D&D 5E Share your nat 20 stories

[feartheminotaur]

Our 3.5 DM did adventure arcs in 5 level increments. After 20 levels, we faced the Ancient Red Dragonlich that was behind the Far Realm invasion of the Material Plane. Contact with the Gods cut off as the Astral Sea was sundered by the lich's machination, the armies of the combined world destroyed and scattered, our heroes entered his lair down to mere hours to save the world.

Tattered and beaten, they faced their foe - he had to keep them occupied for mere rounds before his plans came to fruition and couldn't be reversed. The party rogue, as his friends fell around him, pulled out a puny +1 slaying arrow, and needing to hit...rolled a Nat 20. The Dragonlich roared, and, the DM rolled his save. Nat 1.

We cheered. The DM cleared his throat. The portal was still opening! The cleric hurled his Holy Avenger at the portal...and another 20. The portal exploded in raw energy, the world was saved, campaign over.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Here's one I omitted early because it is actually a Nat 1 story, but in the context that it meant great success on the player character's part so it's kind of the same thing.

The party were looking for the pieces of a magical device they needed to assemble. They had a magical door that they could think of what they wanted, open the door, and usually see where to get whatever it was on the other side, gating to that location if they passed through the door. So one of the characters thinks about the pieces, and opens the door.

Beyond the portal, the party sees sweltering jungle, and the immense form of a carnivorous dinosaur... with the piece of the magical device stuck between a couple of it's flesh-rending teeth. Two of the characters start to deliberate about how to handle this situation, maybe drug some meat and toss it through, maybe just leave this piece alone for now and try back later. The third member of the party just strides through the portal, answering "It's fine." to the other two now shouting along the lines of "What are you doing?! Get back in here! That thing will kill you!"

The player says "I'm going to cast ghoul touch, walk over there, and touch the dinosaur." I check the details, say "Alright, sure. You'll need to win an initiative roll to get the spell off before it has a chance to chomp you, and it'll need to roll a 1 in order to fail the save and be paralyzed." The player says "Yeah, okay." and proceeds to win the initiative roll.

Then I toss the d20 and everyone just hangs in stunned silence for a moment, while the player of the suicidally-confident wizard grins smugly, as the die lands "1" and declares that yes, a 2nd level spell cast by a 3rd level necromancer really is all it takes to utterly defeat a terrifying, towering, killing machine.

 

[WarpedAcorn]

I was playing a Barbarian/Cleric in 3.0 / 3.5 (can't remember) and our party had just encounter an advanced scouting party of Goblinoids in an abandoned tower. The fight started turning in our favor, so the lead Hobgoblin went to flee through the door across the room. I was dual wielding hand axes, and I asked the DM if I could throw the axe that far (it was across a decent size room filled with debris). He said it would be at a penalty (can't remember how much)...rolled a 20, DM said to roll to confirm the crit...20, DM said to roll to confirm auto kill...20. Three friggin 20's in a row!!! Never had that happened before or since then. As for the Hobgoblin, his head, along with my axe, were firmly fastened to the stone wall. >: )

 

[jrowland]

nat20? What about nat 1:

5E D&D:
Cha (persuasion) to convince king he's doing the wrong thing ==> Nat1
Hey! I am a halfling, I'll re-roll that! ==> Nat1
I have inspiration! ==> Nat1
I also have the Lucky Feat ==> Nat1
King throws me out of the kingdom.

True Story. The worse part is I am playing a Diviner, but I was all out of Portent dice. Needless to say, my lucky diviner didn't see that coming.

 

[Rhenny]

I was DMing a session of PotA, and the party was only a Gnome paladin, a Gnome rogue and a Half-Orc fighter all 3rd level. They came across some Featergale Knights fighting a few Earth Cultists, including one who was riding a bullette. The party joined the knights and after two Earth cultists went down, the bullette rider burrowed a tunnel to escape. Well, the Gnome paladin dove into the tunnel to give chase so the others followed. They kept hustling to keep up with the escaping bullette and rider. The rider could attack them, but they could only take opportunity attacks at the bullette. Deeper and deeper into the tunnel, the paladin was hit and started dying. Then the rogue was hit and he died outright. The half Orc killed the bullette, but then he went down. The bullette rider just ran at this point. The paladin stabilized, but it looked as if TPK was imminent. Before dying, the Half-Orc player rolled a nat 20 for his final death save, so he regained 1 hp and was able to carry the two gnomes out of the tunnel.

 

[Rhenny]

I was playing a Barbarian/Cleric in 3.0 / 3.5 (can't remember) and our party had just encounter an advanced scouting party of Goblinoids in an abandoned tower. The fight started turning in our favor, so the lead Hobgoblin went to flee through the door across the room. I was dual wielding hand axes, and I asked the DM if I could throw the axe that far (it was across a decent size room filled with debris). He said it would be at a penalty (can't remember how much)...rolled a 20, DM said to roll to confirm the crit...20, DM said to roll to confirm auto kill...20. Three friggin 20's in a row!!! Never had that happened before or since then. As for the Hobgoblin, his head, along with my axe, were firmly fastened to the stone wall. >: )

Yeah! This reminds me of a 1st edition experience I had about 30 years ago. We also used a similar rule - if you roll a 20 (2x damage) you roll again, another 20 (4x damage) you roll again, and if you roll another 20 it's an auto kill. Well, our party was facing some T-Rex type monster with rider. We were basically in flee mode, but, my wizard threw a dart and did the 3 20s in a row, auto kill on the t-Rex. We erupted with laughter and excitement.

