It was a recent session in Rime of the Frostmaiden where a single saving throw would have taken the only healer out of the fight against Xardorok which was passed so the fight went much smoother than it would have otherwise. #DDBStyle
The party was fighting a horde of gnolls, umber hulks, and mages to stop a ritual with a pit fiend, frost giant lord, beholder, fire elemental lord, and an ancient black dragon watching the whole thing. The Level 7 half-drow rogue ran up to the ancient black dragon when all seemed lost and spoke in its language to try and convince it to help the party since it and the others seemed to be under a spell.
The DM had the rogue roll four persuasion rolls while having a conversation with the dragon (the rogue only had one luck point left and zero bardic inspirations). On the last roll, there were no more luck points, and the rogue rolled a 13 on persuasion… It was heart pounding since the party had no idea if a 13 would cut it, then the dragon rolled a Natural 1! The party survived! #DDBStyle
During a home game, my character, a cleric of the light domain, was on the path of resurrecting an old god of light, life, and fire back to the world known as The Presence.
The antithesis to this god, the Absence, also found its way back into our game through on of our other players, a spirit bard who contacted the old soul of the Absence which was stored within a powerful magic whip. The catch was that the bard had to keep killing sentient beings with the whip for the whip to feed on the dead souls of its victims to use its powers, and if the bard refused to do so, or when long times pass without a kill, the Absence takes control of the character. The Absence also destroys the souls of whatever it kills, making near impossible to resurrect dead characters.
My character didn’t know about the Absence, and just happened to fail a perception check when the dominated party member snuck up behind her. He rolled to hit and crit (damage was already mammoth with this homebrew weapon) so the hit was bound to kill my level 7 cleric. After the roll the bard rolled a total of 63 damage to my 50-odd HP. The DM then asked me to roll percentiles.
I rolled a 1… and felt sick to see such a low roll.
BOOM! A blasting, radiant light floods the hall we are in and Unbeknownst to me, I successfully attempted a divine intervention roll that ended up banishing the Absence momentary, broke the domination that held on to the bard, and reduced my character to 1HP instead.
Everything happened so quickly, our table just sat there for a good minute processing the near clutch disaster that just occurred in the span of 5 minutes. #DDBSTYLE
Super simple climb check by agile cat monk. Should be no problem. Have a reroll just in case. Nat. 1, Nat. 1. DM is nice and gives a last desperate grab at a ledge half way down. 2. All 3 dice rolls added together would not have passed. Ended up burning up in lava. #DDBStyle
I had broken into someone's bedroom and found a heavily locked and magically protected chest. After trying multiple times to open it and failing, I heard presumably the residents of the home coming up the stairs. In a panic but refusing to give up on the chest, I decided my best plan of option was to yeet the chest out the open window. I rolled a Nat 20 + 6 on athletics and successfully 'stole' the chest. Fortunately and unfortunately for me, the person who walked into the room next was my companion but apparently the chest landed directly on top of a passing crowns guard.... Eek! Needless to say it was a hilarious event and definitely a great memory from that campaign. #DDBStyle
The early levels of campaigns tend to get to me. Recently, I was separated from my group, surrounded by goblins, and the dice were not rolling in my favour. I thought I was going to die in the third game day. #DDBSTYLE
My players' characters were competing in the city's festival for the glory of being recognised as the city's heroes and defenders against evil. They had already progressed to the third stage: a race across town to the lighthouse. They used good tactics and cunning but it still came down to the wire with Abe, our investigative rogue, dashing up the stairs of the tower, while a competitor from last year's winners flew himself up to the glass and smashed through. As they both reached forward to add their coloured fire to the brazier, I had them roll a final initiative check. 16 from the NPC competitor.. 17, from Abe. She beat him by a breath. And with that they lit the lighthouse in blue and won the festival! #DDBStyle
I had been rolling excellently all session , always over 10, usually over 15 and I was getting a little overconfident. later in the fight I had to make a strength saving throw or fall into magma. Nat 2, fell in and went down, almost died without a save. Get pulled out and my turn comes around. Death save time! Nat 1.
Don't get confident within earshot of your dice folks, they'll fail you when you need them most.
