As the forever DM It's always great to see players succeed but this is about a failure. My friend's first D&D experience was marred with 2 successive nat 1s on descending a rope into a dwarven cave. Most cats have 9 lives but not his tabaxi #DDBStyle
During our recent Princes of the Apocalypse campaign, I had the bright idea to try to distract Marlos with my Satyr College of Eloquence Bard Cif by entering his room and casting Invisibility to get an eavesdrop on him...
not knowing Marlos had tremor sense and knew exactly where I was.
I was found out, and having to lie my way out of it, I concocted the idea that I was here as a messenger from Thurl... on a deception roll, I had rolled a natural 1 (our table still treats natural 1s as a critical failure despite the outcome, so no guaranteed base 10 for me)... then proceeded to fail my CON saves against petrification. #DDBStyle
I presented my players who were camping outside for the night with a couple of young children trying to steal some food because they were hungry. They caught them and finding out they were orphans decided to feed them for the night. Our Paladin wanted to try and connect with the children, 1 older brother age 9, and 1 younger sister age 7. He persuaded the brother to ride on top of his spirit steed (which was a worg). I had him roll an animal handling check on the steed to see if he'd be willing to do it. He rolls a 19. Great, the steed starts running around with the kid on his back, who is fairly nervous but starting to have some fun. Our Paladin gives a psychic command to his steed saying to do a barrel roll mid-air like they've been working on.
Okay sure.. lol. Roll an acrobatics check with advantage because you had a good animal handling check and you have been practicing this before. TWO NAT 1s! The sheer look of panic in everyone's eyes was priceless. Because these kids have been on their own for a while, I imagined them fairly sturdy, so I rolled a 1d6 for his health points. He has 5 hp. Then I had him roll 2d6 for bludgeoning damage as the worg rolls over lands on the ground with the kid under him. He rolls a total of 4! 4 out of 2d6. The paladin runs over in utter shock realizing he almost killed a child. Quickly lays on hands, apologizes 1000 times as they ride back in the night to the town to drop these kids off safely. Hands them 50 gold and wishes them well on hopefully a new and thriving life. Doesn't get the best of sleep that night.. Guess we'll see what his deity Tyr thinks of this down the road.. hahaha. #DDBStyle
#DDBStyle Watching with glee as my players rolls to see if the Cockatrice venom in them is about to turn them to stone. A pause. A nervous roll, it's justified. All the players go quiet, we hear the roll. Then we see it. And now the party has their own statue.
I unfortunately don't have a pulse racing moment due to me being a complete newb but I hope to have some in the near future, but I do love dnd and how creative people can get. #ddbstyle
The party and I were fighting four elemental deities. I was facing off against the lightning deity. I, being a water genasi, used the water from the edge of the island, and made a mud pit to trap the enemy. I cast rope trick to create the invisible area to fight him above the pit. It came down to a single strength role to push him off the platform and into the mud pit. At this point, the lightning entity was the last one left, because all of the other beings faced off against multiple members of our party. I ended up pushing him down successfully. He became stuck, unable to run away as the big dragonborn killed him with a great sword.
My party of 5 level 8 heroes fought an adult black dragon. After hiding for 3 round they all got caught in the acid breath attack and nearly TPK'd. But then the half-orc fighter went fully berserk and hit 3 nat 20s in one turn. Smashing the black dragon into some dragon paste. It was glorious! And there was so much loot :D #DDBStyle
Level 1 party, Druid (me), Barbarian, and Wizard. We're doing the most classic level 1 adventure ever- fighting giant rats. You wouldn't think this was a recipe for chaos, but my disaster child Druid would prove otherwise.
We're deep in the fight, a few rats left, then the Barbarian goes down. No problem, I have one healing word left. Well, before my turn comes around, I go down too. This just leaves the squishy Wizard alone and terrified. I actually roll a nat 20 on my death save and pop up with 1hp. I throw that healing word on the Barbarian for 5hp and pray that the rats get unlucky on hitting me. Well, very next turn a rat hits the Barbarian for 5hp and he drops again before he can do anything. I'm pissed I wasted my healing spell, but the Wizard and I manage to get the rats down, but not before one hits the Barbarian for one failed death save. Then the Barbarian rolls a nat 1 on his next death save, and he's down.
Our DM, being the kind and benevolent god she is, allows me to make a Medicine check to stabilize the Barb, since this was not supposed to be as deadly as it was. I thought this would be fine, with my proficiency in Medicine. It was not fine. I rolled a nat 1 on this Med check. The DM, being exceedingly kind and benevolent, allows me to make a death saving throw of sorts to see if I didn't damage him further, then the Wizard could try a Med check. I fail the saving throw.
