I guess that player was a particularly unlucky guy.
It's been my experience that fate will just intervene occasionally and dictate that
this character is going to be unlucky or
this character is going to be the luckiest bastard on two legs no matter how the player's luck normally runs.
One example, from Gurps, in a Gurps Fantasy game and setting, running thru, though we didn't know it at the time, what would lead up to the DMs conversion of the Dragon Mountain boxed set. The player didn't have a history of being fate's favored in the past, for good or ill...
Malaeis was a wizard, focusing on the air college of spells, lightning magics in particular. He had a soldier's background, and was reasonably skilled with a blade, though at his heart, he was a spell-slinger. Lady Luck
hated Malaeis with a burning passion; that or she found it very amusing to torment him endlessly. Not exactly sure which. Now, in Gurps, you need to roll to see how well you cast a spell, with your margin of success being directly related to your skill level. Malaeis, being rather focused in his area of study, was pretty darn good at his lightning spells. Until he had to cast them. I have never seen so many critical failures in the course of my gaming career, as I have with Malaeis. His lightning bolts would go astray, arcing into party members, his shocking touch spells would backfire, destroying the weapon that he intended to channel the jolt thru. His ball lightnings would go off at his feet, rather than on the target. Even his critical successes were critical failures that were cleverly disguised. The most memorable of which being - the party is trying to take care of a large group of Sahudese diplomats; a visiting clan lord and his retinue, who are in town to negotiate a trade agreement with the man who hired us. Sahudese culture is sort of a pan-asian melange with very strange and very interesting customs. At one point, Alec, one of the party's swordsmen, offends one of the lord's two bodyguards, and the bodyguard calls for a duel to satisfy his honor. The duel is to take place at sundown, before the rest of the clan. Alec is nearly pissing himself, he's so nervous. Jiro, the man he offended is regarded as a legend if you take the other Sahudese' word on the matter. Malaeis offers to enchant Alec's sword with a Lightning Blade enchantment - and when he does so, rolls a critical success. Electric blue runes burn themselves into the length of the blade - and the only character in the party who reads runes is nowhere near by. Alec is advised not to draw his sword unless he is deadly serious, because the enchantment will trigger when it's next brought forth.
Fast forward to that evening, Alec and Jiro are standing in front of the assembly, Alec arrayed in his battle gear... Jiro wearing only a light kimono and trousers, his sword at his side. They square off, bow, and the lord then stands and announces that the duel will be... a cooking contest. Alec heaves a sigh of relief, knowing that he can lose the cook-off, let Jiro's honor be restored, and all the while keep all his body parts in their normally prescribed locations. After the duel is over, and everyone's happy (and well-fed to boot), Alec is conversing with another party member out back, talking about how things could have gone, etc. "Yeah, Malaeis even enchanted my weapon, to give me a leg up. Check it out." Alec says, drawing out his broadsword to show the other pc.
The runes on the blade are visible for only a split second before they erupt into a 36' foot-wide, 6-dice ball of elecric whoopass - to which Alec is immune, mind you - that fries the everloving bejesus out of the other character. Leaving him smoking and twitching on the ground, nearly dead. A powerful effect, to be sure, and had it gone off in the middle of the assembly it would have slain nearly every member of the clan present in an instant.
We actually had to keep a running tally of how many times each character in that campaign had been zortched by a mis-fired spell of Mal's. We refered to this brotherhood of shared suffering, as the Thunder Club.
