Improbable Encounter
You guys know DM of the Rings, right? If somebody wanted to take the concept and apply it to Pulp Fiction, I would read the shit out of it. Just sayin’.
Any dang way, I think we all know how Gunslinger is feeling. Roll dice for long enough and you’ll see some unlikely malarkey. You know the stories. They’re the ones that end with the words, “Natural fucking twenty.” We’ve all got a few.
In my own travels to strange countries, I’ve heard tell of a single skink warrior taking out a Bloodthirster daemon. Then there’s the infamous natural 20 > natural 20 > natural 20 > instant death rule. I’ve never played at a table that actually used it, and I’m not convinced that it really exists in any system. Nevertheless, if you roll two 20s in a row, the dude sitting next to you will invariably nudge you with his elbow and waggle his eyebrows: “One more and he’s dead, right? We’re playing with that rule, right?” I’ve told the story before, but my current crop of grognard pals recount the tale of the Demon Lord insta-kill that got away. And I myself have witnessed a man roll so poorly in d10 System that he knocked himself out with a celebratory high five.
So what about the rest of you guys? Let’s have your stories of awesome improbability. When did the dice go weird? Did it lead to catastrophe or triumph? Tell us your tale down in the comments!
GET YOUR SCHWAG ON! Want a piece of Handbook-World to hang on you wall? Then you’ll want to check out the “Hero” reward tier on the The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. Each monthly treasure hall will bring you prints, decals, buttons, bookmarks and more! There’s even talk of a few Handbook-themed mini-dungeons on the horizon. So hit the link, open up that treasure chest, and see what loot awaits!
I remember in the single first encounter with my long running friendgroup. I found it funny the idea of ‘how many guns can i hold” so i played a kasatha gunslinger. he rolled on the encounter table, landing on a 100, pitting us against an adult dragon at level 7. Dragon flies in overhead, combat starts. Roll for initiative, i wind up being the first to go. In the first round of combat, i roll for all 4 of my arms and just tanking the absurd penalties, 3 of them get nat 20s, all confirmed, one with another nat 20, but it didnt double confirm. After the series of dice rolls and hearing that the dragon had fallen from the sky dead, i pop out of my chair with finger guns pointed at the sky going “bang bang” and laughing my ass off. Eventually i talked with my dm about how i didnt plan for it to be op, i just tjought carrying around 7 guns would be funny, and agreed to finish the arch he had planned for the character then walk off into the sunset.
I nearly started to calculate the probability. Then I realized I’d need to account for the confirmation roll. And the 4th non-crit attack. And when I started to go cross-eyed I closed out the tab and decided to get coffee. :[
In one game I ran the party was being murderhobos and attacking a merchant ship for kicks (they’d already set it on fire, so looting wasn’t going to happen.) Anyway, the merchant guards on board were desperately trying to fight back but were hopelessly outmatched. Then on one round three weak guards attack and I roll for three attacks: 6, 6, 6. On the spot I decided one of the merchants was a member of the Church of Asmodeus and, knowing he was going to die, decided to use his last act to spite the PCs by sacrificing his soul to make a small portal to the 9 Hells. And with that, the party suddenly finds itself also fighting a barbed devil that promptly begins trying to set their own ship on fire. I did specifically look fora devil of manageable CR so the party still won without too much incident though.
Looking back, I wonder if I could have handled that better. Should I have brought in this new element completely from left field because of an improbable series of attack rolls? And if so, should I have used a stronger devil, one that would have actually turned the encounter into a real challenge? (and suddenly, one of the guards turns into a chain devil!)
To which I can only say: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx5KnFr9xSk
For funzies I’ve recorded my d20 rolls to confirm whether it’s me or if I really do have bad luck. I roll 1s twice as often as 20s, and my mean roll is 9. (A normal person’s mean roll should be 10.)
How many data points in the study? These crazy guys used 10,000!
https://www.awesomedice.com/blog/353/d20-dice-randomness-test-chessex-vs-gamescience/
I only started last session. Data set of 19, but I plan to keep going.
I don’t care aboot rolls in a vacuum, only those during play. I had a die that rolled perfectly normally in tests, but whenever game mechanics were attached it rolled poorly. When I threw it out of my die zone because I was done with its’ shit it rolled a 20 to mock me.
It’s gone now, to send a message to any other die that misbehave.
