ... ), instruments were out, and the ship could only go in reverse (he wasn't giving us THAT much of a chance).

So it was decided that Lucky would give piloting it a chance, but he would need several rolls to succeed and they would have to be critical successes. First was a d100 to decide if he could even figure out the controls enough to fly the thing. I rolled. It came up 00, critical success. The DM's face was like . He didn't panic though, still 2 more rolls..no way we were making it out of there.

Next A d20 was rolled to figure out if Lucky could read the starmaps at least enough to figure out where we were. 20. Critical Success..he figured out where the nearest planet was that could help..there was still one problem. The ship could only go backwards..with no instruments..chance of not impacting something is astronomical.

Next it was decided that he would need two d100, both critical successes to successfully navigate through the asteroid field. First dice 00. Critical success. Second dice 00, critical success. So he was able to drive the ship backwards through an asteroid field.

DM cursed the day I was born, insulted my ancestry, and just gave up. Our characters ended up trapped in the future, but hey .. we lived.

[Andara Bledin]

Nothing to do with lucky dice rolls, but reminded of this by the hapless rogue of Seraph's tale...

We were doing Shadowrun, with our regular group, but with a group of characters that we hadn't been playing for very long. One of the players had this habit of making anti-social guys that almost never meshed with any group and would typically go haring of doing on he knew what.

So, this one run, we have to get into a facility, and he's separated from the group, hasn't told anyone what he's doing, is maintaining radio silence, and so we stop caring about him and start working on our own entrance.

It turns out he was hiding somewhere rather stupid and doing it very well, and our rigger ended up running him over.

And then he got pissed about it.

The GM, however, was one of my favorite out of all those in our group that ran the various games, and he read the guy the riot act about how he got himself run over, and he wasn't dead, anyway, so he should just get over it.

^-.-^

[wolfie]

I spot a small strange looking bird, who is "staring at your group intently, with an intelligence not normal for his kind." Oh hey, spy. I shoot said bird, and kill it instantly. (Hand crossbows are fun)

"Suddenly, an agonized scream pierces the night."

Yeah. I'd shot his familiar. Woops.

Suddenly, orcs and such start pouring out of everywhere, and the wizard himself shows up, flinging fireballs and generally trying to make us KFC sides.

Does not compute. My understanding (AD&D 1st and 2nd edition) is that killing a familiar is a system shock roll to determine whether the wizard is instantly incapacitated (with permanent CON loss) or instantly killed. Either way, he wouldn't show up flinging fireballs.

[Seraph]

"Enemy of Normalcy," and apparently enemy of cliche characters, too.

One day, I'll have to relate the tale of the paladin I accidentally had a vendetta against. Poor guy. People bring it up on facebook still, years later, to watch him fume over it.

Does not compute. My understanding (AD&D 1st and 2nd edition) is that killing a familiar is a system shock roll to determine whether the wizard is instantly incapacitated (with permanent CON loss) or instantly killed. Either way, he wouldn't show up flinging fireballs.

3rd edition, with a twist on all the rules. Things didn't quite work properly, as evidenced by the revenge the DM got on me for this very incident. Owlbear attacked our group, and proceeded to claw at my character. She dodged, only barely, so DM declared that the claws had avoided harming me, but had ripped off my chainmail chest, and I was now naked. In the snow. In front of a group of guys.

I dove into a snowdrift and hid until the paladin in the group finally came over and helped. (I attempted to do a Bugs Bunny-esque tunnel to the wagon for my spare clothes, but failed, and ran headfirst into a rock. And got mild hypothermia. Worst. Owlbear. Ever.)

It turns out he was hiding somewhere rather stupid and doing it very well, and our rigger ended up running him over.

Oh dear nutbunnies, that's freaking epic. I love it.

[Andara Bledin]

Oh dear nutbunnies, that's freaking epic. I love it.

Oh, yeah. We all loved it. Well, except for the idiot who just had a vehicle roll over him.

There was another story with him and an AD&D game we were playing, run by my 2nd fave GM of the group.

The guy doing the running was good; he'd never let a character die if the character didn't deserve it or there was a very good reason for them to do so. So when the pair that involved that one player and me opened a door into a room with poison gas that essentially insta-killed both of our characters, that guy then spent the next two hours rules-lawyering our GM despite repeated statements that he wasn't going to stay dead. I actually tore up my character sheet in disgust and walked out of the room, I was that pissed at him shitting all over our gaming experience.

