1. In a d20 Modern campaign, we had to disarm a bio-agent bomb, and neither of us had Disable Device. So we called in for directions. We were told to cut the red wire first, then the blue. But we got kind of panicky and confused and went to cut the blue wire first....and rolled a natural 1, which the GM ruled meant we cut the wrong wire, which turned out to be the right wire, because we were that incompetent.
2. Once we were level 1 or 2 and being sniped at by kobolds, and the swashbuckler, the ranger, and my cloistered cleric all got down to neg hps. The warlock with the 8 wisdom took out the last kobold, then did DC 15 healing checks on us (he needed 16s or higher!) and he did it! And he happened to be positioned to go from most wounded to least wounded or some such thing. And none of us made our 10% stablization checks.
3. In another level 1 or 2 campaign, we were fighting a bunch of kobolds, and pretty much the whole party went down. My 1st level rogue took 5 points from the first hit, leaving me with 1 or 2 hps, so I just skulked around and tried to snipe and do hit and run stuff. Anyways, everyone else was braver and went into negs....and the wizard's familiar killed all the kobolds. I think it was a ferret. Not a dire ferret, or a fiendish half-dragon ferret, but a vanilla ferret familiar.
... yes, I took out the Gauth (not bad for 4th level party) but it was just so bitterly frustrating that I kept missing ...
In the end it wasn't as bad, but still odd, certainly. Had a party of three level one characters fighting against an ettin on a forest path. My paladin rushes up to it, of course, fighting against it defensively while another player starts plugging arrows into it from a safe distance, and our rogue sneaks around and.. well, tries to hide as best he can. I couldn't hit the ettin 'cause of my defense tactics, yet the because I was defensive the ettin couldn't attack me, either. The fight eventually ended when my paladin crit'd it. Yay!
If the above was played right (that is, all of you were actually level 1 without any odd races and faced an Ettin as per the MM), then there is nothing pathetic about it. It's quite a feat you managed to win.
I'd really like to know how did your DM run this one, because seriously, a party like the one you mentioned would have no chance versus that monster.
I was in an adventure where the dice hated me - I mean, really, really hated me during one encounter. The party were attacked by a Gauth and its followers, and my Spirit Shaman was trying to hit it with Produce Flame ... with my rolls, I couldn't hit the side of a barn door at ten paces (I needed an unadjusted 6 to hit it ... and so rolled time after time for '2' followed by '4' followed by '3' etc.) while the Gauth took out party member after party member. Finally one is dead, all are out in negatives bar me, and I throw my last gout of fire at the Gauth ... for an 18! Yay! The injured Gauth goes down, dead, and I rush around stabilising and healing everyone ...
... yes, I took out the Gauth (not bad for 4th level party) but it was just so bitterly frustrating that I kept missing ...
I DM for a guy who is really, really unlucky. Which is ironic, because his girlfriend is really, really lucky, to the point where people thinks she cheats, but she doesn't. She's actually that lucky. So lucky, in fact, when I used to play with her (as opposed to DM for her), we relied on her paladin getting crits with her Improved Critical longsword. That DM REALLY hated her luck. But she rolled on the table in front of us and consistently got 17s, 18s, and 20s. But back to her boyfriend. The dude is so unlucky, I made an emergency PC for him: a warlock that relies on rolling a natural 2 to hit. Basically, the warlock is built to make ranged touch or melee touch attacks against foes that are flatfooted. I think he has Combat Expertise and Improved Feint, Darkness and Devil Sight, Hideous Blow, PBS, Precise Shot, and Weapon Focus eldritch blast, and that invocation that gives +6 to Bluff and stuff. Of course maxed ranks in Bluff. He hasn't had to use it yet, but it's there if needed. (He's kind of a newbie, or an oldbie that hasn't played since 1st edition, which is why I made an emergency character for him.)
We're playing an anti-undead campaign. Blaster wizard (me), two werewolf fighter-types, and a druid, all around level 8-9. One of the fighter-types is laying into a mummy lord, supported by my wizard, while the other fighter-type holds off a wall of mooks.