 

[ccooke]

There are many who are of the opinion that, should the players get a natural 20, the effect should always benefit them. This is a perfectly reasonable and valid opinion, of course.

It's just that I do not share it.

I generally rule that a natural 20 (in a situation where critical success actually means something) should indicate that whatever the character wanted to do is successful to the highest extent that it can be in the circumstance at hand.

Let's imagine, for instance, that we have a party of five PCs who are currently fighting two quite tough opponents.
Let's imagine that they are all in a 15' square stone chamber, with locked airtight metal doors.
Let's imagine that the party are chest-deep in (or, in the case of the party dwarf, treading) water.
Let's imagine that the situation is looking quite bad.
Let's imagine that one of the party decides to use an area-of-effect thunder attack.
Let's imagine that said PC decides to enhance it using a daily power (this being a 4e game) that noticably increases the damage of thunder based attacks.

Let's imagine that the PC rolls a critical hit on this attack.

Now, given that thunder is a sonic attack and water is a much better conductor of sound than air, and that sealed stone and metal tend to reflect sound, and that the party are immersed in water in a very tight space...

... it could be said that, while this attack did end the encounter and destroy both of their enemies, the party were extremely lucky that one of them just about managed to stay on the right side of positive hit points to save the rest of them.

 

[Weird Dave]

GaryCon VI, I ran a session of Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga (slightly updated from Roger Moore's original Dragon Magazine article) for AD&D 1E. I had a local baron's daughter taken by Baba Yaga and imprisoned within the hut, so the characters were brought in to rescue her. Surprise! Turns out there were two other interested parties in the baron's daughter, a lich and a drow matron mother, and the characters had to find the daughter before the agents of these two powerful entities did. Wander, wander, wander, lots of exploration, until the party found the daughter at the same time as the lich's envoy did, which was led by a death knight. The characters were 11th level, and the ranger - armed with a sun blade - charged forward, got the initiative, and rolled to hit against the death knight. Natural 20. Rolled damage. Maximum damage. A sun blade does double damage against undead, so we doubled the doubled - and nearly killed the death knight in a single blow. It was amazing.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Some of the rolls in my story aren’t Nat 20’s but they were 18’s and 19’s on very high skill checks, so I think they still fit the theme of this thread.

3.5E Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil campaign.

We’re near the end of the campaign with our PCs around level 13 or 14.

I was playing a Wizard/Loremaster whose shtick was being a little obsessed with knowledge. I had ranks in all the Knowledge skills but, in particular, my Knowledge: Arcana and Knowledge: The Planes skills were out the wazoo. I think I had a base check of +28 for Knowledge: Arcana and +26 for Knowledge: The Planes due to a combination of max ranks, high Int, feats, class abilities and magic items. On top of that, I had a skill trick (Collector of Stories) which gave me +5 to Knowledge checks to help identify whatever we’re up against.

We have a fight vs 2 Iron Golems and some cultists, with 1 cultist clearly the leader. The cultists aren’t much of a threat, but as soon as I see the Iron Golems I know (from a meta-game perspective) that we could be in trouble because they are basically immune to magic and no one in the party has adamantine weapons, so our ability to hurt them is pretty limited.

I rolled to see what I know about Iron Golems and got an 18, making for a total of 51!

Amongst a heap of other mechanical things such as rough AC, hit points, abilities, etc., the DM tells that the Iron Golems can be controlled and these two appear to be controlled by the cultist leader, but that I think it is because of his robes, more than anything else.

A few rounds later the cultist leader and all the cultists are dead, but the Iron Golems are hitting us with almost every attack they make, even when rolling single digits, and are doing a fair amount of damage with every hit. I spend 2 rounds grabbing the robes off the cultist leader, putting them on myself and then commanding the Iron Golems to stop attacking (I think I said something like, “By the Eye of Tharizdun, I command you to stop attacking!”).

DM asks me to roll a Knowledge: Arcana check to see if I can figure out the “right” way to command them. I roll a 19, making for a check of 47 (didn’t get the +5 for Collector of Stories this time) and the Iron Golems stop in their tracks. I then command them to return to their places, which they do. They then stand there, utterly defenceless while the Barbarian spends a few minutes turning them into scrap metal!

Final fight of the campaign versus Prince Imix. I make a Knowledge: The Planes check to find out exactly what we’re up against. Nat 20! So I had a check of 51 to know about Prince Imix, what his strengths and weaknesses were, etc. Given it was the last fight of the campaign, the DM offered me the book with his stat block and said, “Here, look at whatever you want!”

It was still a very tough fight, but at least we didn’t waste actions doing things that would have had no effect on him.

Who knew that simple Knowledge skill could be of such assistance.

 

[The Grassy Gnoll]

Just the other day, running Ravenloft:

At the gypsy encampment, the party is invited to join the gypsies round the fire. One of the gypsies is playing a mournful tune on the violin, accompanied by an accordionist (think the sad accordionist from The Nightmare Before Christmas). They are invited to sit and share a song.

Cue: Performance skill checks.

The party of 4 PCs roll TWO Natural 20s, a 19 and a 15. Me as DM rolling for the two NPCs get another Natural 20 and a 10.

The party ends up having a proper full-on jam, using bowstrings as double basses, war hammer percussion, and beautiful harmonising, accompanied by a bubble pipe/minor illusion show. The Burgomaster's daughter was the only one to refrain.

They don't know it yet but this performance may have resulted in one of their packs receiving a surreptitious gift.