Your favourite botches

[SnowleopardVK]

Share some of the most amusing results of poor rolls that you've seen. Doesn't matter what system it's from.

I've got two that I can think of at the moment.

The first was a cleric who threw about 6 spears off a ship in one fight due to a slew of natural ones. After that battle it became generally accepted that nat 1s from that player would always cause her weapons to go flying, preferably off the edge of something, or into something you wouldn't want to stick your hand in (lava three or four times, goo twice, manure once), or even just plain flung upwards and lodged in the ceiling. As long as it was inconvenient.

The second was a pathfinder party who'd all taken the Stealth Synergy teamwork feat. In other words no matter how badly any one particular member does at stealth, the whole group takes the best roll among them. With a ninja and a bard, and the fact that everyone has stealth ranks, they're generally very good team for stealthy jobs. They managed to all roll 1 simultaneously the first time they attempted to be sneaky though, which resulted in them tripping over each other and crashing into the bed of the sleeping drow they were trying to NOT wake.

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

One of the things I do is use critical hits/fumbles tables in the games I run. I know they aren't for everyone, but this particular instance as just great.

The cleric in the group was a follower of one of the gods of nature whose holy symbol was a tree. So the cleric rolls a "1" and then we consult my fumble table for divine powers and he rolls another low number. The result was that somehow the cleric angered his god and was "stunned" for one round.

The way I described it:
"You are suddenly struck with vision of trees in your head that you stop doing anything and everything, listening to the gentle wind move through the leaves, you lose all sense of time and space forgetting about the battle you are currently in." You are stunned for one round, unable to do anything.

It was funny because any time he rolled a "1" he'd groan and say, "dang I hope I don't see TREES again..." This became a running joke in the group about him perhaps wanting to switch deities.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

My 19 Con Dwarf FTR wild Talent Psi in a 2Ed DarkSun game failed every save vs a sequence of 3 spells with 1s, coupled with failing his %ile rolls against System Shock, etc., ALSO with 1s.

This resulted in him being immobilized, prone & vomiting, in a Stinking Cloud, polymorphed into a toad and then turned to ash by a Fireball. We declared his ashes to be a magical component.

The DM- a math whiz- pointed out the sequence of 1s was so unlikely that I had essentially beaten the odds of the Texas State Lottery.

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

The DM- a math whiz- pointed out the sequence of 1s was so unlikely that I had essentially beaten the odds of the Texas State Lottery.

Bet you didn't feel like you won the lottery though

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

It is very hard to buy a Porsche with the ashes of a fictional Dwarf.

 

[Jacob Marley]

A few years ago I was playing a cleric of a deity of luck, fate, and chance in a 3.5 campaign. He had access to the luck domain and would frequently memorize the spell alter fortune - both of which allow for rerolls on the dice. I forget exactly what we were fighting at the time but I remember being hit with a save or die spell. The DC was fairly low and my modifier was pretty high meaning I could only fail on a roll of like three or lower. Of course, my first roll was a one so I used my free reroll from the luck domain which resulted in a two. I then cast alter fortune for my last reroll and the die came up one. And thus my cleric of luck passed into the great gambling hall in the sky - because he was unlucky!

.....

This next story is a combination of "don't split the party" and a series of bad rolls. The story begins with me bringing a new character into the party - a wizard. At the time my new character joined, the party had been split up into two groups.

The first party (our druid) was racing south to inform our benefactor of some important news. After he informed our benefactor of the news, he shapechanged (3.5 PHB II variant) into a puma and raced off back to the party.

In the mean time, my new character was introduced to the second party who, at the time, were setting up camp in the wilderness a day's journey from town. While we were setting up camp, the DM rolled a random encounter with a large puma sneaking into camp to steal a bit of food. We ended up killing the puma and set up watch for the evening. On my watch I spotted a puma in the distance racing toward our camp site. I quickly woke up our cleric and then cast sleep targeting the puma. The puma failed it's save and fell over. The cleric and I quickly made our way over to the body. The cleric was about to coup de grace the puma when the DM had him make a wisdom check DC 5 - which he failed! He then performed the coup de grace for very low damage. The puma attempted his fortitude save and failed on that and died. At that moment he reverted back into druid form - we killed our own ally!

Out of character, we all knew what was going on but our series of die rolls came up in such a way that we could not see any other logical course of action. Had the DM not rolled a random puma encounter OR had I not made my spot check OR had the druid made it's will save OR had the cleric made it's wisdom check OR had the druid made it's fortitude save THEN our druid would have lived. Alas, as it were, none of these rolls came out in our favor and we ended up executing our own party member. We have since declared this the greatest character death ever!

 

[Umbran]

In our Deadlands game, our mad scientist had created a pepper gun, which, as the name implies, sprayed black pepper into the face of an assailant. He and some of his cohorts got into an altercation with a bad guy - a wrestling match in the middle of the street in Dodge city at one in the morning. Hoping to disable the villain, our hero draws his pepper gun, which, of course, misfires.

The misfire discharges his entire pepper supply into the area. And, of course, the only person *not* disabled by the pepper is... the villain, who kicks some heroes in the head for good measure, and then runs away.

He has since then created a glue-gun. I'm just *waiting* for that one to misfire

 

[Corathon]

I once knew a gamer who seemed to be very, very unlucky. One of his PCs was hit with a lightning bolt from a monster called a gauth for around 6 points of damage. He failed his save, and (this being 1E AD&D) had to save for all of his items. At the end of that process he was left with an iron spike and a shield, everything else having been slagged by the (wimpy) lightning bolt.

On another occasion, we were being attacked by goblins that were protected by a stoneskin spell. The unlucky guy's PC swung his sword and fumbled, hitting himself. Then his attacks were blocked by the stoneskin.

Frustrated, he pulled out a bomb. In this campaign, fire trap was often cast on oil vials, and breaking the vial set off the fire trap. So, hit someone with one of these and they took the fire trap's damage and were coated in burning oil to boot. Not satisfied with this, the unlucky guy's character had tied several such vials together to make a bigger bang. He threw it at the goblins, fumbled, and hit himself. The resulting explosion wouldn't have killed him - but he was already wounded from his earlier fumble.

And that's how 6 goblins took out an 8th level fighter...

 

[Stormonu]

I had one that went something like this...

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmzWd0eik44]Knights Of The Dinner Table: Episode 5 - YouTube[/ame]

(and my real name is actually Steve, of all things...)

 

[SkredlitheOgre]

This was GURPS Supers game from about 15 years ago. My character had Super Flight and was trying to get to one of his teammates who was off of our ship at her uncle's house. I say that I'm taking off at top speed to get there.

GM: "Where are you going?"

Me: "Chammie's uncle's house."

GM: "Right, but where is that?"

Me: "Um. I don't know."

GM: "Intelligence check."

Me: *roll roll* "Crap. Critical failure."

GM: "So, you've been flying for about five minutes and you're now about 70 miles away from the ship in the wrong direction."

From that point on, my character had to have a compass, a GPS and a way to communicate with our ship so that he didn't get lost.