This is a story of my first ever time playing Dungeons and dragons Fifth Edition.
I'm a woman, In an all male group or some variation of caster, and of course our ranger.
I decided at that time that magic and casting rules were too hard to understand. The character sheet to a first time player is intimidating on its own when you don't have DnDBeyond.
So. I was a barbarian. He was a Half Orc named BLOO and he didn't understand magic either, in fact was rather distrustful of it.
I had horrible dice. Dice that were borrowed and absolutely hated me for it. Almost every check this big idiot made would convince NPC to hate him. fine. I played into it. Every fight was a trial and a half as I was right up in the action while our casters mostly spread out and reigned fire. On one such run, level 5, He was ragged and forgot to buy more potions. It just so happens the dungeon boss found us while we were already fighting crazy cultists. The rest of the party, worn, wanted to flee. Me, being tired or getting kicked around decided that BLOO was going to go down in a blaze of glory. He rushed in.
It just so happened that one of our casters knew haste and was just before me in the initiative order. OOGI hated spells cast on him but it was for his own good.
OOGI, flew into a rage, and having already used frenzy, he swung. Natural 20. +1 greatsword in hand and the dice rolled high damage.
He gets a second attack. also high. Big bad is taking big damage.
With Haste on him he rolls a second NATURAL 20! All the casters that used BLOO as a shield were in awe, the table was full of exclamation.
And finally the bonus attack of frenzy. It landed in much the same way, which is devastatingly. I remember the DM describing the grisly scene as the cult leader falls to pieces on the battle ground and covered in blood, BLOO runs up to hug the caster who put haste on him(much to their dismay) and swore he would never say mean things about magic ever again.
It was awesome, and I've been playing ever since, and BLOO shows up in every story I DM #DDBStyle
My players were meandering through a large city, they had recently returned from a voyage at sea where they had helped reincarnate a cursed fish god. My players had been dying for a shopping session, they had gold to spend, loot to sell, and holes burning in their pockets. And what do I give them? Two chimera slamming into the roof of their favorite magic item shop. Long battle ensues and they take down the man responsible, a beast master who had gone mad. The fighter and rogue are giving a recap to the city guard about what happened and my players want to take the body with them. (for speak with dead purposes) The guard says “this is my crime scene and everything stays put” and the rogue (who might have been a few glasses of wine in, we classy for D&D) says “YOUR crime scene? WE created it!” And so naturally I ask for a persuasion roll as we’re all laughing hysterically. Natural 1. *handcuff clicking sounds* #DDBStyle
A time that had my heart in my chest was in one of the first campaigns that I played I got separated from the party as I was able to sneak into our next target's house and be looking around for the McGuffin that was to help us beat the BBEG. In my search, I ran into the BBEG and alone had to fight a simulacrum of my entire party 1 after the other. The party only had 3 members at the time, the first fight was against me a Teifling Warlock, the next fight was our Half-Elf Ranger who was a close-quarters fighting type if not for Hellish Rebuke that fight would have gone down the hill quickly, and finally was our Human Bard that fight was won with 2 Nat 20 on my 2 shots of Eldrich blast and rolls of max damage for 50 HP after missing for 3 turns and being on 1 health after another Nat 20 on my first death save. 3 20's in one turn had our table cheering and in shock at the same time.
Our overconfident heroes found themselves captured by a group of cult fanatics. We had been through fight after fight, so we were completely tapped out. The floors of the prison were cold and wet, with blood-curdling screams in the distance, none of us could get in a long rest. It kept us all on a frightening 1hp.
Our DM explained that our characters Chance, Thistle, and Nassim were bound and taken to meet the cult leader. We all begged to be set free and the leader asked each of us why he should let us go. In a regretful attempt at persuasion, Thistle ( a cheeky Gnome, prone to getting into trouble with NPCs) offered to give him a very valuable nude self-portrait which was painted by a skilled artist. "If you like what you see, I can offer you a very flattering nude portrait of me. It was painted by a popular local artist!" she flirted.
The cult leader was enraged at the suggestion and beheaded Thistle on the spot before her friends' eyes! All of us stared at the DM in shock. Frantically checking our character sheets looking for a way out. True death, with no means of putting up a fight.
Then I remembered, I hadn't used my Portent dice, I hadn't even rolled them! The DM said it would have to be high, but I could role them, and if it was high enough, he would work out a way to help us. He told everyone at the table to close their eyes, so we did. I took my two favourite D20s in my hand. Heart racing. I threw them onto the table, and the DM gave nothing away. He took the dice and said, "okay, open your eyes." The silence, as we all waited for the result, was heavy.
Then he said, "Chance, your eyes open as you put together the vision you've just had. Thistle was killed by talking about her painting to the cult leader".
It was such a great way to make my divination wizard feel like she'd seen the future. What we had played through was all just a vision thanks to a pivotal dice roll that had the whole table's heart racing. I made sure to warn Thistle quietly as the cult leaders took us to their leader. She held her tongue about the nude painting and took a less offensive route for her persuasion. She offered gold and her services as a ranger to the cult leader, and he let us live. In time, after earning the cult's trust, we escaped.
#DDBStyle
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I'm here for the same reason as everyone else... to create endless new characters for games I'll probably never play.
