When I was DMing once, I had a player who wanted to be demon-possessed, which fueled their warlock powers. I said okay but said that if he were ever knocked out, the demon would come out and try to take full control. The other players would need to knock you out again to stop the demon. One day, our warlock friend stepped into a room and was immediatly hit by a doppelganger; I rolled the dice and.... he crit..... with sneak attack dmg. I swear I have never seen so many six's in my life. He dropped like a sack of bricks right as the doppelganger closed the door behind him, blocking the party's line of sight. (They did not know about the demon)
#DDBStyle I was just chillin in a vent when two dragons come up behind me and instantly knock me out. I roll my first death saving throw. Nat 1. I start freaking out because I had spent so much time on this character and I didn’t want to see it die this way. I begin to roll my second death saving throw and I roll a 7. My heart starts racing because I died, but then my DM tells me that right before I rolled that saving throw my goblin friend slid through the vent and poured a health potion right in my mouth. I was super relieved. That is the story of one of my most tense d&d rolls.
I was serving on a boat in the military and a group of us would game on the mess deck after hours when we didn't have watch. We were entertaining enough that we had people watching us play. It had all come down to our wizard and the evil wizard engaging in a battle of wills over a sphere of annihilation. All we needed were three successful rolls on the d20. Just straight rolls, me (the DM) vs our wizard. We had somewhere around twenty to twenty-five sailors surrounding us on the edge of their seats for about 10 minutes as the sphere moved closer to each combatant. Our wizard would win two, then the evil wizard. Then ours would win one, the BBEG would win two, then ours would win two. When our wizard won, there were cheers and high fives all around.
Almost a TPK when our party was fighting some cult goblins and a giant constrictor snake. My Grave Cleric was the last one standing versus the snake, my spell slots expended, the other four having been 'saved' with Spare the Dying. After 3 or 4 rounds with just the snake and I standing, with 1 HP remaining I attack with my battle axe, hit, and finally kill the snake. Our DM rolls in the open so there were no fudged rolls anywhere, making it quite the nail biter!
The group had convinced a Goblin chieftain to agree to single combat between our Polar Bear their strongest fighter. Our win would secure our mission, a loss by the bear would put us all in jeopardy. We expected a bugbear or Hobgoblin, but the chief had hidden away a huge owlbear. The fight went several rounds until the Polar Bear was at 1 HP. Then the DM rolled two consecutive failed attacks for the monster, and the polar bear ... a nat 20 and maximum damage for the win. Everyone erupted in cheers.
Our group had gotten into a little skirmish with a death knight. Our paladin, being way too level and not comprehending this, attacked and was promptly polymorphed.
The DM rolled. Rot grub! Immediately the paladin rot grub shouts "I attack the death knight's horse!"
The DM asks, "You what?..." "Okay fine, roll it."... 20! "Okay you are now in the nightmare's foot, traveling up its leg towards its dead heart."
The paladin rot grub says, "No! I am headed straight for the death knight's posterior!" (He didn't say posterior)...
The DM asks, "Seriously? You are going to... ugh, okay roll it"... 20!
We couldn't stop laughing. How do you kill a death knight? let him polymorph you into a rot grub, of course!
In the first campaign that I DM'ed, Lost Mines of Phandelver, my party in their first session arrived at Cragmaw Hideout. Leaving a goblin lookout alive outside, they tried to convince him that they were this poor little goblin's (on-the-spot named Gruul) new best friends with an impassioned argument. I had the party roll for it and of course, a Nat 20 happened. Long story short, this goblin eventually took over the Cragmaw Hideout and is still one of the party's favorite NPCs to this day.
Playing Lost Mines of Phelderwin, our level 3 party of 5 stumbled upon the young green dragon and decided to fight it. Our warlock was insta-killed, I (fighter) was down after the first round of combat. The other 3 players continued fighting and (somehow) got the dragon down to low health. As the dragon was fleeing, our Elven Monk used Misty Step to teleport onto its back to deliver the final blows that killed the dragon. She was knocked unconscious from the fall damage she received (slow fall comes at level 4). Thankfully I made my death saves and our Ranger was able to heal the Monk. In the end, our level 3 party idiotically took on a dragon and won. In comparison, the BBEG was a cakewalk.
I once had my 3 level 5s party try to drop a singular kobold as a joke easy fight. They all proceeded to roll under 5 for 5 straight rounds and the kobold with 5HP somehow was able to damage them to less than half each. It was the dumbest fight I've ever done.