Naw man. You’ve got to do an equal number of non-game rolls and compare the sets. Prove empirically that your dice are screwing with you!
So rolling in a vacuum I have an average of 10.3 with 200 rolls. Just slightly below average. My dice only want to actively screw me when there are stakes.
SCIENCE!
My rolls is as follows:
Batch 1: 16, 17, 17, 7, 8, 2, 1, 1, 8, 3, 17, 4, 7, 14, 19, 4, 3, 20, 3.
Session totals: 19, average roll: 9. (With the median being 10.5) Number of nat 1s: 2, number of nat 20s: 1.
Batch 2: 3, 6, 14, 19, 3, 15, 12, 5, 19, 10, 3, 19, 9, 10, 4, 11, 8, 17, 11, 4
Session totals: Total rolls: 20 . Average roll: 10.1. (Median is 10.5) Nat 1s: 0, nat 20s: 0.
Absolute totals: Total rolls 39, Average roll: 9.56 (Median would be 10.5) Nat 1s: 2, nat 20s: 1
There may be an issue with your dice- one site I ordered from once had really cool colored plastic but on the translucent dice you can see airbubbles inside, so I know they aren’t fair. If you want truly fair dice, you might have to shell out a little cash.
Chessex. They’re pretty standard, they just hate me.
You might want to read this article: http://www.1000d4.com/2013/02/14/how-true-are-your-d20s/
There are problems with all the dice, but the most relevant line that leaps out at me is “Chessex’s dice are the least consistent” [regarding shape].
Player at a PFS table: struggling with unlucky rolls
Me: Dude don’t worry about it. Pathfinder is easy. Just roll more 20s.
Also me: Picks up d20, casually rolls it like I’m tossing paper into a waste basket
d20: Natural fucking 20
Me: ¯_(ツ)_/¯
True story.
5% of the time it works all the time.
iFumble disasters in this AP: our Brawler started a TPK cascade on my Barbarian with a fumble and yesterday the ghosted Gunslinger shot himself in the foot on a fumble: 17damage with 2 HP left. My ersatz for the Barbarian barely got away as the plot hook to recruit the ersatz characters of the other players. Note to self, DM and the rest of the group: don‘t start BBE encounter at 23:30 hours. The chars where theoretically rested enough, the players where dumbed down after 10 hours play.
Do you guys generally adventure with replacement PCs waiting in the wings?
I always have a spare at the correct level with me.
Seems like good policy. I must play in less lethal games though. It’s never really come up for me.
In an Adventure Path I’m running two out of three bosses killed themselves with natural ones. One paralyzed himself, another disintegrated himself.
Ouch. What kind of crit fail system are you using?
Well, one tried to paralyze a PC, the other was trying to disintegrate a PC. And only the first one fumbled with his very first attack, the second one was quite a pain and still cost them dearly.
Well sure, but I was curious what kind of rule system you were using. Ever since I did the math on the whole “roll a 1 and bad things happen” style…
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/fearsome-foe
…I’ve been on the lookout for solutions to the problem. This thing looked promising…
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/tools/critical-generator/
…But I’ve never tried to implement it myself.
a natural 1 is just a miss, a fumble needs to be confirmed. Just like a 20 is just a hit and a crit needs to be confirmed.
Ah yes, I guess I didn’t really answer your question. I use an android app CriticalRoll, which should be pretty much the same as the critical generator you’ve linked to. I think it really makes for a lot of accidental deaths, which is fitting enough due to Zyphus’ influence.
I like the idea of confirming fumbles like you confirm crits, as Agi mentioned. It should mean that your high-level monk has a 1/400 chance of fumbling against a goblin, which seems fair, but a higher chance of fumbling against, say, an ancient dragon. That monk still get’s more chances to fumble than a character making less, more powerful attacks, but he gets more chances to crit too.
Playing Coriolis (far future space setting; the system uses a pool of d6’s, and rolling a 6 gets you a success), my character is the computer expert of the group. I’m trying to hack a ridiculously-beyond-your-tech-level computer system from an ancient civilization. I only need one 6 to get something counting as a success. Over five attempts, rolling 10 or 11 dice per attempt, I did not roll a single 6.
