I apologize for the length of this story but my first ever foray into the world of D&D was a doozie.
A friend I met in college played D&D and talked a buddy of mine and I into trying out the game. This was back in 2nd edition. When we sat down to create our level one characters I chose to play a mage. I came out ok on my stat rolls; I don't remember all of them but I know I had a 10 constitution. When it came time to roll for hit points I took up my trusty new die and rolled a one. My friends laughed and the DM said that I could reroll it since a one hp character wouldn't be fair especially since I was new to the game. So I rerolled and got another one. After more laughter my friend gave me a die to use instead of my "unlucky" die. I rolled another one. Tried again and got another one. I then used three dice at the same time to try and even it out. rolled all ones. After NINE consecutive rolls all of which were ONES I was told, once the DM stopped laughing long enough to talk again, that I had one more shot and then we would stick with the roll and try to get the game going. I rolled a two! Still play with those dice all these years later, they have smoothed out since then but still betray me now and then.
Once we got down to playing the game things got even better. The game was a home brew of the DM that had us all meet in the typical tavern in a small town. We got the main plot point going and then we were all going to rest until morning and set out. However, rather then going to sleep my buddy who rolled a rogue wanted to go out sneaking around the town to see what he could steal. The DM really didn't want to waste the time on a solo expedition but the rest of us were ok with it so out the rogue goes. As he is sneaking around the outskirts of town he comes across two guys digging a hole in a field. He tries to sneak close but made a bunch of noise and the two stopped digging and started calling out and looking for him. he said he wanted to throw a rock to distract them which the DM allowed. He rolled a one, the rock went straight up and came down on his head and he yelled, "ouch!" really loud. He was subsequently hit on the head with a shovel and knocked out. Now rather then stop there the DM decided to have him wake up tied hands and feet to a chair in a basement. An older kid was standing guard at a door and told him to," just hold still, Pa is getting the lawman and then he will know what they do to thieves in their town" or something like that. My friend says he wants to try and get out of his binds and the DM says he can't. My friend argues that he has an 18 DEX and he should at least have a shot of getting out. The DM agrees and has him roll individually for both hands and feet. He rolls a 19, 18, 19, and a 4. So he gets both feet and one hand free but the other is still tied to the arm of the chair. The kid standing at the door runs toward him and my friend decides to attack, rolls an 18 to hit and max damage killing the kid. An older kid runs in after this and my friend attacks again, natural 20, kills this kid too and breaks the chair. The mother rushes in the room screaming and he says he wants to attack her. The DM asks him with what since the chair broke on the last kid. My friend says that since his arm was still tied to it he probably has a broken chair arm still tied to his wrist so he wants to use that. He rolls, natural 20 and puts the broken arm through her neck killing her as well! Now we went from just acting suspiciously in a field to triple murder. He runs out of the house and bolts to the forest to just get away but not before stopping back by the hole to see what was in it. The hole was a new base for an outhouse. Three murders to investigate a new toilet. Most of the rest of the game was the rest of us trying to get out of town the next morning with all the investigations and guard patrols going around. Finally found him a few miles out of town hiding under a log. He told the party that he just wanted to get a jump on the day and headed out early. By the time we wrapped up the session we were all exhausted from laughing so hard for hours. Wild way to get introduced to the game! #ddbstyle
An arcanaloth was slowly being conjured right on top of our party of 3. The odds of beating it in combat were slim at our level, so we made a series of turns during initiative to try to reason with the fiend to keep it calm and interrupt the spell conjuring it. #DDBStyle
In our first DnD 5e Adventure (Hoard of the Dragon Queen) , we were fighting Rezmir.
She downed 4 of the 5 heroes until my lockblade got a Critical (D20) with a Eldritch Smite. Thrilling and at the same time amazing since we got her and saved the group and the campaign.
Our Halfling Rogue was being kidnapped by goblins, so we go to rescue him. My Human Fighter shoots an arrow at the cartwheels to stop the goblins from escaping. 4 Nat 20's. Cart is unmoveable, so we save our Rogue, kill all the goblins and eat shawarma afterwards. #DDBStyle.
Not that you would have known, but my rolls are always quite low. Over the years, I had not managed to roll many nat 20's- until one session last spring. Our group had taken too much damage- one was prone, the other on death save... It wasn't looking hopeful. The two of us left were out of options, and our health was low enough to render our defeat anyway. We decided that we would ditch the battle, and make our escape through a distraction.