One of my players was fighting 1v1 against Langdedrosa Cyanwrath and they were both below 10hp. He used his action surge to take two more swings and would have ended the fight if he hit once. Instead he rolled two nat 1s and got murdered in the next round. #DDBStyle
An epic moment in a campaign I participated in was when my character (Warlock) and his companion (Ranger) were given the sidequest to humiliate a local army leader.
After formulating the plan, they used the Staff of Leadership to convince the leader to give an inspiring speech to his soldiers, but not before feeding (The ranger mixed food with laxatives and he ate it). During the speech, we noticed that the leader had started to flatulate and we took the opportunity to point the Wand of Smile in his direction, who was now standing in place, smiling, and stinking a lot.
Without the success of the dices in these steps, a feat of this size would never happen. #DDBStyle
One hand-trembling roll of the dice occurred as our party fought a Yuan-Ti in an ancient snake-cult temple which was partially submerged. We had killed most of the cultists, so the Yuan-Ti leapt into the water and started to swim away. Our rogue (my wife's character) had a magic item which allowed her to breath underwater and gain a swim-speed comparable to the Yuan-Ti. She only had 9 hit points left, but she knew she was also the only hope we had of catching the Yuan-Ti. After chasing her a couple hundred feet ahead of the rest of the party, our rogue was hit and knocked unconscious. She didn't have much worth scavenging, so the Yuan-Ti proceeded to attack her, making her loose 1 death save automatically. The party was rushing to save her, but they were moving at half-speed. We just got in spell-range as the Yuan-Ti posed for the killing blow. I asked if I could contest it with an Ice spell and our DM allowed it, but said I would have to roll higher than a 25. I grabbed my dice with shaking hands, watching the likelihood of a character death play across my wife's face. I rolled the dice. With modifiers, I rolled a 26, barely managing to stop the Yuan-Ti's strike just in time to save our rogue's life. The Yuan-Ti decided to continue her escape instead of finishing off the character and we all breathed a sigh of relief as we administered a healing potion and watched as our rogue's eyes weakly opened. We all cheered, still shaken from the near-death experience. #DDBStyle
My group was playing a Ravenloft game a while back:
We only had two players that night (a Tiefling Sorcerer and a Dragonborn Cleric), who both ended up fighting a deranged religious zealot sworn to the Dark Powers in an abandoned chapel.
After several rounds of spellslinging, both players were down to single digit HP (they were Level 7 at the time, if I recall correctly), leaving the Zealot to prepare a fireball for his next action.
Essentially, the players both had one turn before they were knocked unconscious or killed.
After a missed attack by the Sorcerer, the Cleric decided to risk it all and use Inflict Wounds with a Third Level Spell slot.
Everyone held their breath...
Crit!
Inflict Wounds did just enough to kill the Zealot, ending the session with a bang.
Honestly the most stressful boss fight I've ever had the pleasure to DM.
#DDBStyle
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"Players beware, the DM is here!" - Probably Some 80's Cartoon
Dwarven cleric (LD) went down during what was essentially the "boss battle Vol. 1" of our campaign. My party was in bad shape and I had pretty much been the only hope we had of winning. I went to make my DS and I rolled a Nat 20! Gotta love Nat 20s!! #DDBStyle
Was having a midbattle conversion with the dragon that was actively killing us, and after some back and forth I successfully distracted enough for the rest of my team set up some dynamite and cave in this lair, 10/10 would chit chat with a white dragon again.
I was DMing and the players were dropping like flies in the climactic battle against a lich. It was back in the days of 3.5, and the only character left standing was the tiefling artificer. The artificer and lich only had a few HPs left, but the lich, of course, had damage resistance. It had been a long series of events with no chance for rest, and the only thing the artificer had left to attack a flying lich at range was a very non-magical x-bow. And to make matters worse, the lich was up. The lich swooped down and attempted a touch attack on the artificer; I rolled a 1... pretty much the only way it could miss. Everyone was on the edges of their seats. The artificer had another chance... and rolled a nat twenty, and confirmed, but it wasn't enough, the lich was left with 2 hp. And he was up again. He moved away and cast disintegrate, but once again I rolled a nat 1. It was a tense moment. Six of us stared at the table and watched as the artificer again rolled a natural 20 and confirmed with one more 20. It was an amazing moment watching the character least suited for a one-on-one standoff with a lich come out on top after a series of crazy rolls.