In my first ever campaign our party was setting fire to a small settlement of baddies while my rogue snuck off to search a store room for unknown items of importance. What followed was everyone engaging in an epic battle with a gang while I had #cratetime on each of my turns of combat finding all sorts of gems and potions. After looking through all the loot boxes I decided to join the fray but the fire had caused some debris to block the door from the other side. The DM asked me to roll a strength check to kick it down (I am a rogue, remember?) and I rolled a nat20 and was a awarded a “how do you wanna do this” for the door. I proceeded to describe my character getting a running jump to kick the door down and then riding it out amongst the flames and added some extra flavor by pulling my bow out and firing while surfing the flaming door and shooting an enemy. By that time the battle was basically over so I got to rummage for goodies and bust out at the right time looking like a hero in a scene from an Expendables movie. #DDBStyle
This is in the first campaign I have ever played (still going strong). We have NPC characters voiced by members of a discord. Three to four sessions into Storm King’s Thunder our DM had us leaving one port to go to a nearby city to gather information about the Ring of Winter.
In this harbor city we had the five sea captains arguing amongst themselves who was the best captain in the city. Our party decided to separate and sway one of the captains to give us a ride to where we were heading. My character, Kitaska Spetsria, a cursed Paladin from a tribe of nomads dedicated to awaken an ancient fire deity in the fissures of the mountain, that escaped and then went back with a militia to stop them from the ritual, was cursed into a bear form.
As a polar bear (before getting an amulet of speech for common) had to communicate with paw gestures and other such things. Her and one of the other party members went to talk to one captain together, she gave the help action to persuade/ intimidate the sea captain into giving us a ride. Cue my polar bear Paladin rolling a nat 20 intimidation check to help lead the Captain into allowing us a ride. This lead the captain to do anything that we asked and offer us a free, all expense paid trip.
This trip was full of free ale, music from the crew, and a kraken encounter meant to be a TPK from the DM (it was supposed to be a drunken nightmare from all the heavy drinking we did, and we were supposed to wake up all shocked). Through a chain of events, our guest member from the discord rolled excessively well as the sea captain to steer the ship in various directions to crash the masts into the creatures face to allow us enough time to escape. Again, we weren’t supposed to survive this encounter, so the kraken was going all out on our band of level threes or fours.
We managed to evade the kraken’s attacks through dodging between wreckage and insanely lucky rolls from spellcasters to use our environment to our advantage. Freezing objects, exploding extra ale barrels near the creature to distract him, illusions, the works, while our melee hitters were rushing to the lifeboats to push them into the water. My polar bear character and our fighter get to the boats, the fighter fails to get the ship in the water, and my polar bear narrowly rolls the strength DC check to chuck the dingy into the water in time for everyone to pile in to escape.
The boat lands in the water, we yell out to the captain to jump in, he jumps over the side of ship And lands in the water for us to scoop him up as the kraken attacks the ship relentlessly (because it believed the mast of the ship was the appendages of some creature, aka. The ship, and it’s sole goal in life was to demolish that ship now). We end up getting washed ashore From the wreckage, a half of the boat washes ashore, and the captain is actually thrilled about surviving a kraken encounter, using it as his advertisement that his crew (which at this point was only him) survived a kraken encounter.
Three sessions in my first campaign ever and Surviving a kraken encounter that was dead set to kill us all due to insanely opportune dice rolls, it was fantastic and a memory to behold for sure. The DM told as at the end that we were supposed to be dead and that it was supposed to be an alcohol infused dream.
He came close To killing all of us, but most of us managed to get to the boats before he could get to the kraken’s turn, so he couldn’t think of how to kill the remaining one or two people on the main deck without killing the rest and making it still a dream scenario, so he embraced it as real And let us have a super bad ass moment and the captain’s attacks trick the kraken into believing the ship was another creature that was more of a threat than us. Thank you for reading this far in if you did, it was just a great moment and memory to share that I hope you all like. We still joke about how and when he is going to get his revenge and try to properly TPK us again, haha.
The best Nat20 I ever had was actually my first. I was learning how to play D&D at my local game store. I was given advantage from flanking to finish off a minor boss. I rolled double 20s and that crit ended up being my first boss victory. #DDBStyle
#DDBStyle With pass without a trace the cleric got a 1 and revealed himself. Then, trying to climb a tower, the winter wolf NPC got a one and fell on my cleric who got a 1 on the strength save and was knocked unconscious. Then the barbarian got a 1 and also fell on him.
The most memorable nat 20 would probably be my second time DMing. I was DMing the sunless citadel from the yawning portal and the group got to the dragon wyrmling encounter. The party found some canned elfmeat in the rooms before (made by goblins) and tried to bargain with the wyrmling by feeding it to him. One player was playing an elven paladin and started attacking the dragon as she realized in horror what the rest of the group has given the dragon to eat. I rolled well (i am not fudging dice in fights on principle) and got the breath attackt recharged 2 round in a row. 3 rounds into the fight the room was covered in ice, 2 players were dead (the elf paladin and an tortle monk) anotherone was unconcious (an aarakocra druid) and the last man standing was our human rouge with crossbowexpert. Despite the ods he chose to shoot with the penalty for the bonus damage and rolled a NAT. 20! With some good roling on the damage and the bonus from crossbowexpert it was enough to slay the wirmling and save his last surviving compagnion. It was an amazing moment where all of us were excided and cheered despite two character deaths. (It was the players first session with those so i guess they were not too attached yet.) All in all it was a truly dramatic moment.
