Humbling defeats

[Warrior Poet]

I nearly killed most of my group with a pool of water too.

Not a pool, so much, but bodies of water were some of the deadliest things in the world in Chaosium's old Stormbringer game. It's a maritime world, so eventually you're going to get on a boat, which means eventually you're going to be attacked by pirates, which means eventually you're going to fall in the water.

Wearing your armor.

The ocean was deadlier than the gods of Chaos in that game. And when you drowned, your soul ended up with Pyray as a crew member in his dead chaos fleet! FEAR THE WATER!

Warrior Poet

 

[Warrior Poet]

Took a break from DMing, and got mauled by the bear in the forge. From full to negative 23 in one round.

D&D finally got bears right!

Warrior Poet

 

[SJ]

I believe it was in Forge of Fury where our human barbarian was defeated by every animated object in the complex.

Dracomeander beat me to it. That same room, and IIRC, the table specifically, rode roughshod over our party like a fearsome dragon. We lost the gnome rogue, dwarf paladin, and a ranger or two before the DM called mercy on us. Complete humbling.

It was then I realized, so early in the life of 3rd edition, that the random outcome determinator (the d20) manytimes is NOT your friend. And neither are animated things.

 

[BWP]

Anything similar to share?

A different sort of defeat, but humbling enough. In my Midnight game, the PCs are sorting out an Orc camp and come across an orc concubine, chained to the wall for the orc chieftain's pleasure. By this point all the other orcs are dead. One of the players is a Dwarg, an orc/dwarf cross-breed, who by nature hate orcs more than most. He's also a Giantblood (MN Heroic Path) which means he's very, very big -- 8' tall. He decides this is the perfect time to score some cheap laughs by taunting the essentially helpless female orc. He uses his Intimidate skill, for which he has numerous bonuses. His roll: 1. The orc's level check: 20. With one fluid motion, the orc scoops up some of her own filth and throws it at the dwarg. Roll: 20. Smack: right between the eyes.

Blushing bright red, the filth-covered dwarg hurries out of the room, barely controlling his tears as the orc laughs at him, ready to give him a new taunting any time.

 

[Arrgh! Mark!]

I don't know about kittens, but I've been killed by both a pool of water *and* and animated rug.

Not to mention my first character I ever played was criticaled and killed by a goblin. Unarmed Goblin. Unsuspecting.

A party of four adventurers was slaughtered by two rats once. I still don't know how.



I just don't have good luck as a player.

 

[Erratic K]

Wild. Us, too. A remarkable set of circumstances, and a remarkable set of rolls, and we defeated the roper (with the help of a large body of water).

It was the stirges that sent all of us scurrying.

Warrior Poet

The roper bit it against the party I mentioned above. It didn't have enough mobility to get away from the mage who direct damaged it to death as soon as he knew what it was. The mage directed everyone else to stay away from it and shower it with missile weapons.

In spite of tearing through the rest of the encounters, they fear bears now... heheh. Forge of Fury teaches respect for animals. Actually they had some trouble with the black thing at the end... but it was just a good fight.

-E

 

[Saeviomagy]

Interesting how often making house rules (instant kills, critical fails on skill checks...) leads to a TPK or embarrasing defeat, isn't it? Makes you wonder if they're such a good idea, doesn't it?

Hmm - our embarrassing defeat was probably at the hands of some kobolds. Admittedly we WERE 1st level, but still - the fact that 3 kobolds overcame and captured 8 characters is pretty pathetic. And it's not like they DID anything special - they rolled well, we rolled poorly, and that's it, game over man.

Just as well our DM let us play out the prison break! One of the most fun games I've had in ages.

 

[Warrior Poet]

Interesting how often making house rules (instant kills, critical fails on skill checks...) leads to a TPK or embarrasing defeat, isn't it? Makes you wonder if they're such a good idea, doesn't it?

It's been my experience that everything already in place is quite enough to do plenty of damage. It wasn't a house rule that brought my barbarian down to -37 hit points, it was just a standard critical hit, regular multipliers, no special "three 20s in a row" kind of thing. But our games tend not to have too many houserules.

As SJ noted above, sometimes the d20 is not your friend. We like to refer to the Gods of Dice and Irony (GDI). They're always listening. And sometimes, they like the kobolds better than they like you.

Warrior Poet

 

[jmucchiello]

It was quite embarressing, in addition to losingthe ten gold coins.

Should have been at least 80 gold.