What has been your WORST D&D/AD&D fail roll of all time?

[LeilaniOtter]

My group moved away from the D&D franchise ~15 years ago, althoug hwe still had a look at 4th & 5th edition. These days we are mostly playing Pathfinder 2 (pathfinder 1 was an offshoot from D&D3.5) The systems themselves have become more streamlined and overall less breakable when it comes to making hyper powerful characters.

As for actual play, thats going to come down to how closely your table follows the rules and what kind of optional rules you are bringing.

I'd love to try something like Shadowrun in the 1990s. That was a lot of fun.

 

[Alski]

I'd love to try something like Shadowrun in the 1990s. That was a lot of fun.

Look in to Savage Worlds system, its rules lite with plenty of flexibility and with suppliments like the Sprawlrunners you could probably make a decent shadowrun like game.

 

[LeilaniOtter]

Look in to Savage Worlds system, its rules lite with plenty of flexibility and with suppliments like the Sprawlrunners you could probably make a decent shadowrun like game.

Oooh, I'll look for it. My housemate and I would like to get a game started again; maybe gain a following. He's written material for comedians before and I used to act; who knows? ? If folks look past our ages, maybe. But I guess "D&D60+" could have a nice ring to it.

 

[Maelstrom556]

In the last campaign I was in, the DM's dice actually loved me. Until it came down to drawing anything from the custom Deck of Many Things. Sure, one of them gave me a permanent +1 in Strength. Almost every other time, it didn't go so well. I pulled a card that summoned a demon and also pulled a card called The Nudist. TWICE. I'm sure you can guess what that card does. One of these those two times was during a pull AFTER someone had pulled a Genie card and wished for all of the negative cards in the Deck to disappear, which left only positive, neutral, and apparently prank cards.

Now if you wanna hear some times the dice loved me, those are some tales.

 

[LeilaniOtter]

In the last campaign I was in, the DM's dice actually loved me. Until it came down to drawing anything from the custom Deck of Many Things. Sure, one of them gave me a permanent +1 in Strength. Almost every other time, it didn't go so well. I pulled a card that summoned a demon and also pulled a card called The Nudist. TWICE. I'm sure you can guess what that card does. One of these those two times was during a pull AFTER someone had pulled a Genie card and wished for all of the negative cards in the Deck to disappear, which left only positive, neutral, and apparently prank cards.

Now if you wanna hear some times the dice loved me, those are some tales.

I'm curious now. D&D is played with cards too...? Oh, I am so far behind the times...

 

[Anonjohn20]

I'm curious now. D&D is played with cards too...? Oh, I am so far behind the times...

The custom deck of many things has been around since 1975 (DnD edition 1). It's just an optional feature not every GM buys.

 

[LeilaniOtter]

The custom deck of many things has been around since 1975 (DnD edition 1). It's just an optional feature not every GM buys.

Apparently our DM took the cheap route then.

 

[AliceMoonvale]

I'm not the biggest fan of D&D, but I remember playing it once with some peeps doing some custom game just to say I played it.
Remember rolling a low number while investigating a spooky haunted dungeon, tried opening a prison cell door too hard and my character flung back, hitting their head on another cell behind them and was incapacitated for awhile. lol

 

[Maelstrom556]

I'm curious now. D&D is played with cards too...? Oh, I am so far behind the times...

The vanilla DoMT that serves as a magic item in the game just wasn't interesting enough, especially since we had a slightly larger group of players than normal. So our DM had a table of 52 cards with their own effects for our Deck instead. We were playing on Roll20, so we would have the system roll a number for us for what our random card was. iirc, the vanilla Deck has 20 cards, so you'd just roll a d20 to pull a card and check the table in the rulebook for the effect if you didn't have some kind of physical version to pull from. It's just that a lot of DMs don't even use the vanilla Deck because it's got cards that, like, reverse your character's alignment, could instantly kill a character, could summon powerful enemies that might end up with multiple party members dead, or it could give the character some super OP stuff. Basically a very unbalanced and easy way to derail the campaign or ruin the fun for some people. That's why DMs will often use custom tables with more tame effects, if they use the Deck at all.