The druid, meanwhile, is in a duel to the death with...a skeleton. A single, 1-HD skeleton. The druid refused to waste spells or wild shape on such a weenie foe (and had already used up most of his powerful spells earlier), so he kept whaling away at the skellie with his scimitar. Between his crappy attack rolls and the skellie's DR, he was doing 1-2 points of damage per round. The skellie, meanwhile, kept rolling amazingly well.
The werewolf fighter/mummy lord combat ended about the same time as the druid/skeleton fight. The druid did win, but he had been whittled down to about half his hp by that one
skeleton.If the above was played right (that is, all of you were actually level 1 without any odd races and faced an Ettin as per the MM), then there is nothing pathetic about it. It's quite a feat you managed to win.
I'd really like to know how did your DM run this one, because seriously, a party like the one you mentioned would have no chance versus that monster.
I admit, grabbing 900pts in your first battle is a bit much, but considering how long ago that battle occured.. I'm just going to assume it was nothing more than dumb luck with the ettin not hitting me at all; though without all those arrows hitting it, I'm sure the outcome would've been much worse.
We were in this kind of oil refinery place in siberia guarded by russians. Guards attacked and they tossed a grenade at us that was a dud on a 99%.
So our guys killed all of these guards.
Then we are looking at this grenade.
It's sitting there. So we get this crazy idea that we are gonna unscrew it and defuse it to disarm it.
So we are working and missing our rolls. We finally get 3 people total to help.
6 rolls later, we open the thing and we see as to how the grenade was messed up at the manufacturing point and the pin is bent and it's all messed up.
That done we all go, "Oh. no wonder it didn't fire."
So we tossed the thing into a snowbank, and walked off.
Minutes later, I announce to the party in general, "Yeah that was pretty stupid of our PCs to try and defuse that thing. If it would have went off..Cancel Christmas."
They all agreed. They also agreed that it was "Work Issues" and "Problem Solving" as a training paradigm at fault.
They next day, we all went back to work, where one of our daily jobs was Installing detonators into 100 Lb torpedo warheads.
The only example I can think of is where this DM we had was a big Top secret RPG fan, so we were playing top secret.
We were in this kind of oil refinery place in siberia guarded by russians. Guards attacked and they tossed a grenade at us that was a dud on a 99%.
So our guys killed all of these guards.
Then we are looking at this grenade.
It's sitting there. So we get this crazy idea that we are gonna unscrew it and defuse it to disarm it.
So we are working and missing our rolls. We finally get 3 people total to help.
6 rolls later, we open the thing and we see as to how the grenade was messed up at the manufacturing point and the pin is bent and it's all messed up.
That done we all go, "Oh. no wonder it didn't fire."
So we tossed the thing into a snowbank, and walked off.
Minutes later, I announce to the party in general, "Yeah that was pretty stupid of our PCs to try and defuse that thing. If it would have went off..Cancel Christmas."
They all agreed. They also agreed that it was "Work Issues" and "Problem Solving" as a training paradigm at fault.
The next day, we all went back to work, where one of our daily jobs was Installing detonators into 100 Lb torpedo warheads.
So you guys are in the Navy, or your characters in game were doing that?
During a 2nd edition game our mage lobbed a fireball into a what we thought was about a 60' x 60' x 60' room filled with monsters. Instead, it was a very well crafted painting at the end of our 10' x 10' corridor, which was about 60' away. And, with the old rules when you summoned a fireball you summoned a volume of fire that was the equivalent of 33.5 10x10x10' cubes. The fireball would have gone off in the middle of the room and we would have been safe. But, since it was a dead end that 33,500 cubic feet of summoned fire had to go someplace, and that someplace was straight back at us. We all took some damage, and as we were trying to recover (we were already weakened due to combat and a couple of characters went unconscious due to this blast) we were attacked the round after the fireball by some assassins who had been trailing us. The entire group almost simultaneously asked what shape they were in. The DM looked a bit puzzled, and someone piped in that the blast would have nailed them as the corridor behind us, though twisting and turning, had no known areas that would have been shielded by the fireball for at least 200' back, and if they had attacked us the next round they would have been much closer than 200' back. So, the DM gave a sheepish grin at his mistake, made some saving throws (or rather, failed some saving throws!) and all but one of the assassins fell over roasted and toasted and dead. And that final assassin was in such bad shape that the DM just cancelled the attack, told us to forget it happened, had the sole survivor flee for his life, and had us find the bodies later on.
