Critical Failure (D&D)

[Aetheilas]

Oh, I just thought of another story. I was once a ranger/wizard and cast True Strike on my bow to stop our pirate and barbarian from robbing a bar.

I rolled a 1.

I actually hit the bartender and nearly got arrested rofl

[Vlad2049]

Ok, my first post was on my buddy's Rogue, but this time it's on me:

We were starting up a new sidequest(is it at all odd, that our Rogue was the DM for this?) and we were woken up by a knock at the door. I roll for a Listen check, wake up and answer the door. A boy of 8 stands before me, with a note in his hand, and a weary 'I just ran about 20 blocks to get here' look on his face. I speak with him shortly, asking him why he's here, to which he replys he has a note from a guy at the tavern to be delivered here. I ask for the note and he says he was going to get paid first, so he sticks out his hand. I roll for a Diplomacy check, to see if I can persuade him otherwise, and get a fairly crappy roll. The kid responds by giving me the finger. My Sorceror didn't like that. I unsheath my Iceburst Dagger and roll to cut his finger off: I got a crit fail and manage to imbed my dagger into the door.(I should stop here, but it gets better)
The *thunk* sound wakes up the rest of the group, who proceed to laugh at me. The kid walks in, hoping to get his money from someone else(big mistake on his part) to which my group responds by attacking and killing the kid. About this time(since I forgot to close the door) a guard comes by and asks if we've seen a boy about 8 or 9. He looks in and sees the dead body of the boy, and I immediatly say that I'd like to make a Strength check to remove my dagger from the door, since I might need it if the guard attacks(I failed this check too, and only wedged it deeper into the door). He says, "Oh, ok. Well, the little b*****d snaked some money from me and a few other people around town. As far as anyone can tell, he's a Street Sleeper(our term for Homeless) and was probably gonna get thrown out of town, but this works too." He said we can keep the money we find, which was about 260 gold, and that he'd discard the body for us. What a nice guy.

[GAMLIN_KICK]

We were in a dungeon for a random quest and we entered a dark hall way. The group decided someone should throw a rock into the hall way to lure any monsters near us so we could get the drop on them. They pick me and I do a skill check, I roll a one. When I throw the rock it goes straight up and explodes when it hits the ceiling causing rock dust to fall on me. I breath it in and it gets in my eyes. I was put out of action for a turn from coughing and I got a -3 to hit roles for the next few turns. My luck did not improve for the entire dungeon. On another critical miss I fell down a ladder about 20 FT. and landed in sewer water.

[Draaggon]

Recently I decided that some natural 1's can be successes, but something bad still happens to the character; aka instant successes, but they end up in a worse situation anyway.
A few examples of the possibilities:
1. Firing an arrow and hitting, but your arm gets skinned by the string ( gonk )
2. Same as above, but instead of the arm thing, string bounces back and smacks character in face.
3. Balancing successfully on the ledge, but the ledges on either side of you crumble and fall into the abyss.
4. Crafting the desired item, but its also cursed (DMG)
5. Climbing successfully up the 50 ft. rock wall, but all of the used handholds crumble, preventing allies from taking the same pathway.

Etc., etc., etc......

[Obersturmbannfuehrer Chii]

My friend's rogue once rolling 1s for every trap he encountered in a short dungeon. We didn't have him try to disarm traps ever again. rofl

[nuo]

Well I was playing Rivvit, a wild elf Ranger, when I had to make a shot against a flesh golem, and I was running out of arrows. SO I made the attack and rolled a one... The arrow bounced off of an arrowhead from an arrow i shot last turn, flew back the 30 feet it had traveled and hit me. What was worse was that the DM was counting this twist of events as an attack on which he rolled a critical hit.

Me: ...(staring in stunned silence)
Sadistic DM: Okay....your arrow is whizzing bach towards you, and you get hit for (rolls in front of me) a critical hit. Congratulations, Rivvit, you killed yourself.

[Thanksgivin Gravytrain]

Alright, top this. I was in a large group, and we had just finished clearing out a huge tower of monsters. We had killed the dragon at the top, and our ranger had eaten the heart and gained the power to become the dragon every three days. he was in dragon form, and we had reached the bottom floor and he couldnt fit through the trap door. Our druid, wanting to be smart, tries to turn the floor into clay so the dragon can sink through. he rolls a natural one, and turns the whole tower into clay, bringing the tower and the dragon down on us. after 15 minutes of calculation, we decided that our characters we had been progressing for 3 months had taken 2.7 million damage. -_-...

