Let's describe some tragic and horrible Critical Failures

[psychognome]

The very first time our group played the Middle Earth Roleplaying Game, we noticed that this system had a way of beng either very deadly or very easy on the player characters.

The group was facing a few orcs, and the half-elven ranger snaps his bowstring, the elven mage fails at concentrating on his spell and bites off his tongue, and swallows it. Meanwhile, the weak halfling rogue has just managed to decapitate one of the orcs.

By the way, these stories have inspired me to use the Good Hits and Bad Misses charts... I think you can still find them on the Paizo Publishing site. I'll of course have to modify them a bit, so as to not to make them too deadly.

 

[NiTessine]

In a former campaign of mine, there was a wizard/rogue called Azholf Stolf. He had a miserable luck with his crossbows. During their first adventure, three light crossbows malfunctioned and broke in his hands. Seeing as he was supposed to be something of an artificer, this was ironic. The adventure's big climax was a fight between two criminal gangs, with PCs helping the other. Stolf managed to shoot one of his allies dead. Way to go, man.

Stolf later perished in the most famous moathouse of them all.

 

[Moe Ronalds]

One time in a d20 modern comedic game, I was playing a 12-year old geneticist (think Dexter's lab but less Einstein and more Frankenstein) named Eugene, who had twin machetes, a pet illithid, and a watch that would create a clone of him with his exact memories every time he died.

Thing is, the watch was faulty, so I'd roll a d20 to see if he had any sort of weird genetic disfigurement.

I roll a 1.

Result?

Sentient Shrubbery with a love of gene splicing.

 

[Magius del Cotto]

Wow... There are some good ones here. The groups I've gamed with have been incredibly lucky, when it comes to dice, but there are three 'Fumbles' of note that I can think of.
1) Second edition, big bad fighter dude main character played by my brother, and stand in cleric (I was away doing college stuff at the time). Cleric makes a joke about the fighter critically fumbling and impaling him with his (very big) two-handed sword. Two rolls by said fighter later (both nat ones), the cleric is, indeed, impaled by the fighter's two handed sword. Even though he's across the (reasonably large) room. Guess it doesn't pay to make jokes like that...
2) About a week ago, my group was in a free-for-all against each other. My cover has been taken away, so I open up on the were-cheetah psionist. Hit, miss, miss, crit fumble. I end up falling on my sword and take full damage. Saved by the field changing and hiding me in an adobe building (where I stood up, ripped the sword out of my own gut, and then healed myself).
3) Same fight, about 2 rounds later, I again have no cover, and I again open up on the psionist. Miss, miss, hit, miss, miss, crit fumble. Both my swords go flying into the air. Fortunately, with the fact that I have quick draw, I was allowed to draw my lightsabers (long story), and press the attack. Hit again, but did 12 damage (DM made it so the weres had DR 15/silver instead of 10).

And those are all the crit fumbles that I can think of. Soem cool crit successes about, but no more crit fails.
Magius out.

 

[Spatula]

Please tell me there was a bard present, to immortalize this beauty in song.

Well, like I said those sorts of occurances were not uncommon in that game. That was the second time during the campaign that that particular crit had come up, actually (the first time it wasn't self-inflicted, though).

 

[DaveStebbins]

I apologize for the length of this, the situation is part of the fun.

OK. The party is about third level. They've located a ventiliation shaft opening up above the main worship room of the evil temple hidden in the swamp. They decide to see what will happen if they drop several casks worth of oil into the room and ignite it. Then, in the commotion they will either go in the hidden entrance they've found (assuming the guards have gone inside to help fight the fire) or hang out there and ambush everyone that comes out (fleeing the fire).

For this group, the plan is a pretty good one. It's simple and effective. In another thread I responded that some groups over-plan, other groups never plan and just wade in swinging, while my group combines both styles by spending hours coming up with a complicated plan and then usually, once the first dies rolls, they forget the plan and just start swinging.

So they approach the ventilation shaft, every character with a small cask of oil strapped to his back instead of a backpack. Unfortunately, the path they choose leads to another hidden, guarded entry. The three guards see them and two advance to hold them up while the third looks like he'll flee inside to summon help. The front row advances to attack the first two guards. To stop the other guard, the cleric in the back decides to cast produce flame. Can you guess where this is going?

So he throws his flaming missile and rolls a one. In my group, the vast majority of ones are just plain misses. You pretty much have to follow it up with another one to hurt or trip yourself or a twenty to do something to a comrade. So he follows it up with... a natural 20. I have him roll to see which of the front line fighters he's hit in the back. It's the guy who also DMs (we rotate). He doesn't seem too concerned, "OK, what's that do, d6+3?"

I say sure and roll the minor damage. Then I ask him to roll a saving throw for the cask of oil on his back. His face registers that he's just remembered it. Kaboom!!! His PC becomes a six-foot tower of flame, screaming and rolling on the ground. The players are rolling on the floor (with laughter). The other PCs manage to extinguish him and drop all three guards, but the incident goes down in local legend...

 

[Pillars of Hercules]

Dyno-mite!

I say sure and roll the minor damage. Then I ask him to roll a saving throw for the cask of oil on his back. His face registers that he's just remembered it. Kaboom!!! His PC becomes a six-foot tower of flame, screaming and rolling on the ground. The players are rolling on the floor (with laughter). The other PCs manage to extinguish him and drop all three guards, but the incident goes down in local legend...

This reminded me of our group's legend. It was Call of Cthulhu and the party was investigating cultist doings in silver mines in Peru. Being CoC, we found horror beyond our powers to confront. The four survivors fled toward the surface pursued by Star Spawn of Cthulhu.

Our party had learned that dynamite rawks in CoC - does enough damage to sometimes actually hurt something and can be used to cover escapes if nothing else. Thus, several fleeing PCs pulled out dynamite as they ran. In CoC, you must first light and then throw. The PCs are having trouble lighting the dynamite fuses at a full run, so one announces he's stopping, turning to face the spawn, lighting and throwing a dynamite stick.

He no longer has to roll to light, but does have to roll to throw. You guessed it -fumble city. With a wicked grin, the GM looked up and stated that, as the PC reared his arm back to throw, the dynamite slipped from his hand and into his backpack - which WAS FULL OF MORE DYNAMITE!

Earlier, we had all specifically stated the great lengths we went to in order to secure our packs for some steep climbing down a cliff face, so dropping the pack and running was not an option. With fear in his eyes, the fumbler looked to the rest of the party and the following exchange occurred:

Fumbler: Guys, help!

GM: What do you do? The dynamite goes off in one round.

PC1: I run.

PC2: I run.

PC3 (fumbler's real life gf): I run.

Fumbler took 99d6 damage. Luckily, he brought down the mine tunnel and sealed the eldritch horrors deep in the earth.