[Bad Luck] The Paladin cannot save... :-\

[Thanee]

Our paladin, a halfling no less, just died the second time by failing a save (which he had a 95% chance to succeed on), when he was death attacked by an invisible assassin (the other one was a bodak's gaze some time ago IIRC).

How much bad luck can a single person have with saves... Doh!

The barbarian died, too, mostly thanks to a 46 damage critical hit and a lot of minor damage. In the end a miserable 24 point flame strike catched him with a corner, only since he was still enlarged for the last half round and he failed his reflex save and thus died seconds before we could dimension door to safety. Not the most lucky streak as well, I might say.

And we even had almost won... if not for the other four 8th~10th level NPCs joining the fight, one of which was the aforementioned assassin, where we were already facing some heavy opposition with eight or so NPCs of somwhere between 6th~10th level plus about a hundred 1st level goons (we were inside a goblin palace in a huge goblin city and as soon as we were detected, which was kinda expected, as our party isn't the most stealthy, all hell broke lose).

Our party is 8th~9th level with only four PCs present (barbarian/dragon disciple, halfling paladin + riding dog, bard, sorceress/incantatrix, plus a dead mystic theurge in a bag of holding, who died two sessions ago, because he used shield other on the barbarian and did not care to dismiss the spell, even though the barbarian was almost undamaged, thanks to some fast healing item we found earlier), so we were actually doing pretty good before that.

But well, at least we got some very valuable information, which will help on our quest...

Bye
Thanee

 

[Argent Silvermage]

Back in 1st ed i had a paladin that died from a failed poisen save. he was resurrected but the creatured attacked again and killed him again with poisen. this went on with failed saves until my 15th level paladin was 6th level in the span of 2 hours time. (real time, not game time.)

I loved that Paladin.

 

[FireLance]

Back in 2e days, I had a player who was under the effect of what in 3.5e terms would be a combination of the Luck domain power and a Moment of Prescience cast at 20th caster level (and which I had pegged as a 2nd level spell - I blame my relative inexperience for this stunning error of judgement). He was fighting a wyvern, got hit by the poison stinger and rolled a 1. He invoked the spell, re-rolled his saving throw at +20, and got another 1.

The moral of the story is, even stunning errors of judgement on the part of the DM can't save a character from a 1 in 400 run of bad luck.

 

[hong]

Our paladin, a halfling no less, just died the second time by failing a save (which he had a 95% chance to succeed on), when he was death attacked by an invisible assassin (the other one was a bodak's gaze some time ago IIRC).

How much bad luck can a single person have with saves... Doh!

Thanee. Pal. Buddy. Mate.

Fortune's Favour

... which is basically Dancing With The Fortunes from AEG's Rokugan, with a shiny new occidental name. For those times when you absolutely, positively must not roll a 1.

 

[Thanee]

Nice. That's not a bad feat to have, at all. Always liked Luck domain, too.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Hand of Evil]

One of the stories I have heard was back in the days of 1e, they were travelling along a passage and came to a gelatinous cube that they could go around, which they did not wanting to waste material on the thing, only to later run into combat with a group of drow, the fight turned bad and the parties thief, weak and wounded, took off running. The DM asked three times, how fast he was running and if he wanted to stop...he ran directly into that gelatinous cube.

 

[Feathercircle]

I had a paladin... well, paladin-equivalent is more accurate... who could not make a Spot check to save her life. Literally. She once fell off a boat when it was hit by a displacement sort of spell because she failed the check so badly. Even after shifting into hawk form (this is where the "equivalent" comes in...), with a racial +8 to the check, she STILL failed it.

Although none of these are as pathetic, I think, as the Ranger/Arcane Archer I witnessed who spent half the time being unable to hit the broad side of a barn.

Some players are just snake-bitten. See if you can talk them into rolling their dice differently somehow, or failing that, have someone else be the "designated roller" for them.

 

[Darklone]

Snake bitten fits. We had a fighter in our group who owned a +2 longsword (snakey sword) that slowed opponents... or hit himself and slowed him when he rolled a 1.

We had NO major battle without him rolling a 1 as his first attack. Till he donated the sword at a temple and bought a puny +1 longsword.

 

[iwatt]

Some of my players are semi-snake bitten. The party barbarian went through aspectacular 6 rounds rolling 1s. Against Orcs Warriors he should have stared to death

But dice really are random. You should have seen him crit his way singlehandedly through the last battle in The Forge of Fury. While the rest of the party tried tyo ave a drowning cleric.

In my case, my characters only fail saves when they have a 95% chance to succeed. And they alaways succeed when I have a 95% chance to fail. Thes the breaks I guess

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I have a player in my group who's playing a chamption of death (from AU) in a DnD campaign. Some minor changes had to be made.

He has rolled good Initiative (from 1st through 4th level) maybe three times in his career. He's rolled 3 6's in a row, on a day when he rolled 7 6s in 20 dice rolls (and, I think, never rolled above a 12). He shuffles dice, too, so it's not like he has low-loaded dice.