The party was on its last legs and my character (bard) was too far away to do anything to help. She fell to her knees and made a desperate plea for help to some one she thought would and could – I rolled a 25 persuasion, and a Balgura was summoned that bought us time to flee #DDBStyle
Our DM was a bit amused that we had bypassed a certain area and were confronting "The Warlord" before we were supposed to. His evil NPC laughed as he explained that it was too late to turn back and that the Warlord was currently empowered by an artifact (we were supposed to have broken/stolen that artifact first). We pressed on nervously, knowing that the only way out was to get past the Warlord's chambers. Sure enough, there he waited. He allowed us to attack him for two rounds without fighting back, just to let us see how ineffective we were. Then he began to quickly dismantle the team, and we were dropping like flies. It came down to our fighter and our cleric, with the rest of use reduced to Death Saving Throws. The fighter had lost his shield and was frozen in place. The DM gleefully announced that he only had to roll a 2 in order to hit the fighter, and we knew that with as much damage as he was doing, this would likely kill the fighter outright while also dooming the rest of us...
He then proceeded to roll a ONE. This DM had implemented a very fun Critical Fumble chart that was brutal but required a person to roll a second one in order to go to the chart. As you have probably already guessed, he indeed rolled that second one. With percentile dice the result on the chart was "Cleave Buttocks" (seriously, I don't know who created that first chart but "Cleave Buttocks" has since been added to every Critical Hit/Fumble chart I've used). But still, we weren't out of woods. The Warlord now had decreased movement and was bleeding out but he had more than enough time to finish us off before running to get healed. However, it was the cleric's turn next...
Our cleric was out of spell slots above 1st level. His Spiritual Hammer was incapable of doing enough damage before the end. He decided to "end it all with butterflies, at least it will look cool" , and he pulled out his Wand of Wonder. He rolled a 98 and the Warlord's saving throw was 9. He was instantly petrified and the campaign ended 2 sessions earlier than the DM had anticipated.
To this day it is was an epic event that was made more so because the DM allowed it to happen according to the rules and rolls. It caused me to respect the DM so much more as he didn't railroad us to make us do it "the right way" (even though it represented passing up on hours of content that he had created), and it has inspired me to be a better DM.
My most epic moment had to be when my kalashtar paladin was fighting a dragon, we were fighting an adult black dragon who was on its last legs and I rolled a nat 20 with a smite to finish it off #DDBStyle
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When I was DMing once, I had a player who wanted to be demon-possessed, which fueled their warlock powers. I said okay but said that if he were ever knocked out, the demon would come out and try to take full control. The other players would need to knock you out again to stop the demon. One day, our warlock friend stepped into a room and was immediatly hit by a doppelganger; I rolled the dice and.... he crit..... with sneak attack dmg. I swear I have never seen so many six's in my life. He dropped like a sack of bricks right as the doppelganger closed the door behind him, blocking the party's line of sight. (They did not know about the demon)
#DDBStyle.
#DDBStyle I was just chillin in a vent when two dragons come up behind me and instantly knock me out. I roll my first death saving throw. Nat 1. I start freaking out because I had spent so much time on this character and I didn’t want to see it die this way. I begin to roll my second death saving throw and I roll a 7. My heart starts racing because I died, but then my DM tells me that right before I rolled that saving throw my goblin friend slid through the vent and poured a health potion right in my mouth. I was super relieved. That is the story of one of my most tense d&d rolls.
#DDBStyle It is a tale of great adventure and heroism! No not really.....
Skill check to juggle to impress the local merchant's daughter. Rolled a 1.
The DM has some interesting rules on the slippery slope to chaos... 4 natural 1's in a row. L2 Char death by juggling ball.
Merchant's daughter NOT impressed. Everyone else at the table though, very impressed.
It's not Magic its Science
I was serving on a boat in the military and a group of us would game on the mess deck after hours when we didn't have watch. We were entertaining enough that we had people watching us play. It had all come down to our wizard and the evil wizard engaging in a battle of wills over a sphere of annihilation. All we needed were three successful rolls on the d20. Just straight rolls, me (the DM) vs our wizard. We had somewhere around twenty to twenty-five sailors surrounding us on the edge of their seats for about 10 minutes as the sphere moved closer to each combatant. Our wizard would win two, then the evil wizard. Then ours would win one, the BBEG would win two, then ours would win two. When our wizard won, there were cheers and high fives all around.
#DDBStyle
Almost a TPK when our party was fighting some cult goblins and a giant constrictor snake.
My Grave Cleric was the last one standing versus the snake, my spell slots expended, the other four having been 'saved' with Spare the Dying.
After 3 or 4 rounds with just the snake and I standing, with 1 HP remaining I attack with my battle axe, hit, and finally kill the snake.
Our DM rolls in the open so there were no fudged rolls anywhere, making it quite the nail biter!