Odds of this are actually only 1 in 10,000, but it still feels horrible to roll that massive number of dice and keep saying, “Nope! Still can’t figure it out!” DM gives you a second chance. And a third chance. And a fourth chance. Just, Nope! Not happening!
Then a couple sessions later, I’m trying to break us into this warehouse of a criminal that had screwed our party over. Again rolling 10 dice per attempt, on both getting into the warehouse, and opening the sealed containers inside (3 or 4 rolls overall), I was rolling 5 to 6 successes each time. Felt like, “The password is, ‘password’.”-level of shenanigans.
I don’t know if my dice betrayed me, or if they were rolling legit for the situations.
It’s probably confirmation bias (and way too many botched invasions in Axis and Allies) but dice pools just feel so swingy to me! My buddy of knocked-out-by-high-five fame suffered his fate in a dice pool system. So. Many. Ones. :*(
Just GMed a Kingmaker session, and 3 out of the 4 chars got down to less then 10 HP(at LVL 5), and one even dropping unconscious, they were really close to a TPK.
But after a couple of lucky Nat20s’ and some exploding Lizardfolk, they managed to barely come out alife.
Most fun combat encounter I GMed in a long time
The dice don’t always deliver that seat-of-your-pants excitement, but goddamn I love it when a gaming moment comes together.
It wasn’t so much my dice going weird as the dms. When playing my bard in a 5e game, in around 12 sessions, despite casting countless cc spells against enemies with weak will saves, only around a dozen or so ever failed. It was amazing. We ended up predicting accurately that every spell that i cast that could fail would fail no matter how much the odds were in my favor. Luckily around the time my character reached level 10 or so it stopped, but none of us had ever seen such a string of bad luck before
Save or suck is a hard row to hoe. You either completely wreck the encounter of sit there looking sad. No middle ground. Especially when you have cursed devil dice.
The worst/best part was that i partially made the character as a sort of joking revenge against my dm for my history of failing will saves regardless of how much i buffed them. He then pretty much never failed them for the first half of the campaign:).
After 15 years of playing there are so many I can remember. But a few that stuck out. The barbarian roll nat20 to charge and throw a goblin at the same time the mage in the tree targeted goblin in another tree nat20 fireball. The goblin being thrown hits the tree at the same time as the fireball. Barbarian does a dance at his mighty power whill mage just watch’s. Another time we are sailing and off on a small island a naked fea creature is bathing under waterfall. I roll nat20 to save blindness whill everyone else goes blind. I watch the bathing as the ship slowly goes by. Another time I had a hammer of throwing that i used from lv4-15. I rolled nat1 and the hammer entered another dimension and lost it forever
There is nothing better than barbarian “wizards.” Have you read the tale of the all barbarian party?
https://i.redd.it/xa5iwkgnwpay.png
I always lose my shit when the one dude casts his “sleep spell.”
I haven’t done Empirical studies, but my dice specifically seem to roll better when I am the GM rolling for baddies going against the party than they do when I am the player. To the point that I have isolated one die for being “The Player killer”, and when I GM it gets to sit out. You are not supposed to kill the tenth level Barbarian in the first combat encounter of the first session. With the first attack. But, Greataxe criticals, am I right?
Same game, different character. Had a Pathfinder fighter who had poured everything into his AC and actually done a good job of making himself almost unassailable. Several monsters could only hit him on a 20. So of course, my dice answered with at least two to three 20s a session on him. I think he would have hit me if I hadn’t been rolling on the table in plain view.
Found a pic of your high-AC fighter. Poor bastard.
I once had a combat where all 2 PCs and all 3 enemies rolled natural 20’s on their initiative.
Naturally, the players both went first, being good 5e optimization scholars who invest in dexterity.
And now, for one of the stranger similes I’ve written in a while: D&D initiative is a lot like standing in line at the grocery store.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/11982373/Why-do-all-the-other-supermarket-checkout-queues-always-move-faster-than-yours.html
On the rolling well side of things, I had a Shadowrun character who was your traditional cybersam with a katana. This tale will be the events of a whole session where the dice were just entirely in my favor.
So we’re in the back of an abandoned supermarket in the loading area for reasons that at this point escape me. What I do recall is that the Yakuza as well as a few other groups were none too happy with us.
So we know things are about to go down. We’ve gotten ourselves all positioned.