[4O4 Error]

Robotech game. Random encounter that should have lasted about half an hour of real time ended up lasting about 3½ hours. The one Veritech Pilot rolled approximately 15 crit fails in that one combat. His Veritech shut down system by system until he crashed to earth in an unresponsive mech, managed to get out and hop on his Cyclone but that was unreliable at best and would shut down every now and then in battle.

The rest of us weren't as unlucky but did roll bad enough to miss our targets a lot. The tank pilot actually ran out of shots with his main gun (his mech had a limit of something like 12 shots before it had to recharge) and ended up having to stand up in the cockpit and fire his rifle at the enemy.

Ironically enough I was playing the mechanic (meaning I sucked at combat) rolled well enough and managed to do more damage to the bad guys than that oh-so-unlucky Veritech pilot. I was in a Jeep with a missile pods attached ... and not the good kind of missiles.

[Blue-ROMan]

as a ranger that normally hits most things with a roll of 8 or greater, 1's are particularly devastating, and i have rolled 1's several times...
here are a few examples...
rolled a 1 on the second attack in my rapidshot, rolled fumble, hit myself with the fumble, rolled min damage against the enemy and max damage against myself...
rolled about 3 or 4 crit. misses in a row and hit the new fighter in the back of the head 2 of those times.

[exploding rune 6d6dmg]

i dont think i ever critical failed at all.... of course i roll 17-20 on average for every d20 i get ahold of...

dm's hate me

players hate me when i dm

its all fun tho ninja

[Ziirid]

An amusing story set at sea:

I'm DMing, the players are on a boat traveling to their next destination. They've encountered the sharkmen before, and chased them off. Well, one particular mook NPC has lived through multiple previous battles, so he's brought the big guns with him this time. Instead of climbing aboard the ship themselves at first, one of the two big guys (an aquatic druid) unleashes his mighty crab companion onto the deck, then uses the spell that I'm forgetting the name of to make it into a monster crab.

The crab rampages about on deck, and when things are going well the rest of them sneak up. At this point, during the crab's turn I roll to hit, 1. Determining that the crab is unused to being this large as well as trying to move on a ship, it slides backwards. Towards the other sharkmen. The two big guys get out of the way, but the poor mook gets crushed to death by a sliding crab. What a way to go!

It just makes it more interesting when natural one's do something.

[iNightSurgeon]

When my group was on a this island, our drow cleric/fighter decided to shoot at a large bird-creature in the distance with his hand crossbow, rolled a crit one on his ranged attack, missed the bird creature, and the arrow flew into the bushes and hit an adolescent green dragon. Go figure.

But it gets better, our barbarian decides to go berserk and rush it, rolls a twenty on his first cleave, attempts to cleave again, rolls a crit one, and is snatched up into the air by the dragon. While all of this is going on, our cleric/fighter has managed to land two arrows in the dragons face. With our barbarian unable to actually fight, he decides to take a bite out of the dragon's hand, after our DM rolls several ones on the dragon's behalf, it is decided the dragon dies of blood loss from the bite.

Poor, poor dragon.

[Lieutenant_Charon]

kupo kupo!!!

Crit fails do not make any sense.
Think about it a lvl 1 fighter has 1 attack a round with a 5% chance to ******** up.
Now a lvl 20 fighter has 4 attacks a round with a 5% chance on each to ******** up.
kinda stupid

Well, that's D&D's abstract combat for you.

[iNightSurgeon]

DIS
THREAD
BE
DEAD
exclaim

[Kita-go-nyaa]

-shifty eyes- CLEAR! -uses defibrillator-

Worst Critical Failures in my experiences:

Jadyn, the sorcerer of fourth level, failed his reflex save with only five hit points left... against the death throes of a Chaarl. He died almost instantly from impalement of 5d6 worth of damage.

Amaya, a rogue of second level, failed an appraise check, thinking a small gem- worth only about 5gp was worth well over 500gp. She attempted to sell it and was arrested for fraud the next day.

Aryin, a level four fighter, took a running start at a door to get a bonus to a strength check to break it. However, he managed to just run straight into it, falling backward AND setting off the trap that was linked to the door, nearly killing the party standing off to the side.