Summer 1979. 3/4ths of my party down. Tarlon, lvl2 Paladin, grips his mighty 2-handed sword and rolls "20" to neatly behead the Ogre Magi that was our bane. #dnd#DDBStyle
Third session into a new campaign. We've played some half-assed campaigns beforehand, but this time we've decided to stick with it properly, to the extent that everyone had a private 'session zero' with the DM, fleshing out their character and backstory.
In this version of the world, natural magic is rare. Those who get their magic from the Gods, like clerics and paladins, are reasonably plentiful. In some cities, wizards are common too, having dedicated years of study to magic. There's the odd warlock too, when someone has subscribed to a slightly darker god's teaching. But among all this, the natural affinity for magic possessed by sorcerers is a rare thing.
So, because I want to be a special snowflake, I'm playing a Sorcerer. Wild Magic, because why not - the RNG sounds like it'll be fun. His name is Armin, and we started at level 3 because levels 1/2 are boring.
Armin is a relatively young lad compared to the rest of the party (only 19 or so, compared to 30s-40s) who has been raised in isolation on a farm by his "Uncle Owen" (because the Star Wars comparison was the easiest way to get the idea across). At some point, for whatever reason, Armin left the farm and encountered the party in a town. They took some pity on this naĂŻve young farm lad, and he ended up traveling with them.
But as I said, this was a more serious campaign, with characters planned out with a lot more backstory. So Armin is not just a simple farm boy.
In the session zero, I'd spoken at length with the DM about how I wanted Armin's character 'hook' to be that he was actually an older sorcerer, who had been unlucky with some wild magic several years ago, and been regressed to about 12 years old. But in getting younger, he lost his memories all the way back to that age.
There's even a ready-made mechanic for it: on the Wild Magic table, the 35/36 result reads: "Roll a d10. Your age changes by a number of years equal to the roll. If the roll is odd, you get younger (minimum 1 year old). If the roll is even, you get older."
So basically he'd been unlucky, and regressed to his early teens.
Seeing the opportunity to take advantage of an impressionable young sorcerer, an enterprising acquaintance of Armin's by the name of Owen decided to take him in and raise him as a nephew. Secretly an evil warlock, Owen's plan was to raise Armin until his magic manifested, then shape him into a tool to be used for his own nefarious purposes. So as a result, as Human Variant, I took the Magic Initiate feat, with Eldritch Blast and Arms of Hadar sitting quietly in my spell list.
As his magic developed, Owen raised Armin to hide it; after all, sorcerers are rare, and as Uncle Owen said, "if others knew of your talent, they would try and take advantage of you". Well played, Uncle Owen.
So when Armin left the farm, he hid his magic from everyone he met. The plan for the reveal was to wait for an "oh crap" moment in a combat, when it was reveal magic or die, and pop Arms of Hadar (in classic Defence Mechanism Superpower style), leading the party to believe that Armin was a warlock. The plan was always to use a bit of DM handwaving to have Armin magically re-aged after a while so that his memories could return, or to recover the memories as he levelled up.
Enter RNG.
In our first combat, Armin stood at the back and did nothing, as the rest of the party defeated the bandits. They weren't too surprised that this farm boy was useless in combat.
Our second fight was against an owlbear. Armin's only useful contribution was dragging our cleric clear so that he didn't get clawed to death.
This developed poor Armin a reputation for uselessness. The other players were giving me grief for rolling a useless character (all in good humour), and fairly justifiably had their characters looking for ways to ditch the useless young farm boy, so they didn't have to worry about looking after him.
Our third combat was where everything got interesting. Clever little Armin used Catapult to sneakily fling a rock at a thug in a way that no one noticed, and even managed to stab another thug with a dagger. The tables turned, and most of the thugs were killed quickly.
One of the last remaining thugs started running after his friends were killed. It was at this point that Armin rolled a 1 on the Wild Magic table. You know, the one that says "Roll on this table at the start of each of your turns for the next minute, ignoring this result on subsequent turns", and guarantees 10 consecutive Wild Magic rolls.
Uh oh.
On the first turn, Armin gets lucky; I roll a 39 and recover 2d10 health; Armin chases the thug and tries to trip him, but fails.
On the next turn, our Alchemist Artificer (who doesn't really trust the other members of the party, because they seem like jerks to her) throws a Thunder Vial that explodes next to Armin and the thug. Armin's turn comes around right after, and I roll on the Wild Magic table.