The first wave comes through the hallway leading to the loading area from inside the supermarket. Four or five guys. They kick the door open loaded for bear, one of them even has a rocket launcher.
That’s the last thing they do as my character wades in, cuts several down, takes the rocket launcher, fires, and leaps out the door and slams it shut behind her.
So yeah, Wave 1 dealt with.
Wave 2 is some spirits, a drone that flies in overhead, and a van full of who knows what and how many drives in straight through the back fence.
My character generously lets the others handle the spirits (read: she was completely incapable of doing anything at all to them). The drone overhead has a machine gun. We really don’t want to deal with the van load of whatever. So my character handles the issue in a way only she can.
She dashes out of cover straight at the van. The drone of course unloads at her as she’s the only visible target for it. After seeing the result of the rolls we determine that what happens is that she just outran the stream of bullets. She reaches the van just as its back door is opening up. She briefly notes that the van is full of dozens of drones as she lobs in the two grenades she already had in both hands through the opening, pivots, and runs away from the ensuing explosion.
Wave 3 is people still dealing with those spirits and two cars of Yakuza driving through the fence. Since my character is doing a good job of handling problems on her own, she runs off to the far car that is clearly trying to have some distance on us for a possible flanking maneuver or some such. She reaches the car just as the four thugs have managed to get out. She cuts down the two on her side and I realize she doesn’t have enough movement to go around the car or crawl through it. So I decide to risk it some more and have her attempt to dive through the backseat. Which she does flawlessly, cutting down one of the goons before she even lands and then taking out the remaining one as she resumes a standing position.
By the end of the session it was clear she’d taken out more than half the opposition we faced and had suffered barely more than a scratch.
I’ve certainly had “dice just hate me today” events, but none of them have particularly great stories attached sadly.
That’s not a game tale. That’s the storyboard for an anime I desperately need to watch.
I had a Machinesmith who was fighting a Mohrg with the group along with some other undead…
The fight is going good when the Mohrg paralyzes me and then latches its tounge onto our fighter.
My turn: options look bad and rolling crap for saves.
I decide to use a Jero Point to end the paralysis and stand up.
My character charges his best offensive spell, Shocking Grasp, and goes for the attack!
20! Roll to confirm… 20!
Roll again? 20!
DM: “You grab its tounge and light it up. When the electricity fades there is a charred body smoldering in front of you.”
Was one of the coolest rolls I have ever made.
By contrast, my Kobold Slayer just rolled a 3, and a 2 back to back in our last Crimson Throne session in addition to having already used up his “Called” for rerolling a Nat 1, which were all misfires on his musket. This resulted in him chomping on his gun to unjam it for two turns (Quick Clear).
The third attempt he finally got off a shot, and it hit!
He shouted in joy at the reversal of fortune.
Hero Point* since my phone decided they were Spanish all of a sudden…
Well I mean… Yes that is pretty badass Halle Berry impression, but I’m more interested in these Jero points. I Googled for them, and based on the top result I think you get some bardic powers: https://vimeo.com/41383840
I once rolled two natural ones, a natural two, and another natural one in that order. It took two druids and a ranger to save me from drowning. (first nat one was to maintain my balance on an unsteady bridge, second was to catch myself as I fell, the two was for my swim check, and the last one was to try and grab the ranger’s hand)
Later in the adventure the ranger rolled three natural ones on her attack rolls and as a result I, the front liner, was stuck full of her arrows by the end of combat.
It’s a miracle we made it out of there alive, frankly.
Heroes of legend or the Three Stooges? Only the dice know the answer!
Just want to add, if someone rolls multiple 20s in a row, don’t tell that new player “oh now you get to times it by an extra 2!”…. No. I’m the DM. Please stop teaching that new player wrong.
Dude came to my table insisting that all spells end when their casters are KO’d. Then he magnanimously told me not to worry about it. He was just used to GMs that “played right.”
That would be an interesting game mechanic (the knocked-out spells thing). Even more so if certain statuses like daze could do that. Could encourage techniques to disrupt or disable spellcasters (like with flashbangs or pressure points or something similar) rather than just hitting them with a sword and betting on their low HP getting the better of them.
These are less specific incidents of insane rolling and more weird trends (most of which I’ve probably mentioned before):
My Magus originally was terrible at physical combat not so much because of her build but because of her rolls. In one specific battle I rolled, over the course of four turns, two 4s, a 6 and a 1 on attack rolls. The party sorcerer was doing better at melee than I was.