The antagonist of the campaign was flinging spells left and right, and targeted my wizard with an un-identified spell, and as I call out "Counterspell!" the DM described a very obvious finger of death spell, and well, I only had third level spell slots left, so as the natural 20 came up my wizard looked at the evil magi in the eye and taunted "I don't think so champ."
I was running a side mission for two of my players. The rogue Tiefling and the Bard Minotaur. The rouge had made a demon deal and now it was time for her to fulfil her side of the deal. She had to hide the dry fingers around the Red Wizards of Thay keep for the Demon so they could be used for scrying. She never asked for more clarification and asked if there were specific locations that would be useful for her to hide them in. They gave her 6 fingers to hide. She felt she had to hide them all. They had one night in the keep but she failed to get all of them hidden in one night not knowing they only had one night. So later, the Bard and the rouge go back and using the bard to dimension door to get back in. The bard uses detect magic and looks around the first room and sees a box glowing with magic but doesn't roll high enough to see the trap. So as they dimension door out of the room he grabs it and they teleport to another room. Well the Bard failed his saving throw and had just become feeble minded. He was dumb and she panicked. She trying to hide the last 2 fingers and she now has this lumbering 7 foot tall minotaur who is dumb and still have detect magic going and so can see "shiny magic lights". So she hides the second to last finger and then goes up the stairs towing the bard with her. He is still staring at the box in his hands, still no idea what's in it but its glowing and is oh shiny. He then wanders around the room and bumps into a bookcase and sees a glow coming from the bottom shelf. So he starts taking one book off at a time. Trying to find the shiney. Well the rouge comes over and she stops him from making a mess and noise and makes him focus on the box again. But the bard again after a few moments starts pulling books off the bottom shelf. At this point the rouge realizes that there is something there and bard is trying to get to it. She helps hic clear the shelf but there is nothing there and bard is pawing at the bottom of the shelf. The rouge tries to move the bookcase but rolls too low. Bard player asks if he would recognize that the bard is trying to move the shelf and assist. I agreed and he rolled a NAT 1. He rips the shelf off the wall and throws the bookcase to floor making a huge noise and finds a piece of cloth glowing. The rouge, freaking out, stuff the last finger in a chair and looks around and hears people coming up the stairs. She is trapped with a man child. She tries to throw a dagger at the window to break it and jump out but misses and then the bard charges the window and misses and bounces off the wall and falls out the window backwards. The rouge jumps out after him and pulls her flying carpet out of her bag of holding and catches him and takes off. They end of flying 2 days till they find a cleric who can fix the bard. While the rouge sleeps the bard goes back and find another item they missed and then leave again. The box had a potion of mind control and the cloth was a simple cape of billowing. #DDBStyle
During one of the first games of my partner's current campaign, we were around level 2/3, she had us hunt down a draconic lion with the ability to summon illusions. The idea was that the hunt would interest the other characters and the dragon and illusion themes would interest my character, a half elf draconic sorcerer who focused on illusions.
The dragon lion had been smuggled into the nation to be sold to an arsehole noble who wanted to skin him or something. We followed a blood trail from a lighthouse and tracked him to a cave system several miles from the village and found him at the back, hidden behind several illusions. I managed to convince the party to let me go ahead and try to calm it down, my guy has a thing for hybrids, being one himself after being magically experimented on.
After navigating to the back of the cave, I found a large black dragon. This is when the bullshit began. On a hunch I guessed this was an illusion and when it rushed I didn't move or react. She had me roll intimidation, nat 20, with modifiers of its close to 30. The dragon stops and backs up and drops its illusion. We stare at each other for around 10 minutes before I try to offer it some food. Wisdom is my dump stat, she had me roll animal handling, another nat 20, with modifiers that's a 20. It begrudgingly takes the food. As its eating, I try to approach it and check to see if its hurt, animal handling check and rolled another nat 20, another 20 with modifiers. At this point the Mrs has lost track of what's supposed to be happening, the idea was this was a boss fight which I'm managing to resolve through insane rolls. I spot its wing is injured and try to tend to its wounds. She has me roll medicine, nat 1.
Things seem to be lost, the lion tries to attack me. Determined not to give up at this point though I try for intimidation again, as it reaches around to bite me I wack it on the nose and stare it down. She begrudgingly has me roll intimidation at disadvantage, the dice gods must've been smiling down on me that day, both came up as a nat 20! She gives up fighting it at this point and has the dragon lion start to trust me after another couple of checks.