Distractions were my specialty.
I charged straight at the creature, to try and stop it from attacking our prone. While I pushed the attack, the others had somehow managed to make it to the stairs- leaving a clear path to the balcony. I had my last spell... and I rolled the dice:
Nat-freakin-20.
The damage was low, but I wasn't using it for the damage.... The knock back from the spell sent our foe careening off of the edge of the tower- leaving us to recover, and marvel at the luck that had blessed us that night.
A short-ish campaign with two players where our DM had us die in a castle under siege in the first session and get transported into the afterlife. There we met the locals including a large Ogre that Mhurrk, my half-orc barbarian befriended and we had plenty of adventures.
Fast forward to emerging into an Underdark sort of place in the afterlife where some facehuggers attack us and we roll to save vs what will turn out to be modify memories.
"DM: Mhurrk, you black out and wake up bouncing on the shoulders of this horrible monster that is running down a dark tunnel. You don't recognize this thing and it is not letting go. What do you do?
Mhurrk: Can I reach it with my sword and use my two attacks to try and stop it?
DM: Sure can, go for it!
Mhurrk: Nat 20! I hack at the throat.
DM: The monster drops you and holds its neck, tumbling to the knees.
Mhurrk: I stand up and roll again... I hit!
DM: The head bounces off the wall and lands staring at you, lolling its tongue trying to speak and it looks familiar as you hear slithering sounds from behind you.
Mhurrk: How is it familiar...?
DM: Suddenly your memories flood back and you realize in shock that you're looking at your ogre friend who must have picked you up to save you from the monsters that had you under their spell."
I still get chills thinking about how well the DM did that scene and how a failed save ****ed everything up so badly. The two PCs got separated at that point and I managed to somehow land in the undersea, middle of nowhere, and picked up by slavers, still carrying my Ogre friends head in the bag because nothing can die again in the afterlife exactly. Trying to find the way off the ship, Mhurrk stumbled upon a cursed sword and got trapped inside it forever.
A few weeks ago, our party was stuck in Avernus. Our cleric had died a few sessions earlier, so our only healer was the paladin. We'd been in Avernus for a while, so we were all out of potions. It had also been a while since our last long rest.
We're in a desecrated temple, fighting multiple undead. They not only drain our hitpoints, but even lower the max hitpoints for a bunch of us. We start going down, one by one. We take down the enemies too, but there's still one left when the last of us hits zero hitpoints. We are all down to death-saves. Basically we're all preparing ourselves for a TPK. We know it's coming. The DM knows it's coming. The players know it's coming. Some of us are even getting a bit annoyed at the DM for dragging this out, because we may as well die and get it over with.
The Barbarian rolls his last death save... and it's a natural 20! He's only got the one hit point, but he's up. Still, there's no way this is going to save us, unless the Paladin wakes up and starts curing. It's 11 at night. We're all ready to call it a day and start over with a new party next time.
The Paladin goes for his own final death save...
And it's a natural 20! We can barely believe it!
The Paladin made it! The enemy is vanquished. The group is cured enough to make it to safety. The entire party survives!
I was running my second ever session with my current group. The party had happened upon a tavern after a long day of travel and high adventure. The Goliath Barbarian of the party took a firm liking to a huge battle-worn war hammer that the half-orc innkeeper had hanging, pride of place above his bar. All attempts to get the innkeeper to part with it had ended in failure and a promise of deadly reprisal if he was bothered on the matter again.
At this point, the gnome rogue took pity on his new goliath companion and hatched a cunning plan. Plying a local halfling with drinks, they convinced him to get up on one of the tables for all to see and start dancing a merry jig, perhaps a song or two, anything to get the tavern all worked up and essentially distracted!
Now it was time for the rogue to make a stealth check in order to sneak behind the bar, doing so with advantage. For reference, the gnome player was rolling his dice at home while we played over discord which was fine as we all trusted one another and that only makes what happened next all the better.
He got an 18, success! He crept behind the bar and neither the innkeeper or any of the other patrons were the wiser. However, at this point I was forced to remind him that the hammer was some 8 feet off the ground. And that he was a gnome. Getting to the hammer was going to be extremely difficult. “Can I try to jump?” he asked. “Sure,” I said, “roll an athletics check, but given the circumstances, this is going to be with disadvantage.”
He made the roll.
“Double 1...”