I roll a 36. You know, "Roll a d10. Your age changes by a number of years equal to the roll. If the roll is odd, you get younger (minimum 1 year old). If the roll is even, you get older."
Uh oh.
I roll the d10: it's a 3. Armin instantly de-ages by 3 years to about 16, looks at the Alchemist (who is the only one paying attention, because the rest of the party are 60+ft away dealing with the other surviving thug), and says "Whoa hey, what's going on, who are you?"
The Alchemist, confused by this, says "Uh, I'm Tayore..? We've been travelling together?", and pulls out another Thunder Vial, checking to see whether it might have gone bad or something. "..do you have a concussion or something?"
Armin stares back, confused.
Meanwhile, all I can think is 'Well crap'. Now Armin is 16, and has no memory of the party, or of leaving the farm. This is not good. How the hell am I going to roleplay this into something sensible?
Combat continues elsewhere, before it comes around to my turn again. Let's see what the dice have in store this time around.
Roll the d100.
It's another 36.
Either this is going to be the most perfectly timed RNG I've ever seen, or I am about to be playing as a child.
Hold breath.
Roll the d10... and it's an 8.
Armin suddenly ages from 16 to 24, and a flicker of recognition passes his eyes. "Oh yes, Tayore. I remember. And.. hm, oh yes, I remember indeed."
Tayore, having just seen Armin blip younger, then noticeably older in a matter of seconds, pauses. She's just seen something very unusual, that would usually be shared with the rest of the party. But she doesn't trust them yet, so she decides to keep this development to herself. "We're going to have to have a talk about this later."
"Oh, we will. Promise." says Armin, with a smile that definitely does not belong to a naĂŻve farm boy.
And that's how RNG led to a great party dynamic of Armin surreptitiously using magic in various encounters, often in ways that only Tayore sees, while the rest of the party remain blissfully unaware of his magic ability. At the same time, this slightly older Armin is far less naĂŻve, having recovered memories from the years he was re-aged through, allowing for more character development.
This reminds me of my first character death. I was playing as a dwarf bard named Bludgion Kermudgion, and our party was on our way to deliver a magic club that I was holding onto personally "for safe keeping". This was one of our first few sessions and we were level 3. Only half the party showed up for this session but we played anyway, a mistake I would soon regret.
Our carriage was attacked by a barlgura. It knocked our carriage on it's side, knocking our absent player's characters unconscious. It was me, our elf ranger, and our warlock (I forget what race they were). We had one round of combat, and then the monster turned invisible. To even the playing field, our ranger cast Fog Cloud. Under cover of fog, I climbed on top of the fallen carriage and waited to attack. When it came close enough, I jumped off and hit it with the magic club. But alas, even with the club's bonuses, I did mediocre damage. And alas, the barlgura turned to me and said "there it is", and promptly smacked me into the carriage.
I was down, and alas, the dice were against me that day. If I remember correctly, my first death save was a natural 1. I failed my second (and last) roll in the last round of combat before my teammates killed the monster. I was fully dead. Like I said, our party was level three and only a few sessions in. No high level spells to resurrect me, and no resources to pay someone else to do it.
The next session, my tiefling necromancer (simply known as Captain) ran into the party on his way to meet Bludgion, his old shipmate from their pirate days. Captain still lives to commit shenanigans to this day. #DDBStyle
#DDBStyle that moment when your super shy and peaceful firbolg cleric rolls a natural 20 on it's attack, making for a preeeeetty gnarly guiding bolt, finishing of a singing lich. (yep, you read that right) I'm not gonna say who that lich looked like, but I'll say it was a christmas special one-shot and all I wanted for christmas was that natural 20.
#DDBStyle We were playing a dads and kids game and one of the kids, who was playing an assassin, was charmed by an evil wizard unbeknownst to the rest of the party. The charmed assassin turned on the party at the most unexpected point and got a nat 20 on a sneak attack nearly permanently killing the party's cleric. The table went into a complete roar at the moment and kids loved it.
My most memorable roll was when my forest gnome wizard found herself in an arm wrestling competition. With a height of 3'1 and an athletics modifier of 0 I had very low expectations for the encounter. I held my breath as I made the roll, prepared for utter failure... Only to land a Nat 20. My little gnome broke the competitions wrist and was well rewarded for it.