We start to make our way out of the cave, which involves passing a deep crevice about 15 feet across with a narrow stone bridge to cross, required an acrobatics check to pass. I pass, but the lion dragon failed, it rolled something in the region of 1-3 and starts to fall. Disaster, all my luck wasted! I try to grab for it. She points out this will be at disadvantage and failure would mean my character goes in with the dragon. I go for it. Roll for athletics at disadvantage. Another double nat 20! I grab the dragon chimera, and together we climb out of the pit and leave the cave, after making an enemy of the noble I convince the party to let me keep him and I named him Jasper. He's my dragon pall and has pulled our asses out of the fire a few times.
Ever since then, whenever someone rolls bad on an important check, I'm blamed for using all the luck in the campaign to get a high CR pet in the first few sessions. #DDBStyle
Just last week I rolled three Nat 1's in a row in the middle of a fight while I was DMing for a bunch of new players. Luckily they had created a lot of fog and obscured the area pretty well so I was able to turn it around in their favor, having the enemies tear each other apart instead. #DDBStyle
My Nat20 story comes from a solo session starring my paladin Torin. Our campaign was set in a kingdom that had broken apart into several independent states about a century ago, and had only recently reformed into a sort of federal monarchy thanks (in part) to the efforts of the party. However the governor, Highly Breac of Torin’s home state was constantly at odds with the king (for example, refusing military aid from the capital to repel an invasion of goblins from the north), and there were rumors that she would try and break away from the federation. Since the stability of the kingdom was an important part of his oath, Torin travelled back home to try and convince the governor to accept the king’s help (and hopefully preempt a bloody civil war).
This was a tall order, since the Highlady disliked Torin because of his friendship with the king. Somehow, Torin managed to get an audience, and I rolled high enough on persuasion to get her to hear me out. It turned out she had taken on a new advisor (an NPC bard who I had encountered before) who had been lying to her about the state of the war and sowing seeds of dissent between her and the king. She brought him in, and we each said our piece - it came down to a contested Persuasion check, between my paladin (who had maybe a +5 at the time) and an NPC who probably had expertise. With a Nat 20, I convinced her that her advisor may have been misleading her, and she set an independent auditor to look into his communications with the generals on the front lines.
The next day, Torin was summoned to the audience chamber, and informed that he was to assume command of her armies and repel the goblin invasion with the help of the king’s troops, as she had determined that her advisor had been deliberately concealing the state of her forces (which were losing badly).
And that’s how a single Nat 20 took my character from enemy of the state to general overnight. #DDBStyle
We were at the climax of our campaign fighting a massive homebrew eldrich creature. Bard on a whim decides to cast polymorph. The monster crit fails its save and is turned into a rat. It critfails again right before my turn. My barbarian realizes that hitting the creature would render the polymorph spell useless, but doesn't have any non-damage action. In order to not waste her turn she opts to stuff it into a bag of devouring (which our DM gave to us thinking we would never have a use for it). It fails and simply ceases to exist. It was the funniest thing that our characters have done to date. #ddbstyle
Our most recent game was with me Dming Ravenloft. The party was was in the Haunted Manor and I had them rolling checks and saves as they raced out of the manor to escape before it consuming itself. The players where all stressed and flushed with excitement as they made it out. (With a little mercy on the DM’s part) #DDBStyle.
It's a bit if a sad story for me. My very first character. Codrath Jaggedhorn, a Minotaur Zeolot Barbarian. He was cursed pink BTW XD. Our Party was outside of a cave of Goblins. It was too stuffy for my Minotaur so I waited for the reconnaissance team...Which never came back. Codrath went inside and found them nearly dead. With literal rage and burning passion for his friends Codrath stormed the way to small cave system and hit hard. All my foes were doomed to die. But...my friends didn't make it. I roled so many close saves. And with last effort Codrath ran even deeper inside until he found their storage room and...flour. Well with a bit of fire and all enemies adjuscent....let's just say the cave and everything inside is no more. Basically I roled good but all it could do was avenging my friends. I miss Codrath. #DDBStyle
It was a recent session in Rime of the Frostmaiden where a single saving throw would have taken the only healer out of the fight against Xardorok which was passed so the fight went much smoother than it would have otherwise. #DDBStyle
Crit failing a deception check when Disguise Self as a famous person and having to escape pursuit. #DDBStyle
#DDBStyle Sign me up!
