D&D 5E Share your nat 20 stories

[Thateous]

Share your nat 20 stories. Non D&D stories accepted.

4^th edition: A noble singled out the group in a marketplace and started randomly spouting pompous nonsense at us. When the crowd gave space he drew on us forcing initiative. I was playing an elven ranger who hated anyone who gained their status through birthright so when I won initiative I pulled no punches. Confounding Arrows to the face. 3 hits all nat 20s. Something around 120 damage. Dropped him like a rock. Latter the DM revealed that there were more baddies waiting in the crowd to jump in but changed their mind after my ‘display’.

Star Wars D20: We arrived back at our ship to find a squad of elite storm troopers waiting for us. Initiative was rolled and our Consular Jedi went first. He decided to Move Object on the ship and rolled a nat 20 beating the DC to move the ship, DM ruled it crushed them all.

 

[Savage Wombat]

My daughter's 1st (2nd?) level sorceress in our PotA game. We're losing badly to this necromancer, and she's one of the last two standing. She's got one action before he attacks her, and isn't sure whether to run or cast Chromatic Orb. I tell her to give it a shot - she could always roll a crit. One nat 20 later and the wizard is down and smoking.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Once, my fighter in a 4th edition game had a stupid plan to jump into the middle of a bunch of demons and attack all of them. The attacks went okay, but naturally the demons all ganged up on my fighter and beat him down to 0 HP, to which my fellow players expressed worry and I said as cockily as possible "Nah, I'm cool. I've got this." Then my next turn came around, I got a nat 20 on the death save, then someone pumped a bit of healing into me, and next time I had the chance I attacked and rolled a nat 20 there too, killing off one of the demons with the crit damage.

Another time, I was playing a mage (in the same 4th edition game as above, though I don't remember if this was the wizard or the sorcerer since I ended up playing both in the same campaign) and used some lightning spell I can't remember the name of... but there were 3 hobgoblins in the area of effect, and I hit all three while getting nat 20s on 2 of the attack rolls. They survived... though my character didn't for much longer.

Then there was long before either of those tales, when my group was still playing 3.5. A magical effect had caused the factotum in the party to attack the fighter in the party with their rapier. The fighter player made some comment along the lines of "No big deal, she probably won't even hit." The factotum player then rolled a nat 20. At the time, in fact this very instance is what resulted in the group abandoning the rule in question, the group had voted to use the optional triple critical threat = instant kill rule, so when the critical confirmation roll also landed on a nat 20, a third roll was made - it was an 18, but when using a rapier that is good enough, so the fighter died instantly.

 

[Draegn]

A wizard/illusionist once made a saving throw versus an evil devil summoning mage's retributive strike with a natural 20, he still ended up with -564 HP.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Most of the time I DM, so I rarely get to play. I feel kinda bad about rolling nat 20s when I DM.

But my favorite nat 20 story is at Gencon 2014, playing Castles & Crusades. We’re facing down the big bad necromancer and his hell hound servant. He’s clearly starting to summon some undead as well. On my first round of combat, I roll a nat 20 on my attack and my half-orc cleric one-hit-kills the necromancer. I was definitely more shocked than the CK.

 

[iserith]

An excerpt from the transcript of my Summer at the Lake campaign. In the climactic scene of the campaign, the PCs fight the balor Charmachnar on a horrific battlefield. Tarandir is the party's paladin.

Tarandir regains his senses, a new cold hate kindles within him. Tears sting his eyes.
Tarandir: I will end every last one of you foul creatures!
Tarandir hacks and slashes with his Holy Avenger!

(Critical hit! 31 to hit against Charmachnar's AC 19 for 22 slashing damage plus 11 radiant damage and another 25 radiant damage if the target is a fiend or undead.)​

Tarandir smites his foe!

(Tarandir expends one paladin spell slot to deal 36 extra radiant damage to Charmachnar, plus 4 more radiant damage if the target is undead or a fiend.)​

Charmachnar stumbles back and roars in pain as the holy avenger bites deep into its demonic flesh!
iserith (DM): (A creature that touches the balor or hits it with a melee attack while within 5 feet of it takes 15 fire damage.)
Tarandir presses the attack!

(28 to hit against Charmachnar's AC 19 for 14 slashing damage plus 2 radiant damage and another 17 radiant damage if the target is a fiend or undead.)​

iserith (DM): (A creature that touches the balor or hits it with a melee attack while within 5 feet of it takes 15 fire damage.)
For the first time in a thousand years, the balor knows fear as fire rains down from its wounds.
Bagdolin seems to slowly come around at the sight of Tarandir's heroic onslaught.
Tarandir falls back from the balor to avoid the flames on the ground.
Charmachnar brings its lightning blade down upon Tarandir as he backs away!

(Critical hit! 34 to hit against Tarandir's AC 20 for 54 slashing damage plus 34 lightning damage. If the balor scores a critical hit, it rolls damage three times, instead of twice.)​

 

[Sacrosanct]

Back in 2e, I was playing a blade bard. Rolled two 20s in a row for both attacks. I was stoked, only to have the DM look at me and say, "Spark, spark." :/

 

[Jaelommiss]

Running PotA. Party comes across a number of cultists standing in a circle around a large fire, performing ritual sacrifices by throwing people into the flames.

Rogue wants to sneak into the middle of the circle to cut the sacrifices free.
I tell him that he's welcome to try, but that he'd be seen immediately since everyone is looking inwards.
He tries anyway, and rolls a nat 20 on stealth (I didn't ask him to roll).
Rogue gets blown apart by a half dozen fireballs.

 

[ChrisCarlson]

Back in 3.0's heyday I played a rather ridiculous barbarian/psychic warrior/weapon master hodgepodge of classes (there were a few others sprinkled in - we were probably around 10th level at the time) who used a nasty warpick (so capable of doing x5 crit damage).

One of the campaign's main recurring villains was a scary, badass anti-paladin. In one of the set-piece finale encounters he shows up to deliver a mocking soliloquy before skirting off while his small army of minions dealt us the big pain. But I would have none of that. Rolling well enough on initiative to going first, I said "screw it" and charged him. He was somewhat far enough away that I guess he felt safe. But I had a high movement rate - I was very mobile.

I manage to just barely get up to him with my charge attack and sure enough, crit! Between power attacking, charge, and the x5 crit multiplier, the damage was so obscene I put him into single digit HPs with one blow. The look on the DMs face mirrored what I could only imagine the villains would have looked like: shock, horror and disbelief.

That anti-paladin tucked tail and fled straight away. And his minions were a bit dejected and demoralized by what they just saw. We mopped them up rather handily after that.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I was DMing for two nephews, ages (at the time) of 8 and 12. I let them both make level 6 characters, and the 8 year old was playing a Halfling Rogue.

He rolled a 1 trying to climb to the roof of a mausoleum* and was crestfallen that he had "failed". I asked him to describe *why* he fell and he thought for a moment and said with a grin, "Because I slipped on wet moss!" A minute later he said, "That was fun."

(Yes! Another roleplayer in the making!)

10 minutes later he rolled a natural 20 sneak attacking a ghoul, then proceeded to roll a positively absurd number of 6's on all those dice, with one 5 and one 4. We turned it into a math exercise and computed the odds of that roll; I think it was something like 1 in 5,000.

A minute later he said, "The thing about slipping on the moss was fun, but making that ghoul explode was REALLY fun." (Later he excitedly described it to his mom in startlingly graphic detail.)