A tiefling shadow sorcerer in my group is little brotheresque to my aasimar paladin and was trying to keep up in a physical contest we were being put through. When it came time for a deadlift aspect, guess who got the natural 20? The scrawny sorcerer made everyone proud of his gains that day.
A natural 20 for grip strength saved our whole party from careening off of a mountain in one of our last sessions. I do not feel the need to climb mountains any time soon.
Party was fighting in the first real dragon fight of the campaign. We entered into the cavern that made up the dragon's temporary lair, and got ambushed with the breath weapon. Most of the party managed to hold on by a thread, but I went unconscious immediately. My turn came up and I held my breath as I rolled my first death save. Natural 20. Stood up and threw a guiding bolt at the dragon, which enabled the party's paladin to land a strong smite against the dragon on his turn.
I gotta say I have an odd tendency of rolling Nat 20 death saves.
My character had entered this contest, and he needed to write an eloquent but deceptive letter on a public message board. Unfortunately he rolled a Nat 1 and the folks at the DNDBeyond message board realized that this post had only been written for their #DDBStyle contest... :)
But seriously, there are too many moments to count.
My mind immediately jumps to the first (and only) character I've ever had die. I was playing a Half-Orc Bloodhunter in Waterdeep Dragon Heist and I was attacked by an intellect devourer. I got a nat 1 on the brain eating save... #DDBStyle
I rolled to take a short rest with my eyes open. I rolled a one and fell asleep. When I woke up a goblin had grabbed me from behind and then slit my throat.
First session of dnd ever, I joined in on a campaign that my friends were in the middle of and were heading in to fight a young red dragon. I was a rogue and one of my very first attack rolls was a Nat 20. Rolling all those dice felt so good. #DDBStyle
Thinking of a time where it all depended on the dice is when my Gnome bard and his party were battling a young black dragon and are hits were doing nothing.
then Bel’Enorios my Bard decided that it would be a good idea to knock the dragon out of the sky with Tasha’s Hideous laughter....
nat 20 and the dragon fell from the sky laughing non stop as my party and I hit it till it died...
The party swashbuckler rogue dressing up in cultist robes to bluff his way into their hideout. 16 Persuasion check did the trick! #DDBStyle
Adrik Torunn: Hill Dwarf Life Cleric of Moradin
Ando Fain: Half-elf Oath of Ancients Paladin of Miliekki, Dragon of Icespire Peak campaign
DM for home campaign
Summer 1979. 3/4ths of my party down. Tarlon, lvl2 Paladin, grips his mighty 2-handed sword and rolls "20" to neatly behead the Ogre Magi that was our bane. #dnd #DDBStyle
Third session into a new campaign. We've played some half-assed campaigns beforehand, but this time we've decided to stick with it properly, to the extent that everyone had a private 'session zero' with the DM, fleshing out their character and backstory.
In this version of the world, natural magic is rare. Those who get their magic from the Gods, like clerics and paladins, are reasonably plentiful. In some cities, wizards are common too, having dedicated years of study to magic. There's the odd warlock too, when someone has subscribed to a slightly darker god's teaching. But among all this, the natural affinity for magic possessed by sorcerers is a rare thing.
So, because I want to be a special snowflake, I'm playing a Sorcerer. Wild Magic, because why not - the RNG sounds like it'll be fun. His name is Armin, and we started at level 3 because levels 1/2 are boring.
Armin is a relatively young lad compared to the rest of the party (only 19 or so, compared to 30s-40s) who has been raised in isolation on a farm by his "Uncle Owen" (because the Star Wars comparison was the easiest way to get the idea across). At some point, for whatever reason, Armin left the farm and encountered the party in a town. They took some pity on this naĂŻve young farm lad, and he ended up traveling with them.
But as I said, this was a more serious campaign, with characters planned out with a lot more backstory. So Armin is not just a simple farm boy.
In the session zero, I'd spoken at length with the DM about how I wanted Armin's character 'hook' to be that he was actually an older sorcerer, who had been unlucky with some wild magic several years ago, and been regressed to about 12 years old. But in getting younger, he lost his memories all the way back to that age.
There's even a ready-made mechanic for it: on the Wild Magic table, the 35/36 result reads: "Roll a d10. Your age changes by a number of years equal to the roll. If the roll is odd, you get younger (minimum 1 year old). If the roll is even, you get older."
So basically he'd been unlucky, and regressed to his early teens.
