When the dice are against you... your worst dice rolls ever

[Grogg of the North]

We were attacked by an ooze and I attacked my my maul. I rolled a 1. Okay, fumble check ... another 1. Reflex save now? Oh, another 1. Oh look I just crit'd myself.

Currently my barbarian believes that the hammer is possessed by evil spirits and refuses to use that weapon. I should have thrown the damn thing into the swamp.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

Mine was in Rolemaster. Fate coming around hard. Two rolls.

I was playing a sorcerer, was 4th level (I think - maybe 5th). Didn't have any direct damage spells, and I was getting charged by a guy with a War Maul. I hit him with a Stunning spell - took 3 rounds to cast (rolemaster spell rules) and hit him. He rolled really well and saved.

Then he hits me. Really solid hit. Then rolls a 100 on the E Crush Crit. Dead character.

Up until this point, he was never hit in combat before.

 

[dagger]

Save vs Dragon Breath
1

Save for Leather Armor
really low, fail

Save for Bag of Holding under Leather Armor
1

Save for Helm of Brilliance that was inside Bag of Holding
*nuclear explosion*

Roll up new character.

 

[Croesus]

Roughly 20 years ago, when Batteltech first came out. Three friends and I are running a quick combat, each person with one medium mech. One player has a Phoenix Hawk. As soon as the game starts, he charges toward my mech. When I can act, I attack his mech with medium laser or some such.

Roll hit location: 2 (head shot - mech decapitated)

We decide this is too quick and easy, so we agree to re-roll.

Roll hit location: 2 (head shot - mech decapitated)

At this point we agree the gods have decided and play something else for the rest of the night.

 

[KDLadage]

A story I have told before. This is the best I can recall the events...

In a Blood Bowl League, my team (The Arborians) was a team of elves. I was playing the Iron Hammer, a team of dwarves. The weather for the game was rolled: Heat Wave.

The rules for this weather state that each team needs to roll a d6 for each player to see if that player is well enough (not suffering from heat exhaustion) to play. My team had 16 players, the dwarf team had a roster of 13.

I rolled eleven 1s. Yes, I had 11 players I could not field. The Dwarves rolled one or two 1s as I recall, so they could put a whole field (11 players) out. In under three turns of the drive, I had three dead (not injured, dead) players, and two incapcitated. The Iron Hammer scored.

Next drive I rolled (of my eleven available players) nine 1s. The Iron Hammer rolled no 1s... The two players I could field attempted to avoid the dwarves, hoping they would score and allow us to move onto the next drive. But since both my throwers were on the field, they chased them down and killed them both.

When I rolled seven (?) 1s on the third drive, I forfieted the game. The losses my team suffered were so devestating in that one game, I was effectively eliminated from my division. After that, most of my friends claimed I had "elf curse" where dice would treat me poorly if I were playing elves in any game. Thus far, this has panned out as mostly true...

 

[renau1g]

I had a memorable moment with the very first adventure I ever ran: N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God. The big boss in this adventure is a naga, which wreaked havoc among the characters resulting in four deaths. Feeling generous - and not wanting to demotivate the all-new players - I graciously gave them four scrolls of Raise Dead. Back in the 1e days you had to roll your Resurrection Survival chance in order to actually survive being raised. The percentage chance depended on your Con and fell in the 90+% range.

The first player (96%) rolled - a 98.
The second player (98%) rolls next - a 99.
The third player (99%) rolls next - a 100.

The most horrible series of rolls I encountered in 30 years of gaming...

I had a similar experience in 2e. The DM decided to use Psionics in the campaign and as a result we all had a chance to have wild psionic abilities. It was affected by race IIRC and of our 5 PC's, 3 ended up rolling over 96 to end up with the powers. I rolled like 90-something on the follow-up roll to see what powers we ended up with. The DM kindly requested that I re-roll as it was some wildly overpowered result.