This leaves the Barb dead and the Wizard looking on in horror, screaming, "You had one job, Roland. ONE JOB."
One of the BBEGs decided to finally make a move against their rivals in the city and began to move in for the kill, the party, who had just turned level 10 were back at their homebase discussing what to do. The cleric (who had just returned to the party and an unfortunate split up) decided to try a divine intervention. No big deal. Super unlikely to succeed. He prays to his goddess to take away the BBEG's power (AKA her magic), rolls the check. He got an 8. Oh boy it was so cool, but the amount of improv and off the cuff rules and plot changes that I had to make were insane. #DDBStyle
So, it was my second session ever as a DM (and my players are giving me a lot of grace), and I've got my five Level-2 players facing a Giant Octopus. It just grappled the Orc Barbarian player, which is one of the tanks of the party, and I'm thinking, "Got ya."
Until he rolls a Nat 20 to escape the grapple.
Crap. So, I'm desperately trying to think how to handle him escaping, when I remember that earlier in the session he had rubbed some oil (not the perfume kind) they found onto himself ('cause Orc are geniuses). So, I say to the player, "Because of the oil you rubbed on yourself from earlier, you slip right out of the grapple and take no damage."
The whole table burst out laughing, and it was probably the best moment of the session.
During our curse of strahd campiagn, the paladin was going to stake strhad in the heart to try and paralyze him. He missed the first attack. As he was getting ready to roll for his extra attack everyone was on their feet to see if he would hit. He barley made the AC and was able finish off strahd with a smite. It was intense. #ddbstyle
First time playing D&D 5e, and the campaign Dragon of Icespire Peak, and I rolled a Nat 1 for perception. I was promptly glomped by an Ochre Jelly dropping from the ceiling. When it was finally my turn to respond, I rolled a Nat 20…..and slashed the jelly…which then formed into 2 separate jellies. Whoops. 😑
Our group of friends just return to play E5. We left it because "adult-life" It was awesome!!! Like we had return in time, we get into the campaign, collecting clues, solving puzzels, you know the drill. Halft time after the first 4 hours we get some lunch and of course in the break we keep talking about the good times, the fails at the first parts of the campaing and how in all the first time our cleric havent had a single damage done, he was a death domain cleric so it was really funny 1 because he´s been the one that had the longes of not playing and it was actually true, not a single hit in all the first half.
Any way, second part of the game estarted, we keep with the puzzels, kill the underlings and finaly fight the boss, we were out of spells, potions and the the DMs planing a cliffhanger tell us that the boss turns invicible and start running away. Our cleric the only one near enough to make the last attack says nothing so all of us tell him DUDE!! try to hit her, you still have a one 1ers lvl slot, the DM told us well you can try but you´ll have disadvantage. So he takes his dices, look at us and say, well we know how its gonna end... he throws... and 2 Nat 20s!! All the day nothing! and the last throw he gets 2, 20´s!!! We all flip out hahaha, he did hit her and the dmgs was enough to kill her, we were so happy we keep playing 1s a month like the all days, we use now D&D Beyond and a tabletop to make it easy but regarles... I was so happy.
I repeatedly Nat 20 against one of my players. One of the funniest was during a first fight of a dungeon delve. I said to him "Watch this! Here comes the Nat 20!" Sure enough, I rolled a 20 and one shotted him into unconsciousness. #DDBStyle
The time my half orc rolled a nat 20 to find a temple in the city to help find a missing half drow who went missing a few days ago and it lead to finding a cult dedicated to loth wish we could have finished the campaign but life got busy.
#DDBStyle
Also I hope whoever does win to keep being awesome
Bordering the city Bidziil, in the country of Ethax, there was a zombie infested swamp. Our group had been sent on a mission to find out why zombies were making almost nightly incursion attempts on Bidziil, and were the zombies were coming from. We quickly discovered that one of the 4 ruling cults of Ethax, The Fallen Phoenix, had a compound in the swamp. We attempted, and Crit Failed, to present ourselves as official inspectors, from the local town government. This worked to only bipass the entire dungeon crawl our DM had set up. Crit Failed the investigation and insight checks, And instead of fighting one boss at a time, while working our way through the fortress, we got all 8 bosses thrown at us at once. This quickly become an escape mission, through the swamp, across multiple sessions. Somehow, making heavily disadvantaged Survival checks, we barely escape. The only way we can prove what we said to be true is carrying along the severed head of a cultist rolling, Nat 20 Medicine to preserve the head. He was meant to be our guide through the swamp, but because he had also seen and heard everything that was said, became our only (undead)witness to absolve us of murder. #DDBStyle
As the resident cleric, I was adventuring in the Underdark with my stalwart band of misfits, seeking something or other. We were on a boat in a large lake when lo and behold: SEA TROLLS. It was an epic fight, with our wizard opting to cast Fireball to hopefully finish off these regenerating beasts and save us from certain death. The fireball blossomed bright and vibrant in the dimness of the Underdark.