The party was fighting a horde of gnolls, umber hulks, and mages to stop a ritual with a pit fiend, frost giant lord, beholder, fire elemental lord, and an ancient black dragon watching the whole thing. The Level 7 half-drow rogue ran up to the ancient black dragon when all seemed lost and spoke in its language to try and convince it to help the party since it and the others seemed to be under a spell.
The DM had the rogue roll four persuasion rolls while having a conversation with the dragon (the rogue only had one luck point left and zero bardic inspirations). On the last roll, there were no more luck points, and the rogue rolled a 13 on persuasion… It was heart pounding since the party had no idea if a 13 would cut it, then the dragon rolled a Natural 1! The party survived! #DDBStyle
During a home game, my character, a cleric of the light domain, was on the path of resurrecting an old god of light, life, and fire back to the world known as The Presence.
The antithesis to this god, the Absence, also found its way back into our game through on of our other players, a spirit bard who contacted the old soul of the Absence which was stored within a powerful magic whip. The catch was that the bard had to keep killing sentient beings with the whip for the whip to feed on the dead souls of its victims to use its powers, and if the bard refused to do so, or when long times pass without a kill, the Absence takes control of the character. The Absence also destroys the souls of whatever it kills, making near impossible to resurrect dead characters.
My character didn’t know about the Absence, and just happened to fail a perception check when the dominated party member snuck up behind her. He rolled to hit and crit (damage was already mammoth with this homebrew weapon) so the hit was bound to kill my level 7 cleric. After the roll the bard rolled a total of 63 damage to my 50-odd HP. The DM then asked me to roll percentiles.
I rolled a 1… and felt sick to see such a low roll.
BOOM! A blasting, radiant light floods the hall we are in and Unbeknownst to me, I successfully attempted a divine intervention roll that ended up banishing the Absence momentary, broke the domination that held on to the bard, and reduced my character to 1HP instead.
Everything happened so quickly, our table just sat there for a good minute processing the near clutch disaster that just occurred in the span of 5 minutes. #DDBSTYLE
Super simple climb check by agile cat monk. Should be no problem. Have a reroll just in case. Nat. 1, Nat. 1. DM is nice and gives a last desperate grab at a ledge half way down. 2. All 3 dice rolls added together would not have passed. Ended up burning up in lava. #DDBStyle
I had broken into someone's bedroom and found a heavily locked and magically protected chest. After trying multiple times to open it and failing, I heard presumably the residents of the home coming up the stairs. In a panic but refusing to give up on the chest, I decided my best plan of option was to yeet the chest out the open window. I rolled a Nat 20 + 6 on athletics and successfully 'stole' the chest. Fortunately and unfortunately for me, the person who walked into the room next was my companion but apparently the chest landed directly on top of a passing crowns guard.... Eek! Needless to say it was a hilarious event and definitely a great memory from that campaign. #DDBStyle
The early levels of campaigns tend to get to me. Recently, I was separated from my group, surrounded by goblins, and the dice were not rolling in my favour. I thought I was going to die in the third game day. #DDBSTYLE
My players' characters were competing in the city's festival for the glory of being recognised as the city's heroes and defenders against evil. They had already progressed to the third stage: a race across town to the lighthouse. They used good tactics and cunning but it still came down to the wire with Abe, our investigative rogue, dashing up the stairs of the tower, while a competitor from last year's winners flew himself up to the glass and smashed through. As they both reached forward to add their coloured fire to the brazier, I had them roll a final initiative check.
16 from the NPC competitor..
17, from Abe. She beat him by a breath. And with that they lit the lighthouse in blue and won the festival! #DDBStyle
I had been rolling excellently all session , always over 10, usually over 15 and I was getting a little overconfident. later in the fight I had to make a strength saving throw or fall into magma. Nat 2, fell in and went down, almost died without a save. Get pulled out and my turn comes around. Death save time! Nat 1.
Don't get confident within earshot of your dice folks, they'll fail you when you need them most.
#DDPStyle
The antagonist of the campaign was flinging spells left and right, and targeted my wizard with an un-identified spell, and as I call out "Counterspell!" the DM described a very obvious finger of death spell, and well, I only had third level spell slots left, so as the natural 20 came up my wizard looked at the evil magi in the eye and taunted "I don't think so champ."