My party and I were on the trail of a psionic murderer, whose latest victim had been a close friend of the party. We had just finished burying the NPC friend, and we then laid a trap for the psi by her gravestone. He showed up and we had an epic fight that went all kinds of wrong for the party.
We were well on our way to a TPK. Knowing that we were seconds away from death, my rogue decided to die with honor. He charged straight forward with his weapon over his head, screaming to the gods to avenge our fallen friend. I picked up my d20 for the attack roll and my GM stopped me. He handed me two d10.
"I'll give you a 5% chance."
I had no clue what he was talking about. "For what?"
"For the gods to answer your call."
Not at all what I had intended, but I rolled with it, pun intended. I tossed the first d10, and it tumbled across the table, landing with the "0" face up. The entire table held their breath, unable to take their eyes off of the second die in my hands. I let the second d10 fly and it slowly flipped over to show a second "0" face up. The entire table was on their feet.
A golden blast of light descended from the sky, banishing our arch enemy from the fight, and healing our wounds. We didn't beat our psionic foe that day, but we survived by the grace of the gods.
Near the beginning of our campaign, we were trapped in a house full of the undead. Our Sorcerer was being a little willy-nilly with opening doors, and walked us right into a banshee's wail. This was the first time any of us had ever encountered a banshee. We were a group of five, and four of us fell unconscious immediately. The only one who managed to resist the wail, by some miracle, was our cleric. He managed to bring us back to consciousness, and my artificer was able to cast Heroism on our barbarian so that he could resist the banshee's horrifying visage effect. We eventually managed to defeat the thing, despite the entire party almost being wiped out in an instant.
Come with me on a journey of remembrance for my Death Domain Cleric Tortle Kopala. Kopala, who knew little of the world, was lucky to find friends in a group of adventurers and together we searched for the Storm King who had gone missing during the great plight of Giants. Our journey took us to the home of Fire Giants, where we quickly learned that things were not as easy as it seemed. We became trapped in a battle of life and death, and Kopala who would give his life to save his friends did just that; pushing our Wizard out of the way as a large hammer came crashing on top of him. The battle raged on and Kopala was losing consciousness fast, he had failed two death saves but on his last roll, his determination to protect his new friends and his faith in Gond awakened him with a Natural 20. Without care for his safety he immediately jumped to his feat and screamed a cry of hope, healing his friends as best he could. This angered the Fire Giants greatly as they turned on Kopala and with two loud thuds, beat Kopala into the ground. The round comes back to me, having already failed two saves from the second strike, I looked to the party and said “And this is where Kopala met his end, with a smile on his face knowing he did everything he could.” The air was tense, the roll was thrown, Kopalas last death save was a Natural 1.
Playing with my old group, had a Pit Fiend chasing us through a castle, I drew 2 cards from our deck of many things, first card gave me a vorpal sword, second summoned an avatar of Death. Rolled a Nat 20 with the vorpal sword, and killed the Avatar of Death in one swipe, unfortunately we rolled a lot of Nat 1's after that, and we suffered a near TPK from the Pit Fiend while trying to flee. #DDBStyle
It's a jailbreak! We are captured by some Yuan-Ti, and imprisoned in the dungeon of a castle they had taken over. We manage to break out of our cells but run into a patrol on our way out of the castle. Initiative is rolled. Battle ensues. My halfling bard goes down after getting cornered by a Yuan-Ti Malison and gets hit once more while unconscious for two automatic failed death saves. The cleric can't get to me before my next turn comes around. I roll my third death save. Natural 1. That's three failed death saves. This is the end of my halfling. The table goes silent as the life fades from his body. Suddenly, I remember: halflings reroll natural 1s due to their Halfling Luck feature! With bated breath, I roll again. Success! My halfling clings to life on the barest thread of luck. The cleric arrives and brings the halfling back from the brink and we manage to turn the tide and defeat the Yuan-Ti to survive another day!
My first ever campaign. We, our ragtag team of adventurers took on the Lord Vampire Straad. Though he was effective at turning allies against each other, I had one ace up my sleeve. MY DRUID'S ARMY OF BLACK BEARS. With their magic claws, they tore through Straad. Though he had prepared to take out the entire party with a high level fire ball (our DM decided he had enough of the bear nonsense, but our sorcerer used a counterspell. Now, of course, due to the high level cast, as he was out of 5th level slots, he had to make his arcana check. He rolled the dice, and...nat 20. He stopped Straad from the potentially fatal blow, after which a bear dealt the finishing blow.
This one made my heart pound for all the wrong reasons. I’ve had some awesomely timed twenties before- - -beheading the first giant I ever met with its own cursed sword, death saves from spider venom combed with falling off a cliff- - -they’re never anticipated they’re just roll and ‘yay!’
This one started out like that but now still gives me chills, and to keep that suspense I’ve included the lead up to the disaster. Enjoy!
...
For context we were playing in a module world I believe is called ‘Mythic Odysseys of Theros’ and my friend and I had a side story going because the Ravenloft play test material let us make two characters from the story I’m writing.