Seeing the opportunity to take advantage of an impressionable young sorcerer, an enterprising acquaintance of Armin's by the name of Owen decided to take him in and raise him as a nephew. Secretly an evil warlock, Owen's plan was to raise Armin until his magic manifested, then shape him into a tool to be used for his own nefarious purposes. So as a result, as Human Variant, I took the Magic Initiate feat, with Eldritch Blast and Arms of Hadar sitting quietly in my spell list.
As his magic developed, Owen raised Armin to hide it; after all, sorcerers are rare, and as Uncle Owen said, "if others knew of your talent, they would try and take advantage of you". Well played, Uncle Owen.
So when Armin left the farm, he hid his magic from everyone he met. The plan for the reveal was to wait for an "oh crap" moment in a combat, when it was reveal magic or die, and pop Arms of Hadar (in classic Defence Mechanism Superpower style), leading the party to believe that Armin was a warlock. The plan was always to use a bit of DM handwaving to have Armin magically re-aged after a while so that his memories could return, or to recover the memories as he levelled up.
Enter RNG.
In our first combat, Armin stood at the back and did nothing, as the rest of the party defeated the bandits. They weren't too surprised that this farm boy was useless in combat.
Our second fight was against an owlbear. Armin's only useful contribution was dragging our cleric clear so that he didn't get clawed to death.
This developed poor Armin a reputation for uselessness. The other players were giving me grief for rolling a useless character (all in good humour), and fairly justifiably had their characters looking for ways to ditch the useless young farm boy, so they didn't have to worry about looking after him.
Our third combat was where everything got interesting. Clever little Armin used Catapult to sneakily fling a rock at a thug in a way that no one noticed, and even managed to stab another thug with a dagger. The tables turned, and most of the thugs were killed quickly.
One of the last remaining thugs started running after his friends were killed. It was at this point that Armin rolled a 1 on the Wild Magic table. You know, the one that says "Roll on this table at the start of each of your turns for the next minute, ignoring this result on subsequent turns", and guarantees 10 consecutive Wild Magic rolls.
Uh oh.
On the first turn, Armin gets lucky; I roll a 39 and recover 2d10 health; Armin chases the thug and tries to trip him, but fails.
On the next turn, our Alchemist Artificer (who doesn't really trust the other members of the party, because they seem like jerks to her) throws a Thunder Vial that explodes next to Armin and the thug. Armin's turn comes around right after, and I roll on the Wild Magic table.
I roll a 36. You know, "Roll a d10. Your age changes by a number of years equal to the roll. If the roll is odd, you get younger (minimum 1 year old). If the roll is even, you get older."
Uh oh.
I roll the d10: it's a 3. Armin instantly de-ages by 3 years to about 16, looks at the Alchemist (who is the only one paying attention, because the rest of the party are 60+ft away dealing with the other surviving thug), and says "Whoa hey, what's going on, who are you?"
The Alchemist, confused by this, says "Uh, I'm Tayore..? We've been travelling together?", and pulls out another Thunder Vial, checking to see whether it might have gone bad or something. "..do you have a concussion or something?"
Armin stares back, confused.
Meanwhile, all I can think is 'Well crap'. Now Armin is 16, and has no memory of the party, or of leaving the farm. This is not good. How the hell am I going to roleplay this into something sensible?
Combat continues elsewhere, before it comes around to my turn again. Let's see what the dice have in store this time around.
Roll the d100.
It's another 36.
Either this is going to be the most perfectly timed RNG I've ever seen, or I am about to be playing as a child.
Hold breath.
Roll the d10... and it's an 8.
Armin suddenly ages from 16 to 24, and a flicker of recognition passes his eyes. "Oh yes, Tayore. I remember. And.. hm, oh yes, I remember indeed."
Tayore, having just seen Armin blip younger, then noticeably older in a matter of seconds, pauses. She's just seen something very unusual, that would usually be shared with the rest of the party. But she doesn't trust them yet, so she decides to keep this development to herself. "We're going to have to have a talk about this later."
"Oh, we will. Promise." says Armin, with a smile that definitely does not belong to a naĂŻve farm boy.
And that's how RNG led to a great party dynamic of Armin surreptitiously using magic in various encounters, often in ways that only Tayore sees, while the rest of the party remain blissfully unaware of his magic ability. At the same time, this slightly older Armin is far less naĂŻve, having recovered memories from the years he was re-aged through, allowing for more character development.
