Incompetent BBEGs

[Immak Antunel]

So, there's this hill giant tribe that the party (a barbarian, a sorceress, a unicorn companion, and an npc stone giant) have to take out. Since they know they can't win a stand-up fight, the barbarian and sorceress attempt to sneak up on the chieftain and kill him, thereby demoralizing the tribe into leaving.

Two invisibility spells, a scythe critical, and a scorching ray later, the cheiftain is down just in time for his honor guard to come in and see two humans standing over his grotesque corpse. They run. The tribe disperses (for now) and it's a job surprisingly well done.

The giant cheiftain, however, had been a cannibal, and so his corpse rises as a 24HD ghast. The vengeful undead tracks down the barbarian and her unicorn, and ambushes them with thrown rocks. An impressive string of critical fails later (D6- 1-2= hit self; 3-4=drop weapon; 5-6=hit ally) the giant-ghast has succeeded only in dropping a boulder on his own head, and fumbling with his enchanted greatsword as if it were a greased pig, while the PC has reduced him to less than half HP. The giant gets frustrated and grabs the barbarian, paralyzes her, and throws her into the distance, but the unicorn finishes him off, trots over to the barbarian, and revives her.

Combats like this make me wish I had the commitment to write a story hour. Anyway, has anyone else ever had a climactic fight turn silly/easy because of poor rolling?

 

[Zendragon]

Plenty of times. In the first example I would reward the party for great planning and execution.
For the second encounter, I would have remembered the critical fumble and used it later in the encounter. Let the BBEG get in a few solid hits and really scare the party. Then when he is about dead, he could lose his weapon then. I know that there are purists out there (and you know who you are) who will be shocked by this manipulation. But I think it makes for better game play and the party will feel a sense of accomplishment.

 

[Graf]

You included a critical fumble table with wildly improbable events.
It’s basically scripting for something like that to happen.

(I’m glad you got what you wanted, and it does sound like a memorable scene, but you make it sound like you were a passive actor in the whole thing… you made up and added a house rule that guarantees silly/unrealistic behavior; so its not really like it just “happened” to you.)