My friend was playing that story’s antagonist as a Chaotic Evil Vampire Cleric while I was playing the protagonist as a Lawful Evil Dragon Blood Sorcerer Rogue who was a Teifling Undead Construct (ash + clay blurred lines a bit). For future reference ‘Vamp Cleric’ has an affinity with canines while ‘Ash Demon Stabby Sorcerer’ has a storied affinity with fire and sheer negative wisdom. We made plenty of in-jokes, especially as my friend is the only one I knew at the table, and were having plenty of fun.
The DM was running a high level campaign in which we could have one main magic item plus whatever we wanted in our character’s inventory as a secret item but it was pretty much one use only. My friend had been outed as a vampire the previous session and got their invisibility cloak taken away per its use to escape being staked. When I was able to hop into the campaign it was for my character to find his self sworn arch nemesis aka elder brother crying in an oversized jar because when the party found out the Felis Wizard accidentally insulted his ego while trying to shower him with comfort and acceptance.
So essentially walked into the tavern to find my job already done in that respect, and after an interlude of the Vampire Cleric running out of the tavern at the meat sight of ‘the huggy devil’ plus an incident of my character falling out of a tree and doing fantastic acrobats to avoid an acidic damage watery grave the party was finally off on an adventure- - -!
Just for the pair of them to get separated from the party when Vampire Cleric to Moses himself across an enchanted river and Stabby Sorcerer to get across the enchanted bridge by being an absolute nerd and getting the Greek mythology quiz right while the party tanked it and had to go the long way round.
And what are a pair of arch enemies to do while waiting for their companions over the weekend? Why set up camp and harass the local wildlife of course! Vamp Cleric went questing for wolves and found some which were seeking assistance with cult masked zombies and Stabby Sorcerer, being both dramatic and over optimistically naive, heartily vowed to protect the wolves from both the zombies and the Cleric’s attempts to charm them into being his new summonable wolf pack (he’d been through three).
Then, THE MOMENT! THE ROLE WHICH WOULD DETERMINE EVERYONE’S FATES!
My character got a Nat Twenty on using kindling to light a touch.
No crazy explosion, the wolves were in awe of the mighty fire God’s mastery of the flame and the control flame spell.
Then the zombies showed up and I cast control flames to create a wall of flames between us, the wolves, and the zombies.
JUST FOR THOSE ENCHANTED SUCKERS TO BE IMUNE TO FIRE AND START TRACKING IT EVERYWHERE.
The forest went up, Vamp Cleric nearly went up, the party had to come save us from the invincible flaming monstrosities, and the sight of the wolves and wolf pups being burned alive was such a horrific sight that Stabby Sorcerer failed the wisdom save and stood there, on fire but still immune because red dragon blood, unable to do anything in the absolute chaos.
When the fire (and everything else) had finally died the surviving wolf cursed us and promised never to trust adventurers ever again, Vamp Cleric got awarded a zombie wolf, Felis Wizard got an ‘Egg of Distraction’ that functionally ends all my turns anyway, and Vamp Cleric cheerfully walked up to Stabby Sorcerer and congratulated him on a task well done.
And that is the story of how my character got ’Flaming Puppy PTSD’ from getting a party trick dead right and enemy vulnerabilities dead wrong with a single poorly timed nat twenty. #DDBStyle
The real kicker? If I hadn’t been hoarding my one use magic items I could have saved them. Portable fortress could’ve kept them safe and away from the blaze. But nope. Still in my inventory alongside a tea kettle, boots of levitation, raven construct, a soul bound doujinshi, and a ring against water. (The water bit is his mortal weakness since he’s functionally immortal by the ash technicality and that was how we nerfed him in book and game)
Bonus: Stabby Sorcerer’s reward was what we believe is a rod of charming which his wisdom is again too low to actually use. It is now known as ‘Charisma Stick’ and used against Vamp Cleric whenever possible. Stabby Sorcerer’s current goal is to gain enough wisdom to use it to make Vamp Cleric pay for the Flaming Puppy experience. (Aka pay for being unsympathetic per character, Stabby will likely succeed at some point in the most unexpected moments :) )
We've played 58 games since the pandemic began and were going to storm the Manse. We had spent all week (real world time) getting an ironclad plan in place, checked everyone's equipment and spells. Everything was set. We were very confident and had lots of healing potions and spells to go around. As we sneak up, I roll a nat 1 and immediately alert the orcs. They ambush us instead and a lightning bolt insta-kills one of the PCs. 58 games! 58 games!
Now we're returning to town because we're freaked out even with the new PC in-play now.
#DDBStyle First time I played, we were against 3 Dire wolves, Nat 20'ed, killed it and cut its leg off, picked it up, NAT 20'ed again hit the second wolf killed it, and then threw the leg at the third and killed it. Needless to say, got me hooked on D&D
The best was probably in my second ever session. Our party was taking shelter in a partially abandoned town, and the party of raiders who had been searching for us had sent scouts into town. after a less than ideal stealth by our only awake party member initiative was rolled and we were surrounded. The leader taunted us and sent his pet minotaur on us. My paladin was the only one of us with much health left, and on my first strike crit on the beast, divine smite, and killed it in a single blow. I was asked to make an intimidation check, and on another Nat 20, the raiders all ran off.
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This is a story of my first ever time playing Dungeons and dragons Fifth Edition.
I'm a woman, In an all male group or some variation of caster, and of course our ranger.