While we were all on the boat.
Made of wood.
With clothsails.
In the middle of a giant lake.
Needless to say that particular situation didn't end well, but we did all ultimately survive the encounter while standing precariously on various wooden planks that used to be attached to our ship (which was now resting comfortably on the bottom of the lake). But we had to all survive exhaustion while we paddled our way to the nearest shore (as far as we knew). Suddenly my compatriots were dropping like flies, exhaustion overtaking them, and the rest of us had to slow our pace to drag them along with us.
Suddenly as the only true healer of the bunch I'm up to level 5 exhaustion, but the shore is in sight. This one final roll will determine whether I wash up on shore, clinging to a shred of strength or as a lifeless husk of a once proud cleric.
The d20 was cast, bouncing around the table with a life of its own as all waited with bated breath. A 20 was needed; my bonus was +4. The die rolled slower and slower as it reached its final resting place, it's bright green face showing a ...
I was in a short campaign that fell apart after this happened. I wasn’t happy with my first character and had asked my DM to make sure I die because I wanted to try another PC. The first time he tried to kill me my companions came to my aid and each of them rolled a nat 20 in different moments to help get me out of the mess I was in. In the game we had obtained a stone of resurrection. At one point I intentionally attacked a much higher level bg and I ended up being decapitated. I had told our Paladin of my plans to die and he tried to take the head of my body and preform last rites over it when the sorceress of the group walked over and tried to place the stone in the lifeless head. They fought over the head and the Paladin clasped his hand over my mouth. the sorceress rolled a nat 20 to shove the stone up the trachea and resurrected me. 🤦🏻♂️ I just couldn’t die. But the campaign fell apart after that.
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As the forever DM It's always great to see players succeed but this is about a failure. My friend's first D&D experience was marred with 2 successive nat 1s on descending a rope into a dwarven cave. Most cats have 9 lives but not his tabaxi #DDBStyle
During our recent Princes of the Apocalypse campaign, I had the bright idea to try to distract Marlos with my Satyr College of Eloquence Bard Cif by entering his room and casting Invisibility to get an eavesdrop on him...
not knowing Marlos had tremor sense and knew exactly where I was.
I was found out, and having to lie my way out of it, I concocted the idea that I was here as a messenger from Thurl... on a deception roll, I had rolled a natural 1 (our table still treats natural 1s as a critical failure despite the outcome, so no guaranteed base 10 for me)... then proceeded to fail my CON saves against petrification. #DDBStyle
As the DM,
I presented my players who were camping outside for the night with a couple of young children trying to steal some food because they were hungry. They caught them and finding out they were orphans decided to feed them for the night. Our Paladin wanted to try and connect with the children, 1 older brother age 9, and 1 younger sister age 7. He persuaded the brother to ride on top of his spirit steed (which was a worg). I had him roll an animal handling check on the steed to see if he'd be willing to do it. He rolls a 19. Great, the steed starts running around with the kid on his back, who is fairly nervous but starting to have some fun. Our Paladin gives a psychic command to his steed saying to do a barrel roll mid-air like they've been working on.
Okay sure.. lol. Roll an acrobatics check with advantage because you had a good animal handling check and you have been practicing this before. TWO NAT 1s! The sheer look of panic in everyone's eyes was priceless. Because these kids have been on their own for a while, I imagined them fairly sturdy, so I rolled a 1d6 for his health points. He has 5 hp. Then I had him roll 2d6 for bludgeoning damage as the worg rolls over lands on the ground with the kid under him. He rolls a total of 4! 4 out of 2d6. The paladin runs over in utter shock realizing he almost killed a child. Quickly lays on hands, apologizes 1000 times as they ride back in the night to the town to drop these kids off safely. Hands them 50 gold and wishes them well on hopefully a new and thriving life. Doesn't get the best of sleep that night.. Guess we'll see what his deity Tyr thinks of this down the road.. hahaha. #DDBStyle
#DDBStyle Watching with glee as my players rolls to see if the Cockatrice venom in them is about to turn them to stone. A pause. A nervous roll, it's justified. All the players go quiet, we hear the roll. Then we see it. And now the party has their own statue.