I remember DMing in 2nd Edition (Itylus, the 18 19 16 17 17 15 illiterate elf ranger, Bel, the super hot (22 Comeliness) elf monk/kensai, Crin, the proto-emo irda "elf" evoker/thief, and Simune, the classy sea elf specialty cleric of the seas and moon/thief) and the PCs were in a long corridor with a horde of Broken Ones (bestial animal-man hybrids built in a lab) coming at them from both sides. Crin was like, "my friends are tough," and cast fireball at range zero, destroying all the Broken Ones as the 33 10 foot cubes of fire rushed down both ends of the hallway. I had all these elaborate plans to capture the PCs, take all their stuff, and see how they dealed without relying on their gear. (They would have gotten it back eventually.) The ranger even had a pair of intelligent magical swords (long and short) that were married to each other. His dad was Sean Connery, and always hit on Bel. Actually, everyone always hit on Bell. Comeliness 22 and a leopard skin bikini will do that to a gal! The ranger had 3 non-weapon proficiencies in cooking. The evoker-thief had been bitten by a T-Rex, killed it, and used its teeth as throwing daggers. It was a ridiculous party, but really fun.
We're a party of 8th level adventurers, a strong balanced party of 5 or 6.
We manage to get the drop on an enemy encampment and get pretty close to the tent where the leaders are. There are two ordinary guards outside - some kind of humanoid race, probably something like 4th level fighter in combat capability.
We get surprise. We had a chance to prebuff. We get initiative...everyone goes before the guards in first round too! We have a plan. We start rolling dice....
By the time the outside guards got to react (end of init, they rolled bad too) we have accomplished....nothing. Every single attack missed, every spell saved, every tactical feat defeated by the d20 swing. One even got outside of the silence field and raised an alarm.
As bad guys poured out from the tent and our clever ambush was turned into a frantic, dangerous battle, my archer's comment was:
"We must let no one escape to tell of our shame!"
Luckily we were able to muscle our way out. With no surviving enemies. We just hoped nobody did a speak with dead or something on those guards...
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On a completely different note, here's another one....
Our intrepid level 2-4 pary discovers the lair of a true vampire, with one silver weapon between them, a few silver arrows (all silver stolen from a jewelry shop earlier and improvised) one holy symbol (on the barbarian), a couple garlic necklaces and only the vaguest notion of how to fight a vampire. (we were under time pressure, and the characters really only knew legends)
The vampire initially didn't try to dominate the barbarian, as she was wearing a holy symbol so he pegged her for a dwarf cleric. Thus we survived the initial rounds as the dominate attempts bounced off decent die rolls. Those with silver weapons were missing. Those with holy water (we DID stock up on that) started chipping away at the vampire.
Right about the time it was desperate enough to start thinking of tactics like "have the barbarian swing my character at the vampire, back first, hoping the 10 flasks of oil would shatter so I could immolate us both with alch fire" and just about when the more sensible plan (take off the backpack first) was being worked out, the vampire dominated the barbarian and sent her to kill my character (her brother..."I'll kill ya quick cause you're my brother!). Me, knowing EXACTLY how dangerous she was immediately ran, sister in chase.
Most of the rest of the party also decided this would be a good time to bug out, but this one level 1-2 character said "Hey GM, if I roll two natural 20s, can I "Stake" this guy with my arrow?"
As this move was absolute character suicide for the PC (he WOULD be drained into a vampire spawn the next round) the GM reminded him of the situation, player wanted to do it anyway and I think the GM let him roll just so he could have him fail and not have to make the judgement call.
Of course you all know how this is going to end.
In front of all of us, the guy proceeds to roll two natural 20s. We had a discussion at that point where the GM polled all of us on whether to let the cinematic thing happen. As the vampire was actually in pretty bad shape from all the rounds of holy water, if it had been crittable, a crit from a magic, silver arrow (which this was, after oil of magic weapon) would have done the job. So inches from death he staked the vampire, and we won...well...after a rather lengthy "subdue the barbarian" session.
