Crowning Rolls of Awesome

[SnowleopardVK]

...That is to say crowning moments of awesome. With dice. Every campaigns got at least one of those moments where the dice fell and everybody agreed the result was amazing. (Well, a lot of them do at any rate) What are yours?

I'd say my current campaign has had three so far.

The first being back in the early levels when I was the group's only healer, and before my teammates ever thought to invest in wands, potions, or a heal skill. My PC was one round away from bleeding to death as my party members spent round after round trying and failing to stabilize her with untrained heal checks. On the round she would have died, I rolled a natural 20 to stabilize. It was the only roll that would have saved her, and the entire party REJOICED. It was looking like we were about to suffer our first death, but we pulled through by amazing luck alone.

The second was a fairly simple moment. Our dual-wielding alchemist (vivisectionist) full-attacked, and rolled max damage for both weapons (one of which also landed a critical hit), all 4 sneak attack dice, and the energy damage of his shocking weapon. Of course he didn't need to roll nearly that high to kill the monster he was fighting, but that attack, and the sheer unlikeliness of that roll is pretty much never going to be forgotten. (I just looked it up, and the probability of what happened happening was apparently about 0.000000004%.)

And the third, was our wizard's first use of fireball. Turning a massive swarm of about a dozen reefclaws into a desperately-fleeing swarm of reefclaws in a single round. It was the first time any of us had ever gotten an arcane caster high levelled enough to actually see a fireball. The fact that he rolled about 50 d6s in one round was simply awe-inspiring to a party newly-arrived at 5th level.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

AD&D, dual classed Fighter/Cleric of Tyr; she is one level short as a Fighter to have 2att/round, just 3att/2rounds. The party was in an evil demiplane, and had just spotted a lich ad some death knights.

She had 2 magic weapons, a Vorpal Sword and a Mace of Disruption...

When the party got into melee, she engaged the Lich. She rolled a nat 20 to hit, and normally, the Mace would trigger...but we're in a demiplane of evil, so such effects were suppressed. To have it actually trigger, I needed another nat 20...which I rolled.

Well, for the Mace to affect the Lich upon triggering, I needed a nat 20...which I rolled, disrupting the lich with a single shot.

My DM was mortified. I asked him if Tyr would take notice of such an improbable act. He said roll a 1 on %ile...which I did.

I asked if this notice would mean Tyr would personally grant me a boon. He said roll a 1 on %ile...which I did.

So the skies opened up, Tyr appeared, granted me one more Fighter level, and disappeared...and from that point on, she got her 2att/round.

 

[Jon_Dahl]

A Runequest-session long time ago:
We were bunch of penniless wanna-be-peasants exploring in countryside on foot.
A couple wild dogs attacked us and one of them critted my character's arm, tearing it off with just one bite. I rolled a "Fort save" and also critted. My character was left standing and he was somewhat calm about the loss of his arm. The dog however was escaping with his arm.

My PC took a knife and throwed it at the dog, critting and killing it. He went to get his arm back. Eventually we managed to reattach it.

 

[Gentlegamer]

AD&D, dual classed Fighter/Cleric of Tyr; she is one level short as a Fighter to have 2att/round, just 3att/2rounds. The party was in an evil demiplane, and had just spotted a lich ad some death knights.

She had 2 magic weapons, a Vorpal Sword and a Mace of Disruption...

When the party got into melee, she engaged the Lich. She rolled a nat 20 to hit, and normally, the Mace would trigger...but we're in a demiplane of evil, so such effects were suppressed. To have it actually trigger, I needed another nat 20...which I rolled.

Well, for the Mace to affect the Lich upon triggering, I needed a nat 20...which I rolled, disrupting the lich with a single shot.

My DM was mortified. I asked him if Tyr would take notice of such an improbable act. He said roll a 1 on %ile...which I did.

I asked if this notice would mean Tyr would personally grant me a boon. He said roll a 1 on %ile...which I did.

So the skies opened up, Tyr appeared, granted me one more Fighter level, and disappeared...and from that point on, she got her 2att/round.

 

[steenan]

I remember not only a single roll, but a whore round of awesome - more than 10 great rolls, from all party members, that left our GM completely shocked.

It was the climax of an old Warhammer campaign, a fight with a powerful demon. And dice gods really blessed us.
I remember my character casting two fireballs with maximum damage rolls, an inquisitor critting with crossbow and getting 4 or 5 rerolls on damage, another character hitting three times with close-to-max damage and dodging a blow that would kill him if it hit. The demon didn't get an opportunity to perform all of its attacks (had 10 or so) - it was dead before a single round passed. We ended the fight that should be nearly impossible to win with one character injured, everybody standing.