Suffice to say, he made the leap, he got eeeever so close, his fingers just brushing the hammer to nudge it slightly...Then gravity took over and he was falling, with the hammer not far behind. It narrowly missed his head, landing heavily on the tavern floor beside him. Everyone in the tavern froze, his companions, the dancing halfling and the innkeeper. The hulking half-orc looked down at the sight of his prize war hammer and a smiling gnome laying there on his back. The innkeeper started to smile too as he set aside the glass he had been cleaning and started to crack his knuckles... #DDBStyle
Our group just started out playing DnD, veteran GM, proficient player (me) and two new roleplayers, our first quest is to stop a group of bandits from exorting the local waystation for money and supplies so we prepare an ambush. when the bandits come with their leader on a horse my ranger shoots an arrow at him, nat 20. rolls dice 8+8+mod, dead bandit leader. the other two awestruck characters just closed the doors and explained the benefits of a peaceful life working at the inn to the terrified bandits. The newbies were pretty sold for the whole Dnd-thing after that.
Well, I was still fairly new when it happened, and was still grasping most of the game rules and stuff. I was playing a Half-Orc Padalin and my whole cue was just trying to harass the BBEG wizard while pinning him against my shield. At a certain point, he got free and I had no choice but to whack him or get disintegrated next turn it gets. I rolled the dice on my turn, I asked what happens on a 20, and they were cheering, I was lightly panicking because I couldn't fully ride their hype and they were handing me their D8's because I only had the one green set they gave me. I still had a 4th level spell slot unused, and since I'm a half orc, we didn't have enough D8's to make it roll all at once. It wasn't the killing blow, but it sure was a good chunk for my first Crit Smite.
I think the most exciting was me DMing in my first campaign & part of the way through I had my players fight a homebrew LESHEN to save an island of people. The fight was like 4 hours I think - had them down on slots, using abilities, potions, & magic items left-right-center. Even got them to retreat! I was having a lot of good rolls with them on the edge of their seats!
Eventually they rolled really well with some crits & tactically used their items and abilities to beat it! I felt really good as a new DM in creating something they enjoyed 🙆🏾
I hope this is sufficient! It's been over a year since then & I still think about it often. I hope to have that kind of battle in my next campaign! #DDBStyle
Though there were many instances where i was freaking out over my (at least at our table) famously bad rolls, my favourite one was the following:
(Preclaimer: We have a homebrew rule at our table that reads, once you NAT 1 an attack, you and the DM roll a d4 attacking a friend in range instead on another 1 from you and / or dropping your weapon on a DMs 1. And by the way, we roll all rolls open.)
Our Lvl 5 party consisting of a weird, randomly excentric and criminal Kenku arcane trickster, a bipolar, gunslinging Tiefling swashbuckling pirate lady and my character a naiv, slightly oblivious chaotic good Tabaxi fighter. After being almost wiped by 4 trolls we were never meant until some tiefling snapped in an arguement and fireing her gun close range in their mothers mouth, we turned way more cautious and burned all our hit dice recovering.
Our given task that day was to clear out a haunted house for our client, a beloved NPC. After arriving at said estate and sneaking in quite successfully for a heavy armor wearing fighter, i asked to check for anything i can perceive, smell or hear in particular. NAT 20!! DM describes a sorrowfull howling and whimpering voice luring and drawing me towards it WIS Save: 5, FAIL. "You NEED to get to that, asap!" welp, here goes. Initiating my uncatchable speed round my DM had not even demanded i Action Surge, Feline Agility and Double Dash, doing 120ft on one turn, leaving my party in the dust. Ienter a small chamber way out of my friends sight. I NAT 20ed listening to a Banshees cry, now being surrounded by 4 shadows and my sorrowful voice in a chamber all on my self.
But my dice did not fail me - yet. screaming and fighting, using all my spells for shield spells i f***ing tank this encounter until my short fused Tiefling girl broke down the door in my back. My turn. I attack the Banshee. NAT 1! We roll D4s. TWO more 1s! DM describes my swing going wide and my hand slipping, throwing my magic +1 sword right at roughed up Lady Red. Roll attack: NAT 20! She drops as my beloved silver glimmering longsword pierces her abdomen. Her turn, death save: NAT 20! so she rises, snapping once again and shooting her last pistol in a shadows face totally bursting it to nothingness! I get ganged on once again, barely standing at 8 HP. Our Kenku kills two more shadows. My turn again. running back to my friend, retrieving my magic sword out of her belly. i, of course, getting opportunity attacked. MISS! I return to strike and hit! killing the Banshee, as bits of her prior time alive flash before my eyes, closing the gaps in what we uncovered of her story so far.