 

[LeilaniOtter]

I'm not the biggest fan of D&D, but I remember playing it once with some peeps doing some custom game just to say I played it.
Remember rolling a low number while investigating a spooky haunted dungeon, tried opening a prison cell door too hard and my character flung back, hitting their head on another cell behind them and was incapacitated for awhile. lol

Aww, you were just over-excited, weren't you? *^^* ?

The vanilla DoMT that serves as a magic item in the game just wasn't interesting enough, especially since we had a slightly larger group of players than normal. So our DM had a table of 52 cards with their own effects for our Deck instead. We were playing on Roll20, so we would have the system roll a number for us for what our random card was. iirc, the vanilla Deck has 20 cards, so you'd just roll a d20 to pull a card and check the table in the rulebook for the effect if you didn't have some kind of physical version to pull from. It's just that a lot of DMs don't even use the vanilla Deck because it's got cards that, like, reverse your character's alignment, could instantly kill a character, could summon powerful enemies that might end up with multiple party members dead, or it could give the character some super OP stuff. Basically a very unbalanced and easy way to derail the campaign or ruin the fun for some people. That's why DMs will often use custom tables with more tame effects, if they use the Deck at all.

This sounds like a LOT of fun. You could totally use an Uno deck for something like this, and when someone drew a Reverse card, like you said, that could reverse alignment. Draw two could mean you could draw two weapons at once, etc. Someone should write this down, we could change the whole game again. ?

 

[Maelstrom556]

This sounds like a LOT of fun. You could totally use an Uno deck for something like this, and when someone drew a Reverse card, like you said, that could reverse alignment. Draw two could mean you could draw two weapons at once, etc. Someone should write this down, we could change the whole game again. ?

I can see it working for a chaotic one-shot where everyone agrees from the start. Maybe a group of paladins, clerics, and warlocks who all have multiple gods/patrons fighting over them, so the party keeps getting boons/curses as a result and alignment changes are in-line with whichever one has temporary control.

If a deck like this was implemented into the middle of a regular campaign, thought, it wouldn't really work. For a lot of people, a reversal of alignment would be worse than just dying because they may not have fun playing that character anymore. I play good-aligned characters because I hate playing evil characters, so I'd probably just stop playing entirely if I got an alignment reversal.

 

[AmiRose]

It's funny that I actually remember mine all these years later, but tell me, former/current D&D playmates, what was your worst fail roll you remember doing?

Mine was killing another player with an errant arrow. I let fly a short-bow arrow while we were fighting some kind of creature in a densely wooded area, so long-range weapons were a challenge. I remember I didn't have any magic left, so when my turn came, I asked if I could somehow get within 50 feet of the monster(s). I was told, yes, I could, so I rolled to attack with a short bow. Well, it came up a 1, and the DM glanced at his notes. My arrow bounced off two trees and sailed back towards us, causing everyone to duck and lose a turn - except one unfortunate man who was weak on HP to begin with, and was trying to rest against a tree.

My arrow took him right in the chest for 10 HP and he died.

Ooopsie. ?

Iunno if everyone would call it a "fail" roll...
but my group got ambushed by a giant wurm-thingy, cuz we faileded our 'perception' stuffs. It popped up right in front of me and I hit it wit my sword.
Then it went... and it swalloweded me.
Teh others all almost died savin me from dat one too, but managed to kill it, and it fell on one of dem (knocking his ass out) befire i came tumblin out of its mouth, sword in hand (for a lil bit), and ended up stabbin teh knockeded out chara wit it and killed him by mistake cuz I was mid-attack when it all happened, and got a crit on the attack, but faileded balance.

It was funnier at teh table...
My fox-girl thief tumblin out of its mouth, her sword goin flyin up in the air as it slipped from her grip, dm randomly determinin the square it landed in, and resolving it as an attack on that square... which i crit on wit a nat-20.