#DDBStyle
I was running a side mission for two of my players. The rogue Tiefling and the Bard Minotaur. The rouge had made a demon deal and now it was time for her to fulfil her side of the deal. She had to hide the dry fingers around the Red Wizards of Thay keep for the Demon so they could be used for scrying. She never asked for more clarification and asked if there were specific locations that would be useful for her to hide them in. They gave her 6 fingers to hide. She felt she had to hide them all. They had one night in the keep but she failed to get all of them hidden in one night not knowing they only had one night. So later, the Bard and the rouge go back and using the bard to dimension door to get back in. The bard uses detect magic and looks around the first room and sees a box glowing with magic but doesn't roll high enough to see the trap. So as they dimension door out of the room he grabs it and they teleport to another room. Well the Bard failed his saving throw and had just become feeble minded. He was dumb and she panicked. She trying to hide the last 2 fingers and she now has this lumbering 7 foot tall minotaur who is dumb and still have detect magic going and so can see "shiny magic lights". So she hides the second to last finger and then goes up the stairs towing the bard with her. He is still staring at the box in his hands, still no idea what's in it but its glowing and is oh shiny. He then wanders around the room and bumps into a bookcase and sees a glow coming from the bottom shelf. So he starts taking one book off at a time. Trying to find the shiney. Well the rouge comes over and she stops him from making a mess and noise and makes him focus on the box again. But the bard again after a few moments starts pulling books off the bottom shelf. At this point the rouge realizes that there is something there and bard is trying to get to it. She helps hic clear the shelf but there is nothing there and bard is pawing at the bottom of the shelf. The rouge tries to move the bookcase but rolls too low. Bard player asks if he would recognize that the bard is trying to move the shelf and assist. I agreed and he rolled a NAT 1. He rips the shelf off the wall and throws the bookcase to floor making a huge noise and finds a piece of cloth glowing. The rouge, freaking out, stuff the last finger in a chair and looks around and hears people coming up the stairs. She is trapped with a man child. She tries to throw a dagger at the window to break it and jump out but misses and then the bard charges the window and misses and bounces off the wall and falls out the window backwards. The rouge jumps out after him and pulls her flying carpet out of her bag of holding and catches him and takes off. They end of flying 2 days till they find a cleric who can fix the bard. While the rouge sleeps the bard goes back and find another item they missed and then leave again. The box had a potion of mind control and the cloth was a simple cape of billowing. #DDBStyle
During one of the first games of my partner's current campaign, we were around level 2/3, she had us hunt down a draconic lion with the ability to summon illusions. The idea was that the hunt would interest the other characters and the dragon and illusion themes would interest my character, a half elf draconic sorcerer who focused on illusions.
The dragon lion had been smuggled into the nation to be sold to an arsehole noble who wanted to skin him or something. We followed a blood trail from a lighthouse and tracked him to a cave system several miles from the village and found him at the back, hidden behind several illusions. I managed to convince the party to let me go ahead and try to calm it down, my guy has a thing for hybrids, being one himself after being magically experimented on.
After navigating to the back of the cave, I found a large black dragon. This is when the bullshit began. On a hunch I guessed this was an illusion and when it rushed I didn't move or react. She had me roll intimidation, nat 20, with modifiers of its close to 30. The dragon stops and backs up and drops its illusion. We stare at each other for around 10 minutes before I try to offer it some food. Wisdom is my dump stat, she had me roll animal handling, another nat 20, with modifiers that's a 20. It begrudgingly takes the food. As its eating, I try to approach it and check to see if its hurt, animal handling check and rolled another nat 20, another 20 with modifiers. At this point the Mrs has lost track of what's supposed to be happening, the idea was this was a boss fight which I'm managing to resolve through insane rolls. I spot its wing is injured and try to tend to its wounds. She has me roll medicine, nat 1.
Things seem to be lost, the lion tries to attack me. Determined not to give up at this point though I try for intimidation again, as it reaches around to bite me I wack it on the nose and stare it down. She begrudgingly has me roll intimidation at disadvantage, the dice gods must've been smiling down on me that day, both came up as a nat 20! She gives up fighting it at this point and has the dragon lion start to trust me after another couple of checks.