Speaking of which, that Sorcerer had a short sword that he loved using (the player used intentional foolishness like that to keep his natural powergaming instincts in check, on the theory that if we were really in trouble, he could start actually trying). He was only capable of three rolls with that sword: 19, 20 and 1, depending on whichever one was funnier at the moment. Said character also rolled two 1s in a row when we were on an unstable platform – one 1 on an Acrobatics check to dash by me and another one on the Reflex save the DM made him do to avoid falling off. As a result, he tried to run past me, I turned around and elbowed him off the platform. (I DID Feather Fall him.) That Sorcerer also had a problem where low-Will enemies rolling VERY high on their saves against Glitterdust. Over the course of a session or two he hit like four groups with Glitterdust and got like 3 blindings total.
We once had a boss who rolled a 20 on the Fort save to survive a coup de grace. From a katana. That one I’d say turned out well, as the boss escaped and came back later in a much more interesting fight (the first fight had been us knocking her out with Sleep and fighting her minions).
Oh, well, there was also the time we tried stealth and the entire party rolled 5s or less. And most of us are not stealth-focused characters anyways.
Love that coup de grace one. I’ve always wanted to see it reversed and have a PC somehow survive the insta-kill. Of course, that requires me to put on my big boy pants and actually make a coup de grace attempt against a player. I’m not sure I own pants that big.
In the game I’m DMing my party fought a ghost. At one point in the battle the inquisitor was facing it in melee and the ghost missed its touch attack (+7 to hit vs 11 touch AC) three times in a row. I could’ve fudged the rolls but I decided not to.
If my calculations are correct, that’s a .003357% chance. Clearly that ghost died from a freak accident of something, the poor unlucky undead SOB.
I thought divine intervention was when you confront God to force him to deal with his alcoholism
Naw man. Divine intervention is the reason why I won’t talk to my buddy Dave anymore. The smug bastard.
https://i.stack.imgur.com/y8W35.jpg
Poor rolls led me to a pretty good adventure. I’m playing a goblin monk who is trying to save her people from a kobold invasion. She just can’t seem to make rolls work for the life of her. I took Observant, but she can’t roll above a 6 on Perception. When I finally did notice something along my path, I pursued it immediately. I felt like I missed a lot of stuff with those low rolls, and might be walking into the main situation underprepared.
What I noticed this time around was a feral, maddened goblin. He wore mostly scraps of clothing, but also two pristine boots with rubies set in them, almost certainly magical. I gave him food and followed him into his cave dwelling, contending with strange beasts and mind-altering fungi in the process. I had to leave my backpack outside, there was no space.
Inside, I find the feral goblin weeping and clutching the partially eaten corpse of another goblin. The feral goblin finds a moment of clarity as I arrive, enough to semi-coherently explain that his name is Scux, the corpse is Chente, and that he didn’t mean to kill her but he is just so hungry. He bids me to flee before I suffer the same fate.
However, I am a goodly Monk, and not about to leave either of them to such suffering. Chente was wearing some magic bracers, which I took, then began carrying her outside. However, Scux’s sanity faded and he spoke in a guttural voice, telling me he’d eat me too. We fought, and I knocked him out. During the fight I discovered the use of the bracers; they turn your hands into the heads of Axe Beaks when you make an unarmed strike with them, increasing the damage and changing it to Slashing. This would prove important.
After defeating Scux, he curled up in a ball and told me to leave him. I took the opportunity to take Chente’s corpse outside, but then came back for Scux. He was despondent, but I tried to carry him too. However, he lapsed back into the guttural voice and I felt my own mind coming under assault as well. When I fended off the attack, Scux was left screaming in pain and clawing at his feet, trying to remove the boots. They burned like molten steel, yet they would not come off. I too was burned when I tried to help him. He couldn’t walk and I could no longer carry him.
Without the time or skill to remove such a cursed item, I offered Scux a choice; stay here in his madness, or lose his legs. Still mad with grief over Chente, he bravely chose the latter. Without my backpack, I didn’t have my sword or any proper supplies, so we had to improvise.
