Not Even a 20 can Save Him ...

[CharlieRock]

The dice gawds. How fickle their favor is.
One time the team was fighting a young adult black dragon named Zetagon. They had found the plans for an airboat and had the Queen commision it built. Then they headed out north flying above the amassed kingdom's army to face Zetagon and his hordes.
Did I mention his hordes. I need to. Seemed Zetagon hung out with a rough crowd that included wyverns and hobgoblin commandos who rode the wyverns and dropped down onto the deck of the airboat. One of the characters sharpshot a wyvern out of the sky, dropping the beast and its crew of hobgobbos to the ground 200' below.
This angered three of the wyverns who then landed next to that character. Most of the crew at this point had succombed to Zetagon's breath attack and not many people (PC or otherwise) were left onboard. On this, the top, deck there were just three good guys and four bad guys (a hobbo was fighting somebodies hireling at the very stern). More were fighting down below decks, but that has no bearing on this story of crazy die rolls.
Okay, the three wyverns attack this sharpshooter PC with their scorpion tails. Two hits and his fort saves were 1s. Both of them. Back to back ones.
Then the sorceress that was clear to the aft shot a mystic fire bolt (scorching ray?) at the third wyvern (who hadn't attacked just yet). She rolls a one. That's three ones piling onto this guy's fate.
Then the third and final wyvern takes it's turn and hits again with that tail. A hit. Fort save ... one! Another jumping one! Four ones and this guys Con hit zero. (negative actually)
To top it all off, it looked like the good guys were going to lose. The final rounds of battle saw the paladin get grappled by Zetagon who dropped him overboard. Zetagon only had five hit points left but nobody else (a bard, the out-of-spells sorceress, and a low level NPC sailor) really had a chance. So Zetagon figures he's got it made with his tough scales and no incoming spells and waits for his breath to catch back up.
The paladin is one round away from hitting the ground. He draws his composite longbow and takes a shot. I forgot what he needed to hit, but he rolled a ... twenty! And another twenty to confirm.
The paladin goes splat but Zetagon loses all his hit points from a lucky-shot arrow crit and drops ,too. Right on top of the paladin!
Moral: Ones may doom your character buy a twenty doesn't necessarily save them either.

[goodmangames]

That's awesome! I had something similar once happen in my DragonMech game. My brother played an archer. When the party was attacked by an opposing mech, he wanted to take a called shot to spear the pilot through the eyes of mech. I told him he could pull it off if he rolled a 20. He took the shot, rolled a 20, rolled damage, and dropped the guy in one shot! One mech incapacitated with a single shot. (And it was around this time that I started rethinking the rules for called shots, as I mentioned in another thread...)

[mythfish]

Beautiful story!

I had a cleric once who found a magic bow and decided to use it even though it wasn't one of his deity's approved weapons. I rolled a 1 almost every time I tried to use it, so my DM decided the deity was already working against the cleric and he didn't need any further punishment.

[CharlieRock]

Heh, if Goodman's brother had Mythfish's magic bow he would have never had to reevaluate them called shots.

Speaking of Mechs and lucky shots:
Some buddies and I were playing a game of BattleTech. It is a neat old wargame with a hexgrid map and used d6s to simulate giant robo wars.
My buddy was in charge of the scout mechs. Lightly armored but very fast. I was in a heavier squad and wasn't doing too good for myself. A Warhammer (big bad robo with giant cannons) was kicking my mech (a Thunderbolt modified to jump) around like a tin can.
My buddy was mostly avoiding the whole fight by hanging around the far side of a ridgeline. At the end of my patience I snapped at him "Could you shoot at least once at them?"
I was being sarcastic but he stepped around the ridgeline and fired, once. His mech (a Panther) hit the Warhammer. I was about to say something else to him but then he rolled on location (a head shot) and when the Warhammer took all ten points to the cockpit area the pilot died.
The mech dropped right in front of me. Then my bud says "There, you happy? I shot him for ya."
I was speechless for a few minutes before the whole table started laughing so hard we had to take a break.

P.S. Of all the ironies ,the discussion before the game between another player and me was that his claim that the Warhammer was the absolute best mech design was being disputed by myself. I claimed a more mobile heavy mech (such as a jump jet powered Thunderbolt) was a much better design. Apparently we were both wrong.

[GnomeBoy]

Good stories always remind gamers of other good stories!

Once, we were shrunk down to a very small scale and were fighting a group of goblins that were repelling down these ropes (threads, actually) by the dozens from a tabletop to the floor we were on, and round by round they were gaining more and more advantage over us.

One of my buddies says to the DM, "What do I need to roll to hit the rope with an arrow?" Cutting the rope would mean damaging or eliminating several of them, since one goblin at a time wasn't cutting it.

The DM says, "Two 20's would do it."

The player mulls it over for a second and decides he'd be more likely to destroy goblins by using his two shots to hit goblins directly.

And -- you guessed it -- he rolls his two attacks...

20.

20.

He could've hit the rope.

Now, this was at least a decade ago. To this day, if he ever rolls two 20's, one of us will deadpan, "You could've hit the rope."

He still gives us dirty looks, too.

[CharlieRock]

re:Gnome Boy's story.