Fun with Crits, Has this ever happened to you?

[Telor]

Hello,
I'm DM'ing City of the Spider Queen for a group of characters that are higher than the designed game, so I boosted almost all NPCs by 3 levels... anyway....

At my table, we have strict dice rolling precedures. I built my own poker/DnD table that has deep felted pockets for dice rolling (and a long concave tray to hold your idle dice). Dice are rerolled if they: leave the pocket, hit other dice in the pocket (if any), or are cocked.

The group found themselves up against a male old shadow dragon, his half kir-lanan/half dragon Ftr11 daughter and three Ftr9 kir-lanans. The group was struggling with this encounter but nothing silly was happening, everyone was taking decent hits across the board.

On the 3rd round the monk decided to stay next to the dragon to take advantage of Full Attack on round 4 (he had been pussing out up until this point with spring attack). The dragon decided to go for the unarmored pink squishy thing...

I rolled a 20 when the dragon bit him and confirmed it when I rolled a 17 (4d8+16 dmg). I rolled a 20 for the left claw, confirmed with a 15 (4d6+8). I rolled a 20 for the right claw, confirmed with a 16 (4d6+8). Rolling a 16, I simply hit with the left wing (1d8+4). I rolled a 20 for the right wing, confirmed with an 18 (2d8+8). The next roll, was a 20 as well but it hit one of the d8's that was in the pocket. My last roll for the tail slap was a 19 (2d6+12).

I couldn't contain my excitement for rolling like that and my players couldn't contain their anguish; however, the monk did not die. In fact, they survived the encounter without a single PC death.

I've been gaming for 13 years now and I've never seen a string of rolls like that. I was wondering if anyone else here had a similar story.

None of us will certainly forget the old shadow dragon that criticalled four out of six times. And almost criticalled for five times.

-Telor

 

[Hygric]

I think my luckiest rolls as DM would have to have been 4 Ogre guards with 4 levels of warrior each and greatclubs. A 12th level fighter in +3 mithral full plate armour and other bits. The ogres needed an 18 to hit him. Roll the dice for all four ogres at once: 4 20's. Roll for the conversions: 2 20's, 1 19 and 1 18. 4 crits... Roll damage for the ogres: 42 points, 37 points, 41 points, 38 points (out of a max of 42 on a crit, crit damage being 4d6+18)

The previously uninjured fighter was turned into pate by those four ogres.

Mind you, that character rapidly invested in fortification enchantments on his armour after being brought back from the dead.

 

[NoOneofConsequence]

No crits but what a table

I'm afraid I have no stories of dice even close to yours, but that home made table sounds like a masterpiece. Do you take orders?

 

[Plane Sailing]

Crail the rogue was fighting three wererat rogues. He took an ill-advised 5ft step, and two of the wererats moved in to flank. 20! Critical hit triple damage + sneak attack! Second wererat 20! critical hit triple damage + sneak attack! Crail slumps forwards on 0hp. Third wererat steps forwards. 20! critical hit triple damage!

The player of Crail shrugged his shoulders. "Sometimes the dice just roll against you" he said phlegmatically.

 

[Darkness]

Three low-level (level 1-3 or so) PCs without any magic weapons or arcane spellcasters are fighting an advanced (to 8 HD) barbazu (CR 7+) and are struggling to hurt it (damage reduction 20/+2).

After a few rounds, they have worn it down by quite a bit (to something like 5 of 44 hp) due to some lucky rolls but are themselves hurt pretty badly. Things aren't looking too good.

Then, the orc barbarian attacks and gets a crit.

Damage:

1d12 (greataxe)
+12 (Str 26 due to Rage, and x1.5 StrMod for two-handed weapon)
+1 (Power Attack)
= 1d12+13

x3 for critical: 3d12+39

He rolled something like 12, 10, 10 - for a total damage of, like, 70 damage.
Which would have been enough to drop an unwounded 8 HD barbazu - damage reduction or no...

 

[Barovan]

Well my experience was not as happy as those above....see my involves fumbles (home brew 2nd Ed system).

I am playing a mid level Ork fighter with 3 attacks a round and well we are charging into battle and my turn comes up and I roll confident in my abilities....3 1's! I then proceed to fail all my checks to avoid the fumbles. Well all three fumbles are hit nearest ally! So the cruel DM says roll damage and apply it to the ally. So I roll almost max damage, more then enough to kill the ally. The rub was that the ally was near me and invisible, needless to say she was not happy!

 

[MerakSpielman]

We were using the varient where if you roll a 20 on your critical confirmation roll, you kept rolling as long as you kept rolling 20s. For each 20, you got to roll another die of damage (or more if your weapon is x2 or x3). So the 1st level wizard, out of spells, throws a dart at a Large Monsterous Centepede. She rolls:

20 - 20 - 20 - 20 - 17 --- that's x5 damage!

I forget the damage rolls - they weren't too special - but she did kill the vermin with a single dart!

 

[Ruavel]

Calcryx - I hated that dragon anyways...

my groups most recent and amusing incident came about with a group of level 1's making their way confidently through the Sunless Citadel...

Having promised to return the kobolds' "mascot" alive (on threat of slow, painful death otherwise), when we finally encountered Calcryx we decided that a few good normal damage hits, followed by a subdual should work OK and if he goes below 0 hp, the half-elven cleric can spare cure light... none of use could do massive amounts of damage...

as the combat played out, we cut the peskie little bugger a few times and the DM (unsubtly) leads us to believe that the critter is hurt pretty bad now and so we thought it would soon be time to go for subdual attacks...

Tanis Half-elven steps up to attack, declaring that his should be the last regular hit, then on to the subdual attacks... besides everything will probably OK as long as he doesn't roll a critical hit...

Natural 20...!!! not just once but on the confirmation roll as well...

Amidst the groans of dismay, Tanis' player is heard to say, "Look, it's still going to be OK as long as I don't roll maximum damage", just before he lobs his 2d8 into the air.

Silence fell across the table as we all stared at the pair of 8's he'd rolled, then the DM burst out in laughter... once he'd composed himself, he described in simple actions how the hatchling dragon fell to the ground in two pieces and we began frantic discussions about how to convince the kobolds it really was an accident...

 

[Quixon]

Ok Telor-that Monk DIDN'T die?. With those crits its 10d6+7d8+56 hp's of damage-So just how many does that Monk have? lol.

 

[The Forsaken One]

I'm DMming a Cthulhu game at the moment each sunday from 12:00 to 21:00 and we had 2 moments the last 3 weeks that were kinda funny hehe with the damage and rolls involved.

First was the part on which one of the people just couldn't hit the baddy (he kept on rolling 1's and 2's) and in agitation he took his next shot with his 10 gauge at a simple bodyguard.
he rolled a 20, confirmed with a 19 and rolled crit damage for a 10 gauge shotgun within its first range increment.. *shrug* 9d8 damage.... he damaged the ppor guy for 69 damage while he had 16 hitpoints... aaaahhhhh overkill beep beep.

The other thing was by the same guy with the same shotgun who managed to screw up all his attacks on the big baddy (again) and then shot on a sidekick again.. and rolled: 20, 20, 20... Dead... (bugger had 20 hp).

He is kinda expert at wasting good die rolls