BTW: Kenku convinced the last shadow to stay in this, now our house and become our butler in exchange for criminals' souls to suck we drop in our basement.
My heart was racing, we screamed at every roll in joy or grieve, it was even more awesome a feeling since we all were sure to get TPKed. Still my favourite close call. Thanks for reading and sorry for grammar mistakes and the lengthy read.
TL;DR: Tabaxi NAT 20ed listening to a Banshees "GET OVER HERE!" spell, held his own, for few rounds against all odds, killed first friend to arrive by accident, who NAT 20ed her death save helping clearing out an seemingly impossible encounter.
It was a big roll to see whether an NPC would give up a semi-sentient Necromantic tome, DC30 Wisdom Save, Bardic Inspiration from PC, Advantage was granted by her high Persuasion roll. She really wanted to save the poor chap. Natural 19, +6 Wisdom save, +5 B.I. Success! #DDBStyle
This was my very first Lvl1 game starting around Aug 2019 my party was in a cave and the GM's descriptions made me think the tunnel we were in got to a drop and I saw my companion stumble forward. As a good party member I offered to help pull him back to his feet before he fell, but that was followed by a roll of nat1 and a dramatic/hilarious? reenactment of Disney's: the Lion King's - "Long live the king" scene, my bro's PC took enough falling dmg to get knocked unconscious without officially triggering the usual 10ft falling event. The cave tunnel was only just slanting downwards. https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/ddbstyle?__eep__=6&__cft__[0]=AZUI_OjcdBzpeZhpceemQzVHJvmnDc5CIemXIjob4RFzp9KMopO6vP4iQzPY7fpUD8Ttt9fOnRMQqRyB7RrI61FtHbe91JLjECkgGqJYEx1797TInTvZ9wliU2xQADeKtP7bhjZhfH-uL3Z6juIEp0xwDbiOfnmU7yFhRgmGljuzig&__tn__=*NK-R">#DDBStyle
I had set up a polymorph trap for my players and one by one my players rolled too low and were polymorphed into toads right as they were trying to run away from a boss fight against an evil wizard and the last player rolled a nat 20 and was able to scoop up the other pc's as toads and get the hell out of dodge. #DDBStyle
My mates and I were playing the Dragon of Icespire Peak's final mission against Cryovain. I was DMing and I was rolling beautifully for my buffed up dragon. They started winning so I had my dragon fly up once more in an effort to blast them with yet another breath weapon but one of my players rolled a beautiful Crit on a grapple restrain to prevent it from flying and the others just proceeded to pummel it into the ground. It was messy but at the same time, glorious! #DDBStyle
When we had downtime during Storm kings thunder I decided to do some bounties and ended up doing a bounty to hunt a bear. I end up finding the bear and sneaking up on it for a surprise round, first hit is a natural 20 and I'm a paladin so I smited it. The bear screeches and turns around to reveal that it is in fact an owl bear, roll initiative. So now it's a solo, low level paladin versus an owl bear, I thought I was screwed. It goes first and rolls a natural 1 to hit on the first attack and low again on the second it then comes to my turn were I roll another natural 20 with a smite, killing it. So that's how a low level paladin soloed an owl bear in 2 turns while taking no damage. #DDBStyle
The first time I was ever in a party with a critical fail, one of the players ended up loosing their dominant arm during the battle. I just remember being so shocked by the outcome and thought, "what do we do now?" I had not been rolling very well myself and just wasn't getting any of my attacks to land. The party made it out, but only by the skin of our teeth. #DDBStyle
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I apologize for the length of this story but my first ever foray into the world of D&D was a doozie.
A friend I met in college played D&D and talked a buddy of mine and I into trying out the game. This was back in 2nd edition. When we sat down to create our level one characters I chose to play a mage. I came out ok on my stat rolls; I don't remember all of them but I know I had a 10 constitution. When it came time to roll for hit points I took up my trusty new die and rolled a one. My friends laughed and the DM said that I could reroll it since a one hp character wouldn't be fair especially since I was new to the game. So I rerolled and got another one. After more laughter my friend gave me a die to use instead of my "unlucky" die. I rolled another one. Tried again and got another one. I then used three dice at the same time to try and even it out. rolled all ones. After NINE consecutive rolls all of which were ONES I was told, once the DM stopped laughing long enough to talk again, that I had one more shot and then we would stick with the roll and try to get the game going. I rolled a two! Still play with those dice all these years later, they have smoothed out since then but still betray me now and then.