I decided at that time that magic and casting rules were too hard to understand. The character sheet to a first time player is intimidating on its own when you don't have DnDBeyond.
So. I was a barbarian. He was a Half Orc named BLOO and he didn't understand magic either, in fact was rather distrustful of it.
I had horrible dice. Dice that were borrowed and absolutely hated me for it. Almost every check this big idiot made would convince NPC to hate him. fine. I played into it. Every fight was a trial and a half as I was right up in the action while our casters mostly spread out and reigned fire. On one such run, level 5, He was ragged and forgot to buy more potions. It just so happens the dungeon boss found us while we were already fighting crazy cultists. The rest of the party, worn, wanted to flee. Me, being tired or getting kicked around decided that BLOO was going to go down in a blaze of glory. He rushed in.
It just so happened that one of our casters knew haste and was just before me in the initiative order. OOGI hated spells cast on him but it was for his own good.
OOGI, flew into a rage, and having already used frenzy, he swung. Natural 20.
+1 greatsword in hand and the dice rolled high damage.
He gets a second attack. also high. Big bad is taking big damage.
With Haste on him he rolls a second NATURAL 20! All the casters that used BLOO as a shield were in awe, the table was full of exclamation.
And finally the bonus attack of frenzy. It landed in much the same way, which is devastatingly. I remember the DM describing the grisly scene as the cult leader falls to pieces on the battle ground and covered in blood, BLOO runs up to hug the caster who put haste on him(much to their dismay) and swore he would never say mean things about magic ever again.
It was awesome, and I've been playing ever since, and BLOO shows up in every story I DM #DDBStyle
My players were meandering through a large city, they had recently returned from a voyage at sea where they had helped reincarnate a cursed fish god. My players had been dying for a shopping session, they had gold to spend, loot to sell, and holes burning in their pockets. And what do I give them? Two chimera slamming into the roof of their favorite magic item shop. Long battle ensues and they take down the man responsible, a beast master who had gone mad. The fighter and rogue are giving a recap to the city guard about what happened and my players want to take the body with them. (for speak with dead purposes) The guard says “this is my crime scene and everything stays put” and the rogue (who might have been a few glasses of wine in, we classy for D&D) says “YOUR crime scene? WE created it!” And so naturally I ask for a persuasion roll as we’re all laughing hysterically. Natural 1. *handcuff clicking sounds* #DDBStyle
A time that had my heart in my chest was in one of the first campaigns that I played I got separated from the party as I was able to sneak into our next target's house and be looking around for the McGuffin that was to help us beat the BBEG. In my search, I ran into the BBEG and alone had to fight a simulacrum of my entire party 1 after the other. The party only had 3 members at the time, the first fight was against me a Teifling Warlock, the next fight was our Half-Elf Ranger who was a close-quarters fighting type if not for Hellish Rebuke that fight would have gone down the hill quickly, and finally was our Human Bard that fight was won with 2 Nat 20 on my 2 shots of Eldrich blast and rolls of max damage for 50 HP after missing for 3 turns and being on 1 health after another Nat 20 on my first death save. 3 20's in one turn had our table cheering and in shock at the same time.
#DDBStyle
Our overconfident heroes found themselves captured by a group of cult fanatics. We had been through fight after fight, so we were completely tapped out. The floors of the prison were cold and wet, with blood-curdling screams in the distance, none of us could get in a long rest. It kept us all on a frightening 1hp.
Our DM explained that our characters Chance, Thistle, and Nassim were bound and taken to meet the cult leader. We all begged to be set free and the leader asked each of us why he should let us go. In a regretful attempt at persuasion, Thistle ( a cheeky Gnome, prone to getting into trouble with NPCs) offered to give him a very valuable nude self-portrait which was painted by a skilled artist. "If you like what you see, I can offer you a very flattering nude portrait of me. It was painted by a popular local artist!" she flirted.
The cult leader was enraged at the suggestion and beheaded Thistle on the spot before her friends' eyes! All of us stared at the DM in shock. Frantically checking our character sheets looking for a way out. True death, with no means of putting up a fight.
Then I remembered, I hadn't used my Portent dice, I hadn't even rolled them! The DM said it would have to be high, but I could role them, and if it was high enough, he would work out a way to help us. He told everyone at the table to close their eyes, so we did. I took my two favourite D20s in my hand. Heart racing. I threw them onto the table, and the DM gave nothing away. He took the dice and said, "okay, open your eyes." The silence, as we all waited for the result, was heavy.
Then he said, "Chance, your eyes open as you put together the vision you've just had. Thistle was killed by talking about her painting to the cult leader".
It was such a great way to make my divination wizard feel like she'd seen the future. What we had played through was all just a vision thanks to a pivotal dice roll that had the whole table's heart racing. I made sure to warn Thistle quietly as the cult leaders took us to their leader. She held her tongue about the nude painting and took a less offensive route for her persuasion. She offered gold and her services as a ranger to the cult leader, and he let us live. In time, after earning the cult's trust, we escaped.
#DDBStyle
I'm here for the same reason as everyone else... to create endless new characters for games I'll probably never play.