A great story, but one that only happened because we were inept.
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Last one. This is about level 14. Wizard BBEG and two vrocks in a dim-locked area. Wizard has a prismatic wall up, and is proceeding to buff while his minions soften us up, or anyway that's his plan.
My character, a monk, thinks "I've got great saves, three rerolls a silence field on me and he's dim-locked. I'll just waltz through the wall and grab him".
All is fine and good...he shrugs off the first 5 veils no problem (and the 7th won't work, the area is dim locked). He hits the insanity veil.
Rolls a 3. Without knowing the result (that's how his first reroll works), he rerolls. Gets a 2. His next reroll allows knowing if he fails, but the GM unsurprisngly says yes. Rerolls again. Natural 1. His third reroll won't work on the same save his second one failed, from the same source. So he's insane.
We roll on the confusion table. "Attack caster". Keen. My character proceeds to grab the caster. Who is now silenced, minions on wrong side of wall, grappled with an insane monk and dim locked.
As his minions were telepathic, he did manage to get them to come help and refocus the confusion to them, but in the process the other 5 members of the party had a field day and mopped up the encounter neatly.
Except that their fully buffed monk (enlarge, free movement, recitation, righteous wrath faithful blah blah blah) with 30ish hitpoints is still insane.
Cleric goes "I've got dispel evil. That'll fix it up". Trouble is, that's a touch spell. Which means an attack, which means the confused monk focuses on her, and as he outreaches her, grabs her on the approach. (yes, the FoM was on HIM, not on the Cleric. This is usually the right thing to do for how they work together). She tries to touch him in the grapple, discovers he has a very high touch AC. Other people do ineffectual things to try to get him to let go, which he shrugs off with passive monk abilities and saves (he was the only party melee...so it was all spell type things). cleric discovers that a full attack grapple from the monk really hurts....
Luckily for her, the way confusion works allows "kiting" - the last guy who hits him before his init is who he goes after. So somebody hit him from across the room, and he dropped the cleric and moved over (casually ignoring more spells raining down).
This keystone cops sequence lasted about 3 rounds before finally the cleric both got next to him safely and stuck the dispel evil. Frankly I figured hitpoint damage would have dropped my character sooner, but the party only had stuff that was too big (risks killing him outright) or too weak (he can save or ignore it).
Several of the monk's companions had a much greater respect for what it was like to be on the other end of his stuff after that fight....
The Rogue/Duskblade-- the only one with a decent Spot check-- sees the statue. He points and shouts, "Look! A dragon!"
The Paladin charges... and gets ambushed by a Tendriculos.
In short order, the Paladin, the Favored Soul, and the Rogue/Duskblade are all swallowed and paralyzed, leaving me and the Paladin's horse to beat it unconscious. Nobody died (except the Tendriculos), but a couple of people were pretty embarassed. And severely injured.
Once we openned the door there was a short corridor leading to another door. The cleric and wizard went first, checking for trap but I got immpacient and just as the cleric and wizard had made it half way, I ran in.
I ran at the door and ended up triggering four poison dart traps which in a massive fluke of luck, I dodged them all. The cleric and wizard took two hits each and nearly died. I continued to run at the door with my axe raised, ready to hack into it but ended up missing my roll and ran head first into the door, causing my dwarf quite a headake.
Strangly enough the other players resented my dwarven ways till I ended up saving them from a band of 4 orcs about 30 mins later with some lucky rolls with my throwing axes.
At first, I thought,
"Oh, a quasit! This should be easy, they have those things for familiars!" But between its damage reduction and fast healing, and high armor class, the little SOB was one of the most frustrating (not hardest) fight we ever had.
We were in this kind of oil refinery place
Guards attacked and they tossed a grenade at us that was a dud on a 99%.
So who's the genius that decided to arm Oil Refinery Guards with hand grenades?
So who's the genius that decided to arm Oil Refinery Guards with hand grenades?
Same one who bought the budget One Percent Dud brand of grenades?