#DDBStyle
The group had convinced a Goblin chieftain to agree to single combat between our Polar Bear their strongest fighter. Our win would secure our mission, a loss by the bear would put us all in jeopardy. We expected a bugbear or Hobgoblin, but the chief had hidden away a huge owlbear. The fight went several rounds until the Polar Bear was at 1 HP. Then the DM rolled two consecutive failed attacks for the monster, and the polar bear ... a nat 20 and maximum damage for the win. Everyone erupted in cheers.
Our group had gotten into a little skirmish with a death knight. Our paladin, being way too level and not comprehending this, attacked and was promptly polymorphed.
The DM rolled. Rot grub! Immediately the paladin rot grub shouts "I attack the death knight's horse!"
The DM asks, "You what?..." "Okay fine, roll it."... 20! "Okay you are now in the nightmare's foot, traveling up its leg towards its dead heart."
The paladin rot grub says, "No! I am headed straight for the death knight's posterior!" (He didn't say posterior)...
The DM asks, "Seriously? You are going to... ugh, okay roll it"... 20!
We couldn't stop laughing. How do you kill a death knight? let him polymorph you into a rot grub, of course!
#DDBStyle
In the first campaign that I DM'ed, Lost Mines of Phandelver, my party in their first session arrived at Cragmaw Hideout. Leaving a goblin lookout alive outside, they tried to convince him that they were this poor little goblin's (on-the-spot named Gruul) new best friends with an impassioned argument. I had the party roll for it and of course, a Nat 20 happened. Long story short, this goblin eventually took over the Cragmaw Hideout and is still one of the party's favorite NPCs to this day.
#DDBStyle
Playing Lost Mines of Phelderwin, our level 3 party of 5 stumbled upon the young green dragon and decided to fight it. Our warlock was insta-killed, I (fighter) was down after the first round of combat. The other 3 players continued fighting and (somehow) got the dragon down to low health. As the dragon was fleeing, our Elven Monk used Misty Step to teleport onto its back to deliver the final blows that killed the dragon. She was knocked unconscious from the fall damage she received (slow fall comes at level 4). Thankfully I made my death saves and our Ranger was able to heal the Monk. In the end, our level 3 party idiotically took on a dragon and won. In comparison, the BBEG was a cakewalk.
#DDBStyle
#DDBStyle
I once had my 3 level 5s party try to drop a singular kobold as a joke easy fight. They all proceeded to roll under 5 for 5 straight rounds and the kobold with 5HP somehow was able to damage them to less than half each. It was the dumbest fight I've ever done.
One of my players was fighting 1v1 against Langdedrosa Cyanwrath and they were both below 10hp. He used his action surge to take two more swings and would have ended the fight if he hit once. Instead he rolled two nat 1s and got murdered in the next round. #DDBStyle
An epic moment in a campaign I participated in was when my character (Warlock) and his companion (Ranger) were given the sidequest to humiliate a local army leader.
After formulating the plan, they used the Staff of Leadership to convince the leader to give an inspiring speech to his soldiers, but not before feeding (The ranger mixed food with laxatives and he ate it). During the speech, we noticed that the leader had started to flatulate and we took the opportunity to point the Wand of Smile in his direction, who was now standing in place, smiling, and stinking a lot.
Without the success of the dices in these steps, a feat of this size would never happen. #DDBStyle
LucasRigotti
One hand-trembling roll of the dice occurred as our party fought a Yuan-Ti in an ancient snake-cult temple which was partially submerged. We had killed most of the cultists, so the Yuan-Ti leapt into the water and started to swim away. Our rogue (my wife's character) had a magic item which allowed her to breath underwater and gain a swim-speed comparable to the Yuan-Ti. She only had 9 hit points left, but she knew she was also the only hope we had of catching the Yuan-Ti. After chasing her a couple hundred feet ahead of the rest of the party, our rogue was hit and knocked unconscious. She didn't have much worth scavenging, so the Yuan-Ti proceeded to attack her, making her loose 1 death save automatically. The party was rushing to save her, but they were moving at half-speed. We just got in spell-range as the Yuan-Ti posed for the killing blow. I asked if I could contest it with an Ice spell and our DM allowed it, but said I would have to roll higher than a 25. I grabbed my dice with shaking hands, watching the likelihood of a character death play across my wife's face. I rolled the dice. With modifiers, I rolled a 26, barely managing to stop the Yuan-Ti's strike just in time to save our rogue's life. The Yuan-Ti decided to continue her escape instead of finishing off the character and we all breathed a sigh of relief as we administered a healing potion and watched as our rogue's eyes weakly opened. We all cheered, still shaken from the near-death experience. #DDBStyle
My group was playing a Ravenloft game a while back:
We only had two players that night (a Tiefling Sorcerer and a Dragonborn Cleric), who both ended up fighting a deranged religious zealot sworn to the Dark Powers in an abandoned chapel.