In my first ever campaign our party was setting fire to a small settlement of baddies while my rogue snuck off to search a store room for unknown items of importance. What followed was everyone engaging in an epic battle with a gang while I had #cratetime on each of my turns of combat finding all sorts of gems and potions. After looking through all the loot boxes I decided to join the fray but the fire had caused some debris to block the door from the other side. The DM asked me to roll a strength check to kick it down (I am a rogue, remember?) and I rolled a nat20 and was a awarded a “how do you wanna do this” for the door. I proceeded to describe my character getting a running jump to kick the door down and then riding it out amongst the flames and added some extra flavor by pulling my bow out and firing while surfing the flaming door and shooting an enemy. By that time the battle was basically over so I got to rummage for goodies and bust out at the right time looking like a hero in a scene from an Expendables movie. #DDBStyle
#DDBStyle
This is in the first campaign I have ever played (still going strong). We have NPC characters voiced by members of a discord. Three to four sessions into Storm King’s Thunder our DM had us leaving one port to go to a nearby city to gather information about the Ring of Winter.
In this harbor city we had the five sea captains arguing amongst themselves who was the best captain in the city. Our party decided to separate and sway one of the captains to give us a ride to where we were heading. My character, Kitaska Spetsria, a cursed Paladin from a tribe of nomads dedicated to awaken an ancient fire deity in the fissures of the mountain, that escaped and then went back with a militia to stop them from the ritual, was cursed into a bear form.
As a polar bear (before getting an amulet of speech for common) had to communicate with paw gestures and other such things. Her and one of the other party members went to talk to one captain together, she gave the help action to persuade/ intimidate the sea captain into giving us a ride. Cue my polar bear Paladin rolling a nat 20 intimidation check to help lead the Captain into allowing us a ride. This lead the captain to do anything that we asked and offer us a free, all expense paid trip.
This trip was full of free ale, music from the crew, and a kraken encounter meant to be a TPK from the DM (it was supposed to be a drunken nightmare from all the heavy drinking we did, and we were supposed to wake up all shocked). Through a chain of events, our guest member from the discord rolled excessively well as the sea captain to steer the ship in various directions to crash the masts into the creatures face to allow us enough time to escape. Again, we weren’t supposed to survive this encounter, so the kraken was going all out on our band of level threes or fours.
We managed to evade the kraken’s attacks through dodging between wreckage and insanely lucky rolls from spellcasters to use our environment to our advantage. Freezing objects, exploding extra ale barrels near the creature to distract him, illusions, the works, while our melee hitters were rushing to the lifeboats to push them into the water. My polar bear character and our fighter get to the boats, the fighter fails to get the ship in the water, and my polar bear narrowly rolls the strength DC check to chuck the dingy into the water in time for everyone to pile in to escape.
The boat lands in the water, we yell out to the captain to jump in, he jumps over the side of ship And lands in the water for us to scoop him up as the kraken attacks the ship relentlessly (because it believed the mast of the ship was the appendages of some creature, aka. The ship, and it’s sole goal in life was to demolish that ship now). We end up getting washed ashore From the wreckage, a half of the boat washes ashore, and the captain is actually thrilled about surviving a kraken encounter, using it as his advertisement that his crew (which at this point was only him) survived a kraken encounter.
Three sessions in my first campaign ever and Surviving a kraken encounter that was dead set to kill us all due to insanely opportune dice rolls, it was fantastic and a memory to behold for sure. The DM told as at the end that we were supposed to be dead and that it was supposed to be an alcohol infused dream.
He came close To killing all of us, but most of us managed to get to the boats before he could get to the kraken’s turn, so he couldn’t think of how to kill the remaining one or two people on the main deck without killing the rest and making it still a dream scenario, so he embraced it as real And let us have a super bad ass moment and the captain’s attacks trick the kraken into believing the ship was another creature that was more of a threat than us. Thank you for reading this far in if you did, it was just a great moment and memory to share that I hope you all like. We still joke about how and when he is going to get his revenge and try to properly TPK us again, haha.
The best Nat20 I ever had was actually my first. I was learning how to play D&D at my local game store. I was given advantage from flanking to finish off a minor boss. I rolled double 20s and that crit ended up being my first boss victory. #DDBStyle
#DDBStyle With pass without a trace the cleric got a 1 and revealed himself. Then, trying to climb a tower, the winter wolf NPC got a one and fell on my cleric who got a 1 on the strength save and was knocked unconscious. Then the barbarian got a 1 and also fell on him.
The most memorable nat 20 would probably be my second time DMing. I was DMing the sunless citadel from the yawning portal and the group got to the dragon wyrmling encounter. The party found some canned elfmeat in the rooms before (made by goblins) and tried to bargain with the wyrmling by feeding it to him. One player was playing an elven paladin and started attacking the dragon as she realized in horror what the rest of the group has given the dragon to eat. I rolled well (i am not fudging dice in fights on principle) and got the breath attackt recharged 2 round in a row. 3 rounds into the fight the room was covered in ice, 2 players were dead (the elf paladin and an tortle monk) anotherone was unconcious (an aarakocra druid) and the last man standing was our human rouge with crossbowexpert. Despite the ods he chose to shoot with the penalty for the bonus damage and rolled a NAT. 20! With some good roling on the damage and the bonus from crossbowexpert it was enough to slay the wirmling and save his last surviving compagnion. It was an amazing moment where all of us were excided and cheered despite two character deaths. (It was the players first session with those so i guess they were not too attached yet.) All in all it was a truly dramatic moment.