I unfortunately don't have a pulse racing moment due to me being a complete newb but I hope to have some in the near future, but I do love dnd and how creative people can get. #ddbstyle
The party and I were fighting four elemental deities. I was facing off against the lightning deity. I, being a water genasi, used the water from the edge of the island, and made a mud pit to trap the enemy. I cast rope trick to create the invisible area to fight him above the pit. It came down to a single strength role to push him off the platform and into the mud pit. At this point, the lightning entity was the last one left, because all of the other beings faced off against multiple members of our party. I ended up pushing him down successfully. He became stuck, unable to run away as the big dragonborn killed him with a great sword.
#DDBStyle
My party of 5 level 8 heroes fought an adult black dragon. After hiding for 3 round they all got caught in the acid breath attack and nearly TPK'd. But then the half-orc fighter went fully berserk and hit 3 nat 20s in one turn. Smashing the black dragon into some dragon paste. It was glorious! And there was so much loot :D #DDBStyle
So it starts like this.
Level 1 party, Druid (me), Barbarian, and Wizard. We're doing the most classic level 1 adventure ever- fighting giant rats. You wouldn't think this was a recipe for chaos, but my disaster child Druid would prove otherwise.
We're deep in the fight, a few rats left, then the Barbarian goes down. No problem, I have one healing word left. Well, before my turn comes around, I go down too. This just leaves the squishy Wizard alone and terrified. I actually roll a nat 20 on my death save and pop up with 1hp. I throw that healing word on the Barbarian for 5hp and pray that the rats get unlucky on hitting me. Well, very next turn a rat hits the Barbarian for 5hp and he drops again before he can do anything. I'm pissed I wasted my healing spell, but the Wizard and I manage to get the rats down, but not before one hits the Barbarian for one failed death save. Then the Barbarian rolls a nat 1 on his next death save, and he's down.
Our DM, being the kind and benevolent god she is, allows me to make a Medicine check to stabilize the Barb, since this was not supposed to be as deadly as it was. I thought this would be fine, with my proficiency in Medicine. It was not fine. I rolled a nat 1 on this Med check. The DM, being exceedingly kind and benevolent, allows me to make a death saving throw of sorts to see if I didn't damage him further, then the Wizard could try a Med check. I fail the saving throw.
This leaves the Barb dead and the Wizard looking on in horror, screaming, "You had one job, Roland. ONE JOB."
#DDBStyle
One of the BBEGs decided to finally make a move against their rivals in the city and began to move in for the kill, the party, who had just turned level 10 were back at their homebase discussing what to do. The cleric (who had just returned to the party and an unfortunate split up) decided to try a divine intervention. No big deal. Super unlikely to succeed. He prays to his goddess to take away the BBEG's power (AKA her magic), rolls the check. He got an 8. Oh boy it was so cool, but the amount of improv and off the cuff rules and plot changes that I had to make were insane. #DDBStyle
#DDBStyle speaking with Gary Gygax about being a GM at a game conference - amazing to get tips from the man himself :)
So, it was my second session ever as a DM (and my players are giving me a lot of grace), and I've got my five Level-2 players facing a Giant Octopus. It just grappled the Orc Barbarian player, which is one of the tanks of the party, and I'm thinking, "Got ya."
Until he rolls a Nat 20 to escape the grapple.
Crap. So, I'm desperately trying to think how to handle him escaping, when I remember that earlier in the session he had rubbed some oil (not the perfume kind) they found onto himself ('cause Orc are geniuses). So, I say to the player, "Because of the oil you rubbed on yourself from earlier, you slip right out of the grapple and take no damage."
The whole table burst out laughing, and it was probably the best moment of the session.
#DDBStyle
When we decided to try and convince some dragon cultists to go say hi to a dragon instead of just fighting them in a very easy battle. #DDBStyle
During our curse of strahd campiagn, the paladin was going to stake strhad in the heart to try and paralyze him. He missed the first attack. As he was getting ready to roll for his extra attack everyone was on their feet to see if he would hit. He barley made the AC and was able finish off strahd with a smite. It was intense. #ddbstyle
First time playing D&D 5e, and the campaign Dragon of Icespire Peak, and I rolled a Nat 1 for perception. I was promptly glomped by an Ochre Jelly dropping from the ceiling. When it was finally my turn to respond, I rolled a Nat 20…..and slashed the jelly…which then formed into 2 separate jellies. Whoops. 😑
#DDBStyle
Our group of friends just return to play E5. We left it because "adult-life" It was awesome!!! Like we had return in time, we get into the campaign, collecting clues, solving puzzels, you know the drill. Halft time after the first 4 hours we get some lunch and of course in the break we keep talking about the good times, the fails at the first parts of the campaing and how in all the first time our cleric havent had a single damage done, he was a death domain cleric so it was really funny 1 because he´s been the one that had the longes of not playing and it was actually true, not a single hit in all the first half.
