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Epic Fail / Epic Success

What stories do you have of rolling natural ones or natural twenties to alter an outcome. Or otherwise epically failing or succeeding from fluke rolls.

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I have seen some one argue with a dm only to have a purple worm burst from the ground in front of his character as happens when you anger the god of gods, only for him to roll 3 nat 20's which was a house rule (first and last time it ever came into play) that the creature through miraculous misfortune some how dies. Leveled up a bit to quick and game died shortly after due to continued arguing with out being able to back it up with similar rolls.

Would of made a goods bard tale tho,

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I had a few stories, the first one I was playing a level 1 fighter using a two haded sword. I rolled a natural 20 on a charge and severed a young red dragons head in one blow.

The second my friend was completely out of arrows save one. A blue dragon was attacking a town and we where shooting arrows at it. He declared his last arrow a black arrow and fired, rolling a natural 20 he finished off the dragon with a black arrow.

This other one I read online somewhere, a monk and group was fighting a Kyton. It had set up its chains in a sort of web in a long shaft / staircase. The monk rolled a bunch of 18's and balanced and climbed its way on the chains up to the top. As the monk was running across the last chain towards the Kyton, just about to kick it in the face. The monk rolled a 1 so he fell, then rolled another 1, then another and another. He fell all threw the chains to die from falling damage at the bottom of the shaft.

Rather off topic, but...
Here are some other funny stories I felt I had to share. Source 4

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My stories that come to mind involve percentile rolls.

One I was running an AD&D 2nd E game and a friend wanted to make a Predator character, from the movies. I rolled my eyes and said "Okay, sure, you have a 3% chance, here," and handed him the two ten sided dice. He rolled "01". That taught me to pay more attention to probability, when he was rolling damage for his plasma caster shoulder cannon against the red dragon.


I was playing Chill, a modern horror game, and my character threw a spear at a giant two-headed cylcops cow demon (don't ask) at an amusement park, and I rolled a 01 to hit (out of 73% I think), and did double damage - the GM allowed it, killing the thing, but didn't let me use my die anymore, which was actually one of those almost round single 1D100 dice, instead of 2 1D10's - and I had just bought it there at the convention!


On the bad sides, both in Call of Cthulhu, also horror - one in the 1920s, one in modern times.

My doctor was running for the closing giant stone doors as the Shoggoth tried to grab the rest of the escaping party - I fumbled badly, don't think it was 100 but it was close. The GM just held out his hand, waiting for me to hand over my character sheet, not saying anything. It was worse than him announcing what had happened.


The other, my lawyer, opened the fridge door in the house we were investigating; I fumbled my dodge or whatever roll (99) I was making, and the cleverly placed trap gave me double damage point-blank double barrel 12 gage shotgun to the face. Definitely my shortest-lived character.


OT: Oliron, that's not allowed, guy.

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That story about the percentile die reminds me of a time my character had a 1 percent chance of living from being poisoned by multiple magical potions. I ended up rolling a 01 out of all the crazy things, that was weird. Not only did I live but the 1 percent chance was some random magical thing happens to you, that is beneficial. My character ended up turning into a doppelganger Source 2 , pretty sweet.

Epic Fail / Epic Success

I'm like still waiting to make it through a quest alive. My character like always seems to die before the adventure is over.

Epic Fail / Epic Success

I will remember that Play I am sure I can kill your character.

As a GM I have given many characters a chance of surviving in some very impossible odds by them rolling a 01 or a 02 on percentile dice. I do believe in giving the party chances and if they can roll very well then they make it.

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Long, long ago, my cousin was playing a ninja (out of a Dragon magazine) and had broken into a house to kill/steal something. In an upstairs room, he encountered an assassin who was being paid to guard against stuff like this. The insane string of 1's and 20's by both characters resulted in one of the noisiest battles between two stealthy killers ever. There was broken furniture, windows, etc. I don't remember how it ended, except that neither I nor my cousin could breath from laughing too hard.