#DDBStyle
My party and I were on the trail of a psionic murderer, whose latest victim had been a close friend of the party. We had just finished burying the NPC friend, and we then laid a trap for the psi by her gravestone. He showed up and we had an epic fight that went all kinds of wrong for the party.
We were well on our way to a TPK. Knowing that we were seconds away from death, my rogue decided to die with honor. He charged straight forward with his weapon over his head, screaming to the gods to avenge our fallen friend. I picked up my d20 for the attack roll and my GM stopped me. He handed me two d10.
"I'll give you a 5% chance."
I had no clue what he was talking about. "For what?"
"For the gods to answer your call."
Not at all what I had intended, but I rolled with it, pun intended. I tossed the first d10, and it tumbled across the table, landing with the "0" face up. The entire table held their breath, unable to take their eyes off of the second die in my hands. I let the second d10 fly and it slowly flipped over to show a second "0" face up. The entire table was on their feet.
A golden blast of light descended from the sky, banishing our arch enemy from the fight, and healing our wounds. We didn't beat our psionic foe that day, but we survived by the grace of the gods.
#DDBStyle
Near the beginning of our campaign, we were trapped in a house full of the undead. Our Sorcerer was being a little willy-nilly with opening doors, and walked us right into a banshee's wail. This was the first time any of us had ever encountered a banshee. We were a group of five, and four of us fell unconscious immediately. The only one who managed to resist the wail, by some miracle, was our cleric. He managed to bring us back to consciousness, and my artificer was able to cast Heroism on our barbarian so that he could resist the banshee's horrifying visage effect. We eventually managed to defeat the thing, despite the entire party almost being wiped out in an instant.
My character..... needed a moment after that.
#DDBStyle
Come with me on a journey of remembrance for my Death Domain Cleric Tortle Kopala. Kopala, who knew little of the world, was lucky to find friends in a group of adventurers and together we searched for the Storm King who had gone missing during the great plight of Giants. Our journey took us to the home of Fire Giants, where we quickly learned that things were not as easy as it seemed. We became trapped in a battle of life and death, and Kopala who would give his life to save his friends did just that; pushing our Wizard out of the way as a large hammer came crashing on top of him. The battle raged on and Kopala was losing consciousness fast, he had failed two death saves but on his last roll, his determination to protect his new friends and his faith in Gond awakened him with a Natural 20. Without care for his safety he immediately jumped to his feat and screamed a cry of hope, healing his friends as best he could. This angered the Fire Giants greatly as they turned on Kopala and with two loud thuds, beat Kopala into the ground. The round comes back to me, having already failed two saves from the second strike, I looked to the party and said “And this is where Kopala met his end, with a smile on his face knowing he did everything he could.” The air was tense, the roll was thrown, Kopalas last death save was a Natural 1.
#DDBStyle
Playing with my old group, had a Pit Fiend chasing us through a castle, I drew 2 cards from our deck of many things, first card gave me a vorpal sword, second summoned an avatar of Death. Rolled a Nat 20 with the vorpal sword, and killed the Avatar of Death in one swipe, unfortunately we rolled a lot of Nat 1's after that, and we suffered a near TPK from the Pit Fiend while trying to flee. #DDBStyle
It's a jailbreak! We are captured by some Yuan-Ti, and imprisoned in the dungeon of a castle they had taken over. We manage to break out of our cells but run into a patrol on our way out of the castle. Initiative is rolled. Battle ensues. My halfling bard goes down after getting cornered by a Yuan-Ti Malison and gets hit once more while unconscious for two automatic failed death saves. The cleric can't get to me before my next turn comes around. I roll my third death save. Natural 1. That's three failed death saves. This is the end of my halfling. The table goes silent as the life fades from his body. Suddenly, I remember: halflings reroll natural 1s due to their Halfling Luck feature! With bated breath, I roll again. Success! My halfling clings to life on the barest thread of luck. The cleric arrives and brings the halfling back from the brink and we manage to turn the tide and defeat the Yuan-Ti to survive another day!
#DDBStyle
My first ever campaign. We, our ragtag team of adventurers took on the Lord Vampire Straad. Though he was effective at turning allies against each other, I had one ace up my sleeve. MY DRUID'S ARMY OF BLACK BEARS. With their magic claws, they tore through Straad. Though he had prepared to take out the entire party with a high level fire ball (our DM decided he had enough of the bear nonsense, but our sorcerer used a counterspell. Now, of course, due to the high level cast, as he was out of 5th level slots, he had to make his arcana check. He rolled the dice, and...nat 20. He stopped Straad from the potentially fatal blow, after which a bear dealt the finishing blow.
#DDBStyle
We were in a cave with goblins and they had a hostage so i rolled a nat 20 and backflipped over the leader and hit him with another crit #DDBStyle
This one made my heart pound for all the wrong reasons. I’ve had some awesomely timed twenties before- - -beheading the first giant I ever met with its own cursed sword, death saves from spider venom combed with falling off a cliff- - -they’re never anticipated they’re just roll and ‘yay!’
This one started out like that but now still gives me chills, and to keep that suspense I’ve included the lead up to the disaster. Enjoy!
...
For context we were playing in a module world I believe is called ‘Mythic Odysseys of Theros’ and my friend and I had a side story going because the Ravenloft play test material let us make two characters from the story I’m writing.