Any way, second part of the game estarted, we keep with the puzzels, kill the underlings and finaly fight the boss, we were out of spells, potions and the the DMs planing a cliffhanger tell us that the boss turns invicible and start running away. Our cleric the only one near enough to make the last attack says nothing so all of us tell him DUDE!! try to hit her, you still have a one 1ers lvl slot, the DM told us well you can try but you´ll have disadvantage. So he takes his dices, look at us and say, well we know how its gonna end... he throws... and 2 Nat 20s!! All the day nothing! and the last throw he gets 2, 20´s!!! We all flip out hahaha, he did hit her and the dmgs was enough to kill her, we were so happy we keep playing 1s a month like the all days, we use now D&D Beyond and a tabletop to make it easy but regarles... I was so happy.
#DDBStyle
I repeatedly Nat 20 against one of my players. One of the funniest was during a first fight of a dungeon delve. I said to him "Watch this! Here comes the Nat 20!" Sure enough, I rolled a 20 and one shotted him into unconsciousness. #DDBStyle
The time my half orc rolled a nat 20 to find a temple in the city to help find a missing half drow who went missing a few days ago and it lead to finding a cult dedicated to loth wish we could have finished the campaign but life got busy.
#DDBStyle
Also I hope whoever does win to keep being awesome
Bordering the city Bidziil, in the country of Ethax, there was a zombie infested swamp. Our group had been sent on a mission to find out why zombies were making almost nightly incursion attempts on Bidziil, and were the zombies were coming from. We quickly discovered that one of the 4 ruling cults of Ethax, The Fallen Phoenix, had a compound in the swamp. We attempted, and Crit Failed, to present ourselves as official inspectors, from the local town government. This worked to only bipass the entire dungeon crawl our DM had set up. Crit Failed the investigation and insight checks, And instead of fighting one boss at a time, while working our way through the fortress, we got all 8 bosses thrown at us at once. This quickly become an escape mission, through the swamp, across multiple sessions. Somehow, making heavily disadvantaged Survival checks, we barely escape. The only way we can prove what we said to be true is carrying along the severed head of a cultist rolling, Nat 20 Medicine to preserve the head. He was meant to be our guide through the swamp, but because he had also seen and heard everything that was said, became our only (undead)witness to absolve us of murder. #DDBStyle
As the resident cleric, I was adventuring in the Underdark with my stalwart band of misfits, seeking something or other. We were on a boat in a large lake when lo and behold: SEA TROLLS. It was an epic fight, with our wizard opting to cast Fireball to hopefully finish off these regenerating beasts and save us from certain death. The fireball blossomed bright and vibrant in the dimness of the Underdark.
While we were all on the boat.
Made of wood.
With cloth sails.
In the middle of a giant lake.
Needless to say that particular situation didn't end well, but we did all ultimately survive the encounter while standing precariously on various wooden planks that used to be attached to our ship (which was now resting comfortably on the bottom of the lake). But we had to all survive exhaustion while we paddled our way to the nearest shore (as far as we knew). Suddenly my compatriots were dropping like flies, exhaustion overtaking them, and the rest of us had to slow our pace to drag them along with us.
Suddenly as the only true healer of the bunch I'm up to level 5 exhaustion, but the shore is in sight. This one final roll will determine whether I wash up on shore, clinging to a shred of strength or as a lifeless husk of a once proud cleric.
The d20 was cast, bouncing around the table with a life of its own as all waited with bated breath. A 20 was needed; my bonus was +4. The die rolled slower and slower as it reached its final resting place, it's bright green face showing a ...
[to be continued]
#DDBStyle
I was in a short campaign that fell apart after this happened.
I wasn’t happy with my first character and had asked my DM to make sure I die because I wanted to try another PC. The first time he tried to kill me my companions came to my aid and each of them rolled a nat 20 in different moments to help get me out of the mess I was in.
In the game we had obtained a stone of resurrection. At one point I intentionally attacked a much higher level bg and I ended up being decapitated. I had told our Paladin of my plans to die and he tried to take the head of my body and preform last rites over it when the sorceress of the group walked over and tried to place the stone in the lifeless head. They fought over the head and the Paladin clasped his hand over my mouth. the sorceress rolled a nat 20 to shove the stone up the trachea and resurrected me. 🤦🏻♂️ I just couldn’t die. But the campaign fell apart after that.