Once we got down to playing the game things got even better. The game was a home brew of the DM that had us all meet in the typical tavern in a small town. We got the main plot point going and then we were all going to rest until morning and set out. However, rather then going to sleep my buddy who rolled a rogue wanted to go out sneaking around the town to see what he could steal. The DM really didn't want to waste the time on a solo expedition but the rest of us were ok with it so out the rogue goes. As he is sneaking around the outskirts of town he comes across two guys digging a hole in a field. He tries to sneak close but made a bunch of noise and the two stopped digging and started calling out and looking for him. he said he wanted to throw a rock to distract them which the DM allowed. He rolled a one, the rock went straight up and came down on his head and he yelled, "ouch!" really loud. He was subsequently hit on the head with a shovel and knocked out. Now rather then stop there the DM decided to have him wake up tied hands and feet to a chair in a basement. An older kid was standing guard at a door and told him to," just hold still, Pa is getting the lawman and then he will know what they do to thieves in their town" or something like that. My friend says he wants to try and get out of his binds and the DM says he can't. My friend argues that he has an 18 DEX and he should at least have a shot of getting out. The DM agrees and has him roll individually for both hands and feet. He rolls a 19, 18, 19, and a 4. So he gets both feet and one hand free but the other is still tied to the arm of the chair. The kid standing at the door runs toward him and my friend decides to attack, rolls an 18 to hit and max damage killing the kid. An older kid runs in after this and my friend attacks again, natural 20, kills this kid too and breaks the chair. The mother rushes in the room screaming and he says he wants to attack her. The DM asks him with what since the chair broke on the last kid. My friend says that since his arm was still tied to it he probably has a broken chair arm still tied to his wrist so he wants to use that. He rolls, natural 20 and puts the broken arm through her neck killing her as well! Now we went from just acting suspiciously in a field to triple murder. He runs out of the house and bolts to the forest to just get away but not before stopping back by the hole to see what was in it. The hole was a new base for an outhouse. Three murders to investigate a new toilet. Most of the rest of the game was the rest of us trying to get out of town the next morning with all the investigations and guard patrols going around. Finally found him a few miles out of town hiding under a log. He told the party that he just wanted to get a jump on the day and headed out early. By the time we wrapped up the session we were all exhausted from laughing so hard for hours. Wild way to get introduced to the game! #ddbstyle
An arcanaloth was slowly being conjured right on top of our party of 3. The odds of beating it in combat were slim at our level, so we made a series of turns during initiative to try to reason with the fiend to keep it calm and interrupt the spell conjuring it. #DDBStyle
In our first DnD 5e Adventure (Hoard of the Dragon Queen) , we were fighting Rezmir.
She downed 4 of the 5 heroes until my lockblade got a Critical (D20) with a Eldritch Smite. Thrilling and at the same time amazing since we got her and saved the group and the campaign.
#DDBStyle
Sadly my (murdered by a trickster gods icicle) dragonborn sorcerer wasn't there to help hahahaha
Our Halfling Rogue was being kidnapped by goblins, so we go to rescue him. My Human Fighter shoots an arrow at the cartwheels to stop the goblins from escaping. 4 Nat 20's. Cart is unmoveable, so we save our Rogue, kill all the goblins and eat shawarma afterwards. #DDBStyle.
Not that you would have known, but my rolls are always quite low. Over the years, I had not managed to roll many nat 20's- until one session last spring. Our group had taken too much damage- one was prone, the other on death save... It wasn't looking hopeful. The two of us left were out of options, and our health was low enough to render our defeat anyway. We decided that we would ditch the battle, and make our escape through a distraction.
Distractions were my specialty.
I charged straight at the creature, to try and stop it from attacking our prone. While I pushed the attack, the others had somehow managed to make it to the stairs- leaving a clear path to the balcony. I had my last spell... and I rolled the dice:
Nat-freakin-20.
The damage was low, but I wasn't using it for the damage.... The knock back from the spell sent our foe careening off of the edge of the tower- leaving us to recover, and marvel at the luck that had blessed us that night.
#DDBStyle
A short-ish campaign with two players where our DM had us die in a castle under siege in the first session and get transported into the afterlife. There we met the locals including a large Ogre that Mhurrk, my half-orc barbarian befriended and we had plenty of adventures.