10/10, would RNG again. #DDBStyle
This reminds me of my first character death. I was playing as a dwarf bard named Bludgion Kermudgion, and our party was on our way to deliver a magic club that I was holding onto personally "for safe keeping". This was one of our first few sessions and we were level 3. Only half the party showed up for this session but we played anyway, a mistake I would soon regret.
Our carriage was attacked by a barlgura. It knocked our carriage on it's side, knocking our absent player's characters unconscious. It was me, our elf ranger, and our warlock (I forget what race they were). We had one round of combat, and then the monster turned invisible. To even the playing field, our ranger cast Fog Cloud. Under cover of fog, I climbed on top of the fallen carriage and waited to attack. When it came close enough, I jumped off and hit it with the magic club. But alas, even with the club's bonuses, I did mediocre damage. And alas, the barlgura turned to me and said "there it is", and promptly smacked me into the carriage.
I was down, and alas, the dice were against me that day. If I remember correctly, my first death save was a natural 1. I failed my second (and last) roll in the last round of combat before my teammates killed the monster. I was fully dead. Like I said, our party was level three and only a few sessions in. No high level spells to resurrect me, and no resources to pay someone else to do it.
The next session, my tiefling necromancer (simply known as Captain) ran into the party on his way to meet Bludgion, his old shipmate from their pirate days. Captain still lives to commit shenanigans to this day.
#DDBStyle
#DDBStyle that moment when your super shy and peaceful firbolg cleric rolls a natural 20 on it's attack, making for a preeeeetty gnarly guiding bolt, finishing of a singing lich. (yep, you read that right) I'm not gonna say who that lich looked like, but I'll say it was a christmas special one-shot and all I wanted for christmas was that natural 20.
#DDBStyle We were playing a dads and kids game and one of the kids, who was playing an assassin, was charmed by an evil wizard unbeknownst to the rest of the party. The charmed assassin turned on the party at the most unexpected point and got a nat 20 on a sneak attack nearly permanently killing the party's cleric. The table went into a complete roar at the moment and kids loved it.
#DDBStyle
My most memorable roll was when my forest gnome wizard found herself in an arm wrestling competition. With a height of 3'1 and an athletics modifier of 0 I had very low expectations for the encounter. I held my breath as I made the roll, prepared for utter failure... Only to land a Nat 20. My little gnome broke the competitions wrist and was well rewarded for it.
#DDBStyle
A tiefling shadow sorcerer in my group is little brotheresque to my aasimar paladin and was trying to keep up in a physical contest we were being put through. When it came time for a deadlift aspect, guess who got the natural 20? The scrawny sorcerer made everyone proud of his gains that day.
A natural 20 for grip strength saved our whole party from careening off of a mountain in one of our last sessions. I do not feel the need to climb mountains any time soon.
#DDBStyle
Party was fighting in the first real dragon fight of the campaign. We entered into the cavern that made up the dragon's temporary lair, and got ambushed with the breath weapon. Most of the party managed to hold on by a thread, but I went unconscious immediately. My turn came up and I held my breath as I rolled my first death save. Natural 20. Stood up and threw a guiding bolt at the dragon, which enabled the party's paladin to land a strong smite against the dragon on his turn.
I gotta say I have an odd tendency of rolling Nat 20 death saves.
#DDBStyle
My character had entered this contest, and he needed to write an eloquent but deceptive letter on a public message board. Unfortunately he rolled a Nat 1 and the folks at the DNDBeyond message board realized that this post had only been written for their #DDBStyle contest... :)
But seriously, there are too many moments to count.
My mind immediately jumps to the first (and only) character I've ever had die. I was playing a Half-Orc Bloodhunter in Waterdeep Dragon Heist and I was attacked by an intellect devourer. I got a nat 1 on the brain eating save... #DDBStyle
I rolled to take a short rest with my eyes open. I rolled a one and fell asleep. When I woke up a goblin had grabbed me from behind and then slit my throat.
#DDBStyle
First session of dnd ever, I joined in on a campaign that my friends were in the middle of and were heading in to fight a young red dragon. I was a rogue and one of my very first attack rolls was a Nat 20. Rolling all those dice felt so good. #DDBStyle
Thinking of a time where it all depended on the dice is when my Gnome bard and his party were battling a young black dragon and are hits were doing nothing.
then Bel’Enorios my Bard decided that it would be a good idea to knock the dragon out of the sky with Tasha’s Hideous laughter....
nat 20 and the dragon fell from the sky laughing non stop as my party and I hit it till it died...