We start to make our way out of the cave, which involves passing a deep crevice about 15 feet across with a narrow stone bridge to cross, required an acrobatics check to pass. I pass, but the lion dragon failed, it rolled something in the region of 1-3 and starts to fall. Disaster, all my luck wasted! I try to grab for it. She points out this will be at disadvantage and failure would mean my character goes in with the dragon. I go for it. Roll for athletics at disadvantage. Another double nat 20! I grab the dragon chimera, and together we climb out of the pit and leave the cave, after making an enemy of the noble I convince the party to let me keep him and I named him Jasper. He's my dragon pall and has pulled our asses out of the fire a few times.
Ever since then, whenever someone rolls bad on an important check, I'm blamed for using all the luck in the campaign to get a high CR pet in the first few sessions. #DDBStyle
Just last week I rolled three Nat 1's in a row in the middle of a fight while I was DMing for a bunch of new players. Luckily they had created a lot of fog and obscured the area pretty well so I was able to turn it around in their favor, having the enemies tear each other apart instead. #DDBStyle
I've always been blessed with multiple nat 20, the only issue, is that I'm the DM, my players don't seem to love it as much! #DDBStyle
I rolled a 1 on giving dwarven candy to a gnome child. Dwarves are stranger danger. #DDBStyle
My Nat20 story comes from a solo session starring my paladin Torin. Our campaign was set in a kingdom that had broken apart into several independent states about a century ago, and had only recently reformed into a sort of federal monarchy thanks (in part) to the efforts of the party. However the governor, Highly Breac of Torin’s home state was constantly at odds with the king (for example, refusing military aid from the capital to repel an invasion of goblins from the north), and there were rumors that she would try and break away from the federation. Since the stability of the kingdom was an important part of his oath, Torin travelled back home to try and convince the governor to accept the king’s help (and hopefully preempt a bloody civil war).
This was a tall order, since the Highlady disliked Torin because of his friendship with the king. Somehow, Torin managed to get an audience, and I rolled high enough on persuasion to get her to hear me out. It turned out she had taken on a new advisor (an NPC bard who I had encountered before) who had been lying to her about the state of the war and sowing seeds of dissent between her and the king. She brought him in, and we each said our piece - it came down to a contested Persuasion check, between my paladin (who had maybe a +5 at the time) and an NPC who probably had expertise. With a Nat 20, I convinced her that her advisor may have been misleading her, and she set an independent auditor to look into his communications with the generals on the front lines.
The next day, Torin was summoned to the audience chamber, and informed that he was to assume command of her armies and repel the goblin invasion with the help of the king’s troops, as she had determined that her advisor had been deliberately concealing the state of her forces (which were losing badly).
And that’s how a single Nat 20 took my character from enemy of the state to general overnight. #DDBStyle
We were at the climax of our campaign fighting a massive homebrew eldrich creature. Bard on a whim decides to cast polymorph. The monster crit fails its save and is turned into a rat. It critfails again right before my turn. My barbarian realizes that hitting the creature would render the polymorph spell useless, but doesn't have any non-damage action. In order to not waste her turn she opts to stuff it into a bag of devouring (which our DM gave to us thinking we would never have a use for it). It fails and simply ceases to exist. It was the funniest thing that our characters have done to date. #ddbstyle
Our most recent game was with me Dming Ravenloft. The party was was in the Haunted Manor and I had them rolling checks and saves as they raced out of the manor to escape before it consuming itself. The players where all stressed and flushed with excitement as they made it out. (With a little mercy on the DM’s part) #DDBStyle.
It's a bit if a sad story for me. My very first character. Codrath Jaggedhorn, a Minotaur Zeolot Barbarian. He was cursed pink BTW XD. Our Party was outside of a cave of Goblins. It was too stuffy for my Minotaur so I waited for the reconnaissance team...Which never came back. Codrath went inside and found them nearly dead. With literal rage and burning passion for his friends Codrath stormed the way to small cave system and hit hard. All my foes were doomed to die. But...my friends didn't make it. I roled so many close saves. And with last effort Codrath ran even deeper inside until he found their storage room and...flour. Well with a bit of fire and all enemies adjuscent....let's just say the cave and everything inside is no more. Basically I roled good but all it could do was avenging my friends. I miss Codrath. #DDBStyle