I twisted my shirt into a crude rope and told him to bite down on it, and to think only of Chente. He began crying, but these thoughts gave him the strength to endure. I then lined up my hand just above the top of the boots, and gave it a chop. With my new bracers, my hands turned into sharp axe beaks and severed him almost cleanly. He passed out immediately, and the feet left in the boots burned and bubbled away as if by acid.
I staunched his wounds (poorly, I still can’t roll for crap) and carried him outside. There I was able to give him proper medical care and a last glimpse of Chente before I entombed her in a cairn.
I plan to carry him with me until we reach safety, then help him rehabilitate. He is the bravest goblin i’ve ever met, carrying on after all that, so I feel I owe him as much.
This scene was very emotional for the DM and I both. Neither of us expected it, and yet it was powerful, moving. We had to take a break after I removed Scux’s legs. None of this would have happened without my first string of terrible rolls, because I wouldn’t have found a single random goblin interesting otherwise. 🙂
Who the hell is chopping onions in my office? Incon-bloody-siderate in the morning!
I once got hold of some loaded dice with which to DM some Paranoia. Fun times.
You know who hates loaded dice? Mutant commie traitors!
On the subject of DM of the Rings, have you read Darths and Droids, which is the same thing, but for Star Wars? It’s quite funny.
The only story of really wonky dice stuff I think I shared under a previous comment, the story of my gargoyle rogue, and his natural 20 on a bluff check to convince the one guard who saw me move that he was just having a bad trip, and should go lie down.
I read several hundred pages of Darths and Droids, but dropped off for some reason. I really ought to go back and pick it up again.
I was briefly obsessed with this one a few years back: http://friendshipisdragons.thecomicseries.com/comics/first/
Ah, the dice, sometimes they just Favor the Monster.
Our Party consisted of a Fighter, a Paladin, A Monk and a Wizard, which were escorting a Carriage back to a Village. All of us Lvl 2, D&D5e.
On our merry way, we were of course Attacked by some Goblins. Squishy Wizard that i am i heroically dropped behined the Crates on the Cart, and started throwing Fireballs. (No not the big ones the Lvl 1 Cantrip.) Our Fighter charged the Goblins Archers hiding in the Bushes, while our Paladin and our Monk bravely took on the Meele Goblins in Front storming at our Cart.
Now a special Mention, our Paladin was from noble birth soe he already had Plate Armour and a Shield. At First we had little Trouble hacking through the Goblins while only the Monk suffered a few Wounds.
But then it appeared: That Goblin Hero. With a few Crits he managed to fell our Paladin, with only a Dagger in his hand. We all stared in amazement, our former nigh Unwoundable Paladin was down?
My Wizard and the Fighter were just finished mopping up the Goblin Archers, Goblin Hero was the only Goblin left. He evaded the Spell and almost killed our Monk, who was barley hanging on the thread of her life. Luckly in that moment Fighter managed to get back and ended the Goblin Heros Life with one swing of her Greataxe.
We managed to heal the Paladin with Potions, but i guess he will never forget the Day he was felled by the Goblin Hero.
We will never underestimate Goblins again, there might just be another Golbin among them as formidable as Goblin Hero.
I think the Goblin Hero has relatives. Way back on Level 1 of my Pathfinder megadungeon, some goblins ambushed the party. The heroic adventurers had downed 6/7 goblins, and the last one was down to 1 hp.
Combat went on for another three rounds.
No matter what the players did, they could not land a blow on this little shit. He jumped, dodged, and parried like a fiend, fighting for his little green life. Somebody finally managed to brain the sucker a dozen or so turns later, but he made a big impression. Those players are still unreasonably afraid of monsters with only 1 hp.
Wow, now that was probably his Brother, or his Sister, hard to tell with Goblins. But, hell thats what i call a Heroic last stand. These Goblins will live forever in the Songs of their kin. Hm Maybe one could Make thes Encounters into Goblin Legends, and if they meet some Goblin Trader (If the Goblins aren’t Always Chaotic Evil of Coutrse), the Players could come to hear that very Legen, which they are part of.
The legend grows whenever the players shout, “Shit guys. It only has one hit point left. Run away!”
Played a Gunslinger with Gun Scrounger archetype. First combat round, blew my gun to Legit-Broken with a 1. Repaired next round. Third round, blew out the gun again. With a 1. Repaired again. Enemy got close, critted my squishy gunslinger to unconscious and bleeding out. Decided to stop using guns in Pathfinder.