After several rounds of spellslinging, both players were down to single digit HP (they were Level 7 at the time, if I recall correctly), leaving the Zealot to prepare a fireball for his next action.
Essentially, the players both had one turn before they were knocked unconscious or killed.
After a missed attack by the Sorcerer, the Cleric decided to risk it all and use Inflict Wounds with a Third Level Spell slot.
Everyone held their breath...
Crit!
Inflict Wounds did just enough to kill the Zealot, ending the session with a bang.
Honestly the most stressful boss fight I've ever had the pleasure to DM.
#DDBStyle
"Players beware, the DM is here!" - Probably Some 80's Cartoon
Dwarven cleric (LD) went down during what was essentially the "boss battle Vol. 1" of our campaign. My party was in bad shape and I had pretty much been the only hope we had of winning. I went to make my DS and I rolled a Nat 20! Gotta love Nat 20s!! #DDBStyle
Was having a midbattle conversion with the dragon that was actively killing us, and after some back and forth I successfully distracted enough for the rest of my team set up some dynamite and cave in this lair, 10/10 would chit chat with a white dragon again.
#DDBStyle
I was DMing and the players were dropping like flies in the climactic battle against a lich. It was back in the days of 3.5, and the only character left standing was the tiefling artificer. The artificer and lich only had a few HPs left, but the lich, of course, had damage resistance. It had been a long series of events with no chance for rest, and the only thing the artificer had left to attack a flying lich at range was a very non-magical x-bow. And to make matters worse, the lich was up. The lich swooped down and attempted a touch attack on the artificer; I rolled a 1... pretty much the only way it could miss. Everyone was on the edges of their seats. The artificer had another chance... and rolled a nat twenty, and confirmed, but it wasn't enough, the lich was left with 2 hp. And he was up again. He moved away and cast disintegrate, but once again I rolled a nat 1. It was a tense moment. Six of us stared at the table and watched as the artificer again rolled a natural 20 and confirmed with one more 20. It was an amazing moment watching the character least suited for a one-on-one standoff with a lich come out on top after a series of crazy rolls.
#DDBStyle
The party was on its last legs and my character (bard) was too far away to do anything to help. She fell to her knees and made a desperate plea for help to some one she thought would and could – I rolled a 25 persuasion, and a Balgura was summoned that bought us time to flee #DDBStyle
Our DM was a bit amused that we had bypassed a certain area and were confronting "The Warlord" before we were supposed to. His evil NPC laughed as he explained that it was too late to turn back and that the Warlord was currently empowered by an artifact (we were supposed to have broken/stolen that artifact first). We pressed on nervously, knowing that the only way out was to get past the Warlord's chambers. Sure enough, there he waited. He allowed us to attack him for two rounds without fighting back, just to let us see how ineffective we were. Then he began to quickly dismantle the team, and we were dropping like flies. It came down to our fighter and our cleric, with the rest of use reduced to Death Saving Throws. The fighter had lost his shield and was frozen in place. The DM gleefully announced that he only had to roll a 2 in order to hit the fighter, and we knew that with as much damage as he was doing, this would likely kill the fighter outright while also dooming the rest of us...
He then proceeded to roll a ONE. This DM had implemented a very fun Critical Fumble chart that was brutal but required a person to roll a second one in order to go to the chart. As you have probably already guessed, he indeed rolled that second one. With percentile dice the result on the chart was "Cleave Buttocks" (seriously, I don't know who created that first chart but "Cleave Buttocks" has since been added to every Critical Hit/Fumble chart I've used). But still, we weren't out of woods. The Warlord now had decreased movement and was bleeding out but he had more than enough time to finish us off before running to get healed. However, it was the cleric's turn next...
Our cleric was out of spell slots above 1st level. His Spiritual Hammer was incapable of doing enough damage before the end. He decided to "end it all with butterflies, at least it will look cool" , and he pulled out his Wand of Wonder. He rolled a 98 and the Warlord's saving throw was 9. He was instantly petrified and the campaign ended 2 sessions earlier than the DM had anticipated.
To this day it is was an epic event that was made more so because the DM allowed it to happen according to the rules and rolls. It caused me to respect the DM so much more as he didn't railroad us to make us do it "the right way" (even though it represented passing up on hours of content that he had created), and it has inspired me to be a better DM.
#DDBStyle
My most epic moment had to be when my kalashtar paladin was fighting a dragon, we were fighting an adult black dragon who was on its last legs and I rolled a nat 20 with a smite to finish it off #DDBStyle