Fast forward to emerging into an Underdark sort of place in the afterlife where some facehuggers attack us and we roll to save vs what will turn out to be modify memories.
"DM: Mhurrk, you black out and wake up bouncing on the shoulders of this horrible monster that is running down a dark tunnel. You don't recognize this thing and it is not letting go. What do you do?
Mhurrk: Can I reach it with my sword and use my two attacks to try and stop it?
DM: Sure can, go for it!
Mhurrk: Nat 20! I hack at the throat.
DM: The monster drops you and holds its neck, tumbling to the knees.
Mhurrk: I stand up and roll again... I hit!
DM: The head bounces off the wall and lands staring at you, lolling its tongue trying to speak and it looks familiar as you hear slithering sounds from behind you.
Mhurrk: How is it familiar...?
DM: Suddenly your memories flood back and you realize in shock that you're looking at your ogre friend who must have picked you up to save you from the monsters that had you under their spell."
I still get chills thinking about how well the DM did that scene and how a failed save ****ed everything up so badly. The two PCs got separated at that point and I managed to somehow land in the undersea, middle of nowhere, and picked up by slavers, still carrying my Ogre friends head in the bag because nothing can die again in the afterlife exactly. Trying to find the way off the ship, Mhurrk stumbled upon a cursed sword and got trapped inside it forever.
#DDBStyle
A few weeks ago, our party was stuck in Avernus. Our cleric had died a few sessions earlier, so our only healer was the paladin. We'd been in Avernus for a while, so we were all out of potions. It had also been a while since our last long rest.
We're in a desecrated temple, fighting multiple undead. They not only drain our hitpoints, but even lower the max hitpoints for a bunch of us. We start going down, one by one. We take down the enemies too, but there's still one left when the last of us hits zero hitpoints. We are all down to death-saves. Basically we're all preparing ourselves for a TPK. We know it's coming. The DM knows it's coming. The players know it's coming. Some of us are even getting a bit annoyed at the DM for dragging this out, because we may as well die and get it over with.
The Barbarian rolls his last death save... and it's a natural 20! He's only got the one hit point, but he's up.
Still, there's no way this is going to save us, unless the Paladin wakes up and starts curing.
It's 11 at night. We're all ready to call it a day and start over with a new party next time.
The Paladin goes for his own final death save...
And it's a natural 20! We can barely believe it!
The Paladin made it! The enemy is vanquished. The group is cured enough to make it to safety. The entire party survives!
#DDBStyle
#DDBStyle
Our group just started out playing DnD, veteran GM, proficient player (me) and two new roleplayers, our first quest is to stop a group of bandits from exorting the local waystation for money and supplies so we prepare an ambush. when the bandits come with their leader on a horse my ranger shoots an arrow at him, nat 20. rolls dice 8+8+mod, dead bandit leader. the other two awestruck characters just closed the doors and explained the benefits of a peaceful life working at the inn to the terrified bandits. The newbies were pretty sold for the whole Dnd-thing after that.
#DDBStyle
Well, I was still fairly new when it happened, and was still grasping most of the game rules and stuff. I was playing a Half-Orc Padalin and my whole cue was just trying to harass the BBEG wizard while pinning him against my shield. At a certain point, he got free and I had no choice but to whack him or get disintegrated next turn it gets. I rolled the dice on my turn, I asked what happens on a 20, and they were cheering, I was lightly panicking because I couldn't fully ride their hype and they were handing me their D8's because I only had the one green set they gave me. I still had a 4th level spell slot unused, and since I'm a half orc, we didn't have enough D8's to make it roll all at once. It wasn't the killing blow, but it sure was a good chunk for my first Crit Smite.
#DDBStyle
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Probably not going to use this anymore - Moving to Kobold Press with their Black Flag Project for free and open core-ruleset they are working on.
Though there were many instances where i was freaking out over my (at least at our table) famously bad rolls, my favourite one was the following:
(Preclaimer: We have a homebrew rule at our table that reads, once you NAT 1 an attack, you and the DM roll a d4 attacking a friend in range instead on another 1 from you and / or dropping your weapon on a DMs 1. And by the way, we roll all rolls open.)