It is as if the gods of setting and theme were all like, “This is a fantasy universe! Get out of here with that anachronistic malarkey!”
I’m running with a spellslinger at the moment, and the dude is all over the map. He’ll single-handedly take down a deadly encounter one minute, then stand there like Elmer Fudd with an exploded face in the next. Swear to Gygax man, gunslinger has got to be the swingiest class in the game!
Funnily enough, the very first attack roll in my campaign was a nat 20. The party was traveling on a road, got jumped by goblins, the usual; one goblin beats everybody else on initiative and immediately crits our rogue. Fortunately, the barbarian and monk were able to fend the goblins off and stabilize the rogue, but it was still an auspicious start to our campaign.
Another time, the party were fighting this band of slave traders that some local bandits had been selling villagers to. The fight goes south despite one of the slavers being completely incapable of hitting anyone in the party (seriously, I don’t think I rolled anything above a 9 for him). Eventually, the entire party is down except for the barbarian, who earlier that fight had managed to get back up from unconsciousness with a nat 20. He decides not to attack but attempts to talk the last surviving slaver (Sir Miss-A-Lot himself) into leaving and rolls another nat 20, convincing him to cut his losses and leave.
The barbarian uses diplomacy? Damn dude, the dice really did go weird on that one!
Our barbarian’s… weird. They’re a warforged, and his player decided that they wanted to play a warforged as following Asimov’s Three Laws. (We decided that Asimov was a warforged himself in the lore, one who devoted himself to his human creators and their humanoid friends out of gratitude for being created and eventually gained a following.)
So essentially, our barbarian is this very servile being who will fly into a rage to protect his friends, but will also unfailingly obey and refuse to harm anything he deems as “human-like”, which includes things like humans and elves and dwarves and such. Any time they run into a humanoid creature they’ve never seen before, they roll to see if it counts as “human-like” — so far, the only time that’s happened is with orcs, but now the barbarian’s absolutely aghast at how this one group of people are absolutely horrible to everyone else and is looking for ways to convince them to stop doing that. So far his best idea has been to fight Gruumsh to get him to stop making all his followers so evil; if the campaign goes on long enough, that’ll get interesting.
It’s made for some interesting situations, like the time he bisected an orc while raging (we ruled that barbarian rage overrides his capacity to distinguish between human and non-human) and kinda blue-screened for a while out of guilt once he realized what he’d done. Also, any time the party fights groups of humanoids, the barbarian refuses to harm them, and after said bisecting incident, he also refuses to rage out of fear that he’d lose control again (he has, however, ruled that “restraining” or “carefully shoving into rain barrels” does not count as harming).
None of the human enemies the party has fought so far have figured out that he would obey them if commanded (it’s not a concept common to standard-fantasy-realm thinking, and most people aren’t going to try ordering their opponents around mid-combat without using some sort of command spell), but eventually one of them’s going to figure it out…
That Rogue I mentioned before? I had arbitrarily had him set as a worshiper of Tymora, goddess of luck. He always seemed to roll just badly enough to get into the worst trouble, but just well enough to survive it.
Lady Luck is a fickle mistress.
Looking back on that, the REALLY bad luck started right after I took the Hexblade levels. Despite the high damage on any hit, GETTING that hit was a bit difficult when those rolls wouldn’t get into double digits. Apparently she wasn’t a fan of the warlock class, but his faith remained firm, and the climax of the module had him rolling 15+ almost the entire way through, so I guess she came around.
I have played at a table that used the 3×20 kill houserule. And its counterpart: the 3×1 disaster houserule. As spectacular as rolling 3 20s in a row can be (which I have seen, once), rolling 3 1s in a row does the opposite: The attack kills the character making it. In the interest of relation to the question… The story of how Feather Token Whip became one of my favorite magic items!
It’s short, don’t worry. Simple enough: We got one as loot. I think we each had one, and we ended up against a hydra. One party member used their whip, and had it initiate a grapple. The rest of us started discussing the basic “how to kill a hydra” and “what do we have that can do that”. Five minutes later, we realize… the DM didn’t tell us what the hydra was doing for its turn. As it turned out, while we were in discussion, he rolled for the hydra to escape. And he rolled 1… 1… 1.
The hydra strangled itself on the magic summoned whip while trying to wrest itself free.