So... fail-roll... or crit-hit roll?
I call it a fail, cuz i wasn't tryin ta hit that player's chara... I wanted ta hit the wurm cuz it tried ta eat me in a very not-fun way >,.,<

My group has/had lotsa crazy shennanigan-stories...
Some good... others not-so-much.

 

[AliceMoonvale]

Iunno if everyone would call it a "fail" roll...
but my group got ambushed by a giant wurm-thingy, cuz we faileded our 'perception' stuffs. It popped up right in front of me and I hit it wit my sword.
Then it went... and it swalloweded me.
Teh others all almost died savin me from dat one too, but managed to kill it, and it fell on one of dem (knocking his ass out) befire i came tumblin out of its mouth, sword in hand (for a lil bit), and ended up stabbin teh knockeded out chara wit it and killed him by mistake cuz I was mid-attack when it all happened, and got a crit on the attack, but faileded balance.

It was funnier at teh table...
My fox-girl thief tumblin out of its mouth, her sword goin flyin up in the air as it slipped from her grip, dm randomly determinin the square it landed in, and resolving it as an attack on that square... which i crit on wit a nat-20.

So... fail-roll... or crit-hit roll?
I call it a fail, cuz i wasn't tryin ta hit that player's chara... I wanted ta hit the wurm cuz it tried ta eat me in a very not-fun way >,.,<

My group has/had lotsa crazy shennanigan-stories...
Some good... others not-so-much.

I know you want to increase your post count, but responding to older threads that haven't had activity in the last 3 months is cringe and unwelcomed.

 

[Bimbanana]

Iunno if everyone would call it a "fail" roll...
but my group got ambushed by a giant wurm-thingy, cuz we faileded our 'perception' stuffs. It popped up right in front of me and I hit it wit my sword.
Then it went... and it swalloweded me.
Teh others all almost died savin me from dat one too, but managed to kill it, and it fell on one of dem (knocking his ass out) befire i came tumblin out of its mouth, sword in hand (for a lil bit), and ended up stabbin teh knockeded out chara wit it and killed him by mistake cuz I was mid-attack when it all happened, and got a crit on the attack, but faileded balance.

It was funnier at teh table...
My fox-girl thief tumblin out of its mouth, her sword goin flyin up in the air as it slipped from her grip, dm randomly determinin the square it landed in, and resolving it as an attack on that square... which i crit on wit a nat-20.

So... fail-roll... or crit-hit roll?
I call it a fail, cuz i wasn't tryin ta hit that player's chara... I wanted ta hit the wurm cuz it tried ta eat me in a very not-fun way >,.,<

My group has/had lotsa crazy shennanigan-stories...
Some good... others not-so-much.

Oh, I forgot to tell you. The cats around here can be scary

 

[LeilaniOtter]

Iunno if everyone would call it a "fail" roll...
but my group got ambushed by a giant wurm-thingy, cuz we faileded our 'perception' stuffs. It popped up right in front of me and I hit it wit my sword.
Then it went... and it swalloweded me.
Teh others all almost died savin me from dat one too, but managed to kill it, and it fell on one of dem (knocking his ass out) befire i came tumblin out of its mouth, sword in hand (for a lil bit), and ended up stabbin teh knockeded out chara wit it and killed him by mistake cuz I was mid-attack when it all happened, and got a crit on the attack, but faileded balance.

It was funnier at teh table...
My fox-girl thief tumblin out of its mouth, her sword goin flyin up in the air as it slipped from her grip, dm randomly determinin the square it landed in, and resolving it as an attack on that square... which i crit on wit a nat-20.

So... fail-roll... or crit-hit roll?
I call it a fail, cuz i wasn't tryin ta hit that player's chara... I wanted ta hit the wurm cuz it tried ta eat me in a very not-fun way >,.,<

My group has/had lotsa crazy shennanigan-stories...
Some good... others not-so-much.

That would have been hilarious to see done on HarmonQuest. I miss that show.