As for the crappy side of things.... I did have a PC I played here in a PbP, a wizard in 4e. He missed on his first 8 attack rolls (all below 10 IIRC), that was super fun

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Roughly 20 years ago, when Batteltech first came out. Three friends and I are running a quick combat, each person with one medium mech. One player has a Phoenix Hawk. As soon as the game starts, he charges toward my mech. When I can act, I attack his mech with medium laser or some such.

Roll hit location: 2 (head shot - mech decapitated)

We decide this is too quick and easy, so we agree to re-roll.

Roll hit location: 2 (head shot - mech decapitated)

At this point we agree the gods have decided and play something else for the rest of the night.

I have been that guy myself.

And in another game- Mekton- all the PCs, regardless of their overall skillset, needed to train as Mecha pilots, including mastering a landing on a "carrier". I crashed the deck 3 times before managing to eke out a barely passable landing. Nearly killed my PC in the process.

...and yes, I AM one of the few, the proud, the gamers who have lost a Traveller PC to death during PC generation.

 

[SteelDraco]

Three examples.

First is a new wild mage PC I had just rolled up. It's the first round of the first combat of the campaign. I cast a spell - wild surge, a 1 in 20 chance. DM asks me to roll percentiles to see what happens, then cackles. Asks me to roll percentiles again. I roll really high. He laughs some more, then starts to explain. Turns out my wild surge was "caster polymorphs randomly" and I had turned into a chipmunk. The second roll was to see if I kept my mind, a rule from earlier editions - there was a chance you wouldn't remember what you used to be when you got polymorphed. I failed it badly. So, first combat action of the campaign, my PC turns himself into a chipmunk and bolts into the woods, never to be seen again.

In another group entirely, it was the first session of a sci-fi game. We were on a ship that was falling apart, and had to escape. I'm a big lug of a fighter, carrying the power source we need to get an escape craft working. We get into a firefight, and one of the genius PCs throws a grenade at my feet, trying to save me from a couple of mooks. Blows up, knocks me and the mooks out, and breaches the power cell I'm carrying. It starts beeping, and after a couple of bad rolls, blows up while the group's tech is trying to fix it, killing him and tearing a hole in the ship that kills another PC. The last PC is left on the unpowered escape pod and eventually eats a bullet before burning up in atmospheric reentry.

Third was in an Alternity colonial fantasy game I was running. One of the PCs was a dhampir, a half-vampire. He's been struggling to control his urges, and gets wounded enough that he needs to feed. It's a willpower check of some kind to resist the urge to kill, and he botches it - a natural 20 in a roll-low system. Kills the guy he was just trying to drain a little bit and leave relatively unharmed. As a dhampir, killing is addictive, so I have him roll another willpower check. Another critical failure. He goes tearing off into the night to find more victims. Ends up killing several people and losing a whole lot of progress on fighting his addiction because of a few bad rolls, almost becoming an NPC.

 

[Stormonu]

As a DM, I've had my share of crappy rolls - which have made the characters giddy to no end. Usually the next week the rolls completely reverse and its seems the bad guys can do no wrong.

The worst I can remember was during a climatic ship-to-ship battle. I had spent a week statting up a terrifying dual-wielding vampiric sorcerer/fighter (ToB-style abilities to boot) with a crew of the dead (a skeleton crew?). When it was time for the bad guy to take the stage, his first two attacks - a 1 and a 2.

The party fighter then tripped him (a 1 for the vampire's opposed Strength roll) and beat on him, the party wizard blasted him (a 1 for the save) and the party thief sneak attacked him (by this time the thief had a feat that let him sneak attack undead). Being reduced to 0 hp, the vampire went gaseous and attempted to flee below deck to his coffin, only to be dispersed to the four winds by the wizard via gust of wind.

Oh yeah, and with a great roll, the party cleric managed to blast the undead crew to smithereens. In about 2 rounds, the party took the enemy galleon and no one on the party's side took a hit point of damage.

So I sent 'em to Ravenloft, knowing how I'd roll next session.

 

[john112364]

...and yes, I AM one of the few, the proud, the gamers who have lost a Traveller PC to death during PC generation.

Yup. I did that myself in one of the first attempts at generating a Traveller character. I was more than a little miffed by that.

We are an elite bunch aren't we.