Our Lvl 5 party consisting of a weird, randomly excentric and criminal Kenku arcane trickster, a bipolar, gunslinging Tiefling swashbuckling pirate lady and my character a naiv, slightly oblivious chaotic good Tabaxi fighter. After being almost wiped by 4 trolls we were never meant until some tiefling snapped in an arguement and fireing her gun close range in their mothers mouth, we turned way more cautious and burned all our hit dice recovering.
Our given task that day was to clear out a haunted house for our client, a beloved NPC. After arriving at said estate and sneaking in quite successfully for a heavy armor wearing fighter, i asked to check for anything i can perceive, smell or hear in particular. NAT 20!! DM describes a sorrowfull howling and whimpering voice luring and drawing me towards it WIS Save: 5, FAIL. "You NEED to get to that, asap!" welp, here goes. Initiating my uncatchable speed round my DM had not even demanded i Action Surge, Feline Agility and Double Dash, doing 120ft on one turn, leaving my party in the dust. Ienter a small chamber way out of my friends sight. I NAT 20ed listening to a Banshees cry, now being surrounded by 4 shadows and my sorrowful voice in a chamber all on my self.
But my dice did not fail me - yet. screaming and fighting, using all my spells for shield spells i f***ing tank this encounter until my short fused Tiefling girl broke down the door in my back. My turn. I attack the Banshee. NAT 1! We roll D4s. TWO more 1s! DM describes my swing going wide and my hand slipping, throwing my magic +1 sword right at roughed up Lady Red. Roll attack: NAT 20! She drops as my beloved silver glimmering longsword pierces her abdomen. Her turn, death save: NAT 20! so she rises, snapping once again and shooting her last pistol in a shadows face totally bursting it to nothingness! I get ganged on once again, barely standing at 8 HP. Our Kenku kills two more shadows. My turn again. running back to my friend, retrieving my magic sword out of her belly. i, of course, getting opportunity attacked. MISS! I return to strike and hit! killing the Banshee, as bits of her prior time alive flash before my eyes, closing the gaps in what we uncovered of her story so far.
BTW: Kenku convinced the last shadow to stay in this, now our house and become our butler in exchange for criminals' souls to suck we drop in our basement.
My heart was racing, we screamed at every roll in joy or grieve, it was even more awesome a feeling since we all were sure to get TPKed. Still my favourite close call. Thanks for reading and sorry for grammar mistakes and the lengthy read.
TL;DR: Tabaxi NAT 20ed listening to a Banshees "GET OVER HERE!" spell, held his own, for few rounds against all odds, killed first friend to arrive by accident, who NAT 20ed her death save helping clearing out an seemingly impossible encounter.
It was a big roll to see whether an NPC would give up a semi-sentient Necromantic tome, DC30 Wisdom Save, Bardic Inspiration from PC, Advantage was granted by her high Persuasion roll. She really wanted to save the poor chap. Natural 19, +6 Wisdom save, +5 B.I. Success! #DDBStyle
I had set up a polymorph trap for my players and one by one my players rolled too low and were polymorphed into toads right as they were trying to run away from a boss fight against an evil wizard and the last player rolled a nat 20 and was able to scoop up the other pc's as toads and get the hell out of dodge. #DDBStyle
My mates and I were playing the Dragon of Icespire Peak's final mission against Cryovain. I was DMing and I was rolling beautifully for my buffed up dragon. They started winning so I had my dragon fly up once more in an effort to blast them with yet another breath weapon but one of my players rolled a beautiful Crit on a grapple restrain to prevent it from flying and the others just proceeded to pummel it into the ground. It was messy but at the same time, glorious! #DDBStyle
Rolling with disadvantage, rolled two nat 20's. #DDBStyle
When we had downtime during Storm kings thunder I decided to do some bounties and ended up doing a bounty to hunt a bear. I end up finding the bear and sneaking up on it for a surprise round, first hit is a natural 20 and I'm a paladin so I smited it. The bear screeches and turns around to reveal that it is in fact an owl bear, roll initiative. So now it's a solo, low level paladin versus an owl bear, I thought I was screwed. It goes first and rolls a natural 1 to hit on the first attack and low again on the second it then comes to my turn were I roll another natural 20 with a smite, killing it. So that's how a low level paladin soloed an owl bear in 2 turns while taking no damage. #DDBStyle
The first time I was ever in a party with a critical fail, one of the players ended up loosing their dominant arm during the battle. I just remember being so shocked by the outcome and thought, "what do we do now?" I had not been rolling very well myself and just wasn't getting any of my attacks to land. The party made it out, but only by the skin of our teeth. #DDBStyle