 

[SkredlitheOgre]

From a 3E campaign about 10 or 11 years ago. Party is on a boat and I'm the 3rd level Dwarven Cleric. One of the party members is a (secretly) EEEEEEEVIL Elf Ranger and poisons the party. I was the only one to make the Fort save and since I didn't have any poison spells prepared, I went after the evil Ranger. She crits me with her bow, but since I'm a Dwarf and she has Human as her favored enemy, I don't take the extra damage. I fort save again against (house ruled) massive damage (it was close to 20 points after Strength bonus). I chase after her and decide instead of dodging around and through doors that I burst through the wall of the deckhouse. Natural 20 on Strength check. BOOM! Run through the wall and attack the Elf. Critical with a warhammer, knocked her off the boat and into the river. The campaign ended before we found out whether she survived or not.

From a 2E campaign, my party was being chased through a cave system by a pack of dire wolves. Eventually, I make my way up to the top of this mountain/mesa/thing and I'm the only one left, due to bad rolling on our part. I'm lost all of my gear trying to stay ahead of the wolves. I look down over the edge and spot a lake. I say I'm going to jump. DM says that I can pick one number off of percentile dice to take the minimum falling damage. I pick 57. 57 comes up. So, I jump what had to be like 500 feet down into the lake. "You survive! Now, 500 times 1 is...500 hit points of damage." Aw.

 

[Swedish Chef]

1e AD&D - I'm playing a LE Anti-Paladin from the Dragon Magazine article. Party is accosted by a group of knights, things are said by both sides, and blades are drawn. The Paladin of the opposing group charges at me with his sword.

I say to the DM "I spur my horse forward, raise my shield, and I'm aiming my sword for his neck". It's the first ever called shot by anyone in the group (we'd only been playing a few months at this time). The DM pauses while trying to figure out what the modifier on my attack roll should be for a called shot. He and another player start discussing it and looking through rule books. I ask him if I could roll my attack in front of the others while he was deciding. He allowed it (4 other players witnessed).

A natural 20. I sat there with a grin on my face, as our group followed the Nat20 always hits rule faithfully. 5 minutes later the DM looks up and says, "Okay, -8 to your attack roll to aim for his neck". I smiled and said, "That's fine. It doesn't matter. I rolled a natural 20."

The look on his face was priceless. The rest of the table, having waited patiently, high-fived me and there was much rejoicing as we handily routed the rest of the knights after that one roll.

 

[Squire James]

Hm... most of the Awesome moments I was involved in were "group DM derails" in a single AD&D campaign in the mid 80's. We needed good dice rolls to do what we did, but most of it was due to Solid Plans the DM was totally unprepared for! The best example follows:

The story hook was a small horde of orcs, about 100 of them, were out ravaging the countryside. We were 8 characters ranging from level 1 to 3, so we were not supposed to take them head-on. Our party started with hints about where the horde was, but no hints regarding where their lair was. The DM clearly meant us to encounter the horde, follow them back to their lair, kill them piecemeal, and rejoice with level-appropriate piles of treasure.

We met the horde all right, in the aftermath of raiding a caravan. We asked what was in the caravan, and one of the things the DM mentioned was several barrels of oil. One of the 3rd level guys was a magic-user, so our thief got an Invisibility spell and fetched a couple barrels (some orc undoubtedly thinking "Did I just see a barrel move for no apparent reason? Nah!").

From behind a hill overlooking the now-camping horde, we lit the barrels on fire (those barrels of oil burned well back then... it only became "wussy oil" in later editions). The orcs had started plenty of fires, so one more wasn't remarkable. At least, not until we rolled them over the hill and on to their campsite, while the illusionist made a Phantasmal Force of them being Fireballs!

The barrels provided the thermal component missing from the spell, so about half of them perished from failing to disbelieve they were being burned for 5d6 fire damage, and some more perished from a good roll on the 2d6 they were really taking! Our other 6 people charged the 30 or so remaining orcs and slaughtered most of them. I think a few might have gotten away, making us something they used to get their kids to behave... somewhere far from here.

Of course, the DM had to punish us for our success by telling us all their treasure was in their lair (that we had no idea existed at this point). Wait a minute... all these orcs trusted Some Orc Back Home with ALL their money? Apparently so!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Here's one I was on the other side of the screen for:

My players planned (without my knowledge) an ambush of the campaign's BBEG in a marketplace.

Round 1- The Paladin (the statistical and philosophical analog to my Ftr/Clc of Tyr above) walked up talking to to the BBEG politely...and just stabbed at him. He failed his surprise roll, his bodyguards failed theirs. The BBEG rolled a 4 for init, his bodyguards a 5. No PC rolled under a 14.

The Paladin struck 2 times, critted both, maxed one and nearly maxed the other, dropping the BBEG down to about 3HP, whereafter the BBEG failed his save vs massive damage and died. The party got similarly lucky virtually wiping out the guards, and the druid cast a spell turning the party into a flock of ravens that then flew away.

Round 2- I gawp.

 

[gamerprinter]

Round 1- The Paladin (the statistical and philosophical analog to my Ftr/Clc of Tyr above) walked up talking to to the BBEG politely...and just stabbed at him.

Not to judge your game, but unless 'polite murder' is legal - that doesn't sound much like a paladin to me. Using subterfuge to kill someone, I wouldn't allow a paladin to do such without losing their paladinhood. But that's just me. If he was chaotic good, no problem...