Needless to say, that particular campaign never recovered. That guy single-handedly destroyed the campaign because he didn't even want to be temporarily dead.

He'd be the kid playing cowboys and indians who never got hit by anyone. >_>

^-.-^

[wolfie]

3rd edition, with a twist on all the rules. Things didn't quite work properly, as evidenced by the revenge the DM got on me for this very incident. Owlbear attacked our group, and proceeded to claw at my character. She dodged, only barely, so DM declared that the claws had avoided harming me, but had ripped off my chainmail chest, and I was now naked. In the snow. In front of a group of guys.

I see - different edition, and it's been so long since I've played that I might have misremembered rule details (my wizard did NOT have a familiar due to the risk involved).

Your owlbear issue was clearly a case of DM abuse. Due to the nature of the material, chainmail (unlike rigid materials like boiled leather and metal) can't be used to make a breastplate. It would have to be (at least) a vest, and (since it's stronger than flesh) can't be ripped off without seriously injuring the wearer. Also, you wouldn't have been left naked - chain is worn over a quilted gambeson to avoid having the links driven into the wearer's flesh when struck by a weapon (chain is extremely resistant to cutting, moderately resistant to piercing - riveted mail more so than butted mail, and offers no resistance to bludgeoning weapons. Getting hit by a sword while wearing chain is like getting hit by a metal bar of equal weight - stops the edge from cutting, but doesn't do anything for the impact.

[Crossbow]

...offers no resistance to bludgeoning weapons. Getting hit by a sword while wearing chain is like getting hit by a metal bar of equal weight - stops the edge from cutting, but doesn't do anything for the impact.

Quoted for truth. That's why you don't see a lot of SCA fighters wearing chain, even though the standards say it's what fighter should be considered to be wearing for calibration reasons. Only part of my old kit that was chainmail was the camail that hung from my helmet as a secondary gorget, and that was 6 on 1 instead of the usual 4 on 1.

One day, I'll have to relate the tale of the paladin I accidentally had a vendetta against.

Yes, yes you will. We're going to hold you to that.

[Akasa]

My gaming group has been playing Strands of Fate recently. The way it works is you roll 4 d6's and if you get 1 or 2 it counts as -1, 3-4=0, and 5-6=1.

This last campaign every time I defended I would roll at least a negative 3 and fail my defense roll with spin(if you succeed or fail a roll by 3 its spin) and the person attacking me got to choose the condition (it goes minor, major, severe, extreme, defeated). Though when I would go to attack I'd roll a 3-4 and add that to my stat and boom heavy hits I'm getting spin. It was insane. If it weren't for my being able to heal The fights would have been a lot closer.

[lordlundar]

I see - different edition, and it's been so long since I've played that I might have misremembered rule details (my wizard did NOT have a familiar due to the risk involved).

Your owlbear issue was clearly a case of DM abuse. Due to the nature of the material, chainmail (unlike rigid materials like boiled leather and metal) can't be used to make a breastplate. It would have to be (at least) a vest, and (since it's stronger than flesh) can't be ripped off without seriously injuring the wearer. Also, you wouldn't have been left naked - chain is worn over a quilted gambeson to avoid having the links driven into the wearer's flesh when struck by a weapon (chain is extremely resistant to cutting, moderately resistant to piercing - riveted mail more so than butted mail, and offers no resistance to bludgeoning weapons. Getting hit by a sword while wearing chain is like getting hit by a metal bar of equal weight - stops the edge from cutting, but doesn't do anything for the impact.

You're your group's resident rule lawyer, aren't you?

[Barracuda]

If I haven't already, I may have to tell the tale of how my lawful good cleric accidentally killed an entire village of children sometime.

[AnaKhouri]

I am not a huge gamer, in fact I am in the middle of my first-ever RPG (Lamentations of the Flame Princess). At the moment my poor halfling has negative HP (which I didn't even know was possible) and I think the next group of giant poisonous centipedes will be the end of poor Clementine Limberdark.

This other guy in our group has lost three characters already, once saving me from a giant spider. After volunteering me to go up into a hole in the ceiling to see what was up there (what was up there was a giant spider). I rolled a 20 and obliterated that spider though, so I avenged his ass.

The role-playing thing is fun even if we always spend at least 2 hours making jokes instead of playing.