My friend was playing that story’s antagonist as a Chaotic Evil Vampire Cleric while I was playing the protagonist as a Lawful Evil Dragon Blood Sorcerer Rogue who was a Teifling Undead Construct (ash + clay blurred lines a bit). For future reference ‘Vamp Cleric’ has an affinity with canines while ‘Ash Demon Stabby Sorcerer’ has a storied affinity with fire and sheer negative wisdom. We made plenty of in-jokes, especially as my friend is the only one I knew at the table, and were having plenty of fun.
The DM was running a high level campaign in which we could have one main magic item plus whatever we wanted in our character’s inventory as a secret item but it was pretty much one use only. My friend had been outed as a vampire the previous session and got their invisibility cloak taken away per its use to escape being staked. When I was able to hop into the campaign it was for my character to find his self sworn arch nemesis aka elder brother crying in an oversized jar because when the party found out the Felis Wizard accidentally insulted his ego while trying to shower him with comfort and acceptance.
So essentially walked into the tavern to find my job already done in that respect, and after an interlude of the Vampire Cleric running out of the tavern at the meat sight of ‘the huggy devil’ plus an incident of my character falling out of a tree and doing fantastic acrobats to avoid an acidic damage watery grave the party was finally off on an adventure- - -!
Just for the pair of them to get separated from the party when Vampire Cleric to Moses himself across an enchanted river and Stabby Sorcerer to get across the enchanted bridge by being an absolute nerd and getting the Greek mythology quiz right while the party tanked it and had to go the long way round.
And what are a pair of arch enemies to do while waiting for their companions over the weekend? Why set up camp and harass the local wildlife of course! Vamp Cleric went questing for wolves and found some which were seeking assistance with cult masked zombies and Stabby Sorcerer, being both dramatic and over optimistically naive, heartily vowed to protect the wolves from both the zombies and the Cleric’s attempts to charm them into being his new summonable wolf pack (he’d been through three).
Then, THE MOMENT! THE ROLE WHICH WOULD DETERMINE EVERYONE’S FATES!
My character got a Nat Twenty on using kindling to light a touch.
No crazy explosion, the wolves were in awe of the mighty fire God’s mastery of the flame and the control flame spell.
Then the zombies showed up and I cast control flames to create a wall of flames between us, the wolves, and the zombies.
JUST FOR THOSE ENCHANTED SUCKERS TO BE IMUNE TO FIRE AND START TRACKING IT EVERYWHERE.
The forest went up, Vamp Cleric nearly went up, the party had to come save us from the invincible flaming monstrosities, and the sight of the wolves and wolf pups being burned alive was such a horrific sight that Stabby Sorcerer failed the wisdom save and stood there, on fire but still immune because red dragon blood, unable to do anything in the absolute chaos.
When the fire (and everything else) had finally died the surviving wolf cursed us and promised never to trust adventurers ever again, Vamp Cleric got awarded a zombie wolf, Felis Wizard got an ‘Egg of Distraction’ that functionally ends all my turns anyway, and Vamp Cleric cheerfully walked up to Stabby Sorcerer and congratulated him on a task well done.
And that is the story of how my character got ’Flaming Puppy PTSD’ from getting a party trick dead right and enemy vulnerabilities dead wrong with a single poorly timed nat twenty. #DDBStyle
The real kicker? If I hadn’t been hoarding my one use magic items I could have saved them. Portable fortress could’ve kept them safe and away from the blaze. But nope. Still in my inventory alongside a tea kettle, boots of levitation, raven construct, a soul bound doujinshi, and a ring against water. (The water bit is his mortal weakness since he’s functionally immortal by the ash technicality and that was how we nerfed him in book and game)
Bonus: Stabby Sorcerer’s reward was what we believe is a rod of charming which his wisdom is again too low to actually use. It is now known as ‘Charisma Stick’ and used against Vamp Cleric whenever possible. Stabby Sorcerer’s current goal is to gain enough wisdom to use it to make Vamp Cleric pay for the Flaming Puppy experience. (Aka pay for being unsympathetic per character, Stabby will likely succeed at some point in the most unexpected moments :) )
We've played 58 games since the pandemic began and were going to storm the Manse. We had spent all week (real world time) getting an ironclad plan in place, checked everyone's equipment and spells. Everything was set. We were very confident and had lots of healing potions and spells to go around. As we sneak up, I roll a nat 1 and immediately alert the orcs. They ambush us instead and a lightning bolt insta-kills one of the PCs. 58 games! 58 games!
Now we're returning to town because we're freaked out even with the new PC in-play now.
#DDBStyle
#DDBStyle First time I played, we were against 3 Dire wolves, Nat 20'ed, killed it and cut its leg off, picked it up, NAT 20'ed again hit the second wolf killed it, and then threw the leg at the third and killed it. Needless to say, got me hooked on D&D
The best was probably in my second ever session. Our party was taking shelter in a partially abandoned town, and the party of raiders who had been searching for us had sent scouts into town. after a less than ideal stealth by our only awake party member initiative was rolled and we were surrounded. The leader taunted us and sent his pet minotaur on us. My paladin was the only one of us with much health left, and on my first strike crit on the beast, divine smite, and killed it in a single blow. I was asked to make an intimidation check, and on another Nat 20, the raiders all ran off.