Most improbable RPG die throw?

Duckie · Post by **Duckie** » 2005-07-10 12:03am

I was wondering, because I have a few hours before storm time comes and all sensitive stuff must be shut off, does anyone else have "quirky" dice when they play RPGs? I'm sure mine are balanced correctly because they produce strange results in both roll-under and roll-over systems, but some things just stretch belief.

I believe the worse streak of high rolls came when players on a break from trading looking to make a buck by prospecting in the desert and selling locations of deposits. They found a working (albeit very heavily damaged) starship on a backwater planet, instantly changing the entire campaign and adding several subplots to it on the fly.

Here follows a boring and drawn out account of all the improbable 95+ rolls in a row producing a starship found in the desert for those who believe I'm making this up.

In Traveller20, the P/Prospecting skill can let you earn cash if you have months of time and the equipment to exploit the findings you make, or are willing to sell a valuable claim for a small percent of the estimated profit to a government/corporation [house rule to save time]. However, there is (I believe this is correct), a 12% chance, assuming a find is made (and that's probably 25% chance, if not a lot worse), that the find is salvagable equipment that's been abandoned/lost. However, a lucky roll lets something be found within the first week

I roll. 98- Salvage. Then the subtable, with a 10% chance of a starship and much higher percentages for vehicles and equipment of sorts. 96, followed by 32- Medium Starship (In disbelief, I chose Free Trader as what it must be in this backwater area, and was one of the cheapest (still 60 million credits !) starships [so they wouldn't become rich from selling what I "knew" must be a burnt out wreck for parts and scrap].)

So there's a starship found, and it is heavily damaged. Probably ruined, since it's unlikely for a Starship to crash land on a planet and survive, and even if it did you probably won't get it back off the ground.

Rolling again for damage- 90%, but not disabled. The starship is functional, but I roll on the internal damage tables about 11 times by GM Abritrary Rule Creation to "rough up" the ship and miraculously the only major things damaged are some fuel tanks, the crew quarters, and the manuever drive, the latter of which is able to be jury-rigged given time.

Hell of an unlikely turn of events. Even accepting the rather high 0.4% of finding a starship (and less of it being a starship of size enough to not be declared "invalid roll" and rerolled), the fact that it isn't disabled and made a safe touchdown (barring the former crew) is pretty unlikely, along with internal damage rolls producing only "soft" hits to things like crew areas, the drive fuel tanks. To top it off, the ship is only 5 years old.

Long drawn out explanation finished

That was just too cool to veto or hamsting with salvage laws- I mean, if it happens one out of 360+ times, finding a free ship downed on a planet cannot be ignored as too unbalancing to a campaign. It's just too cool.

As to why it went down, why salvage rights didn't apply, and where it went after, that's a whole new story... [plus the inevitable players asking themselves "If it crashed once mysteriously, will it do it again with us in it?]

Anyone else had a ridiculously improbable turn of the dice like that, or have I preemptively beaten every other response there is?
Edit- Numbers corrected. It turns out it's 10 times more likely than I had supposed, but 1:2500 to at least 1:360 is still weird.

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2005-07-10 12:26am

Way back, I was playing "Call of Cthulu." My character was an FBI agent investigating paranormal disturbances, and I'd pumped 99% into his pistol skill.

The first time I had to fire, it was a dead-on shot with no difficulty modifier. All I had to do was roll 99 or below.

I rolled a double-zero on the percentile D-10's. The GM looked at me and said, "Okay, your gun jammed."

Oni Koneko Damien · Post by **Oni Koneko Damien** » 2005-07-10 12:47am

The one time I gm'd for my family...they managed six botches in a thirty minute period.

To put it bluntly, the gods were merciful. The druid's puppy had a dagger sticking out of its ass, our ranger, likewise, had an arrow sticking out of his ass, and several weapons were irretrievably lodged into various walls.

~Damienkitty

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2005-07-10 02:21am

Big bad ubervillian teams who has been schooling us till now.

I decided to say, @$%@$ it, I'm going down with style, my then 7th Ranger grabed out my pair of shortswords begin bellowing a warcry and changed directly at the mage a pair of archers and a warrior move to intercept me.

Well we were in this giant underground cave and our mage had the brilliant idea to freeze the floor to make sure they would not be able to close on us while he fired off spells and we shot them with arrows.

Turns out they were MUCH better archers then we were, when I started our charge the only people still standing was myself (With half heath, my only saving graces was my 19 DEX and 18 CON, I took about five arrows) and our Mage who was taking cover behind a minotaur we also had killed minutes before.

Well I start my blood raging charge, the archers got four attacks on me as I crossed the floor, I kept making dex checks as I'm sprinting across this ice floor.

Fifteen heath left out of my normal sixty eight and I start to try and jump over the warrior charging to meet me, but I finaly failed my dex-check, slipped feel and slip past the suprised warrior who also tripped up and feel on her ass. Rebound to my feet and countinue my run(I was still sliding towards the mage) had to make a Dex check at a negative ten modifier.

Leap up, attack with both swords trying to close to grapple range on the mage were I can mess her up good. Well she's been firing off spells at me as I've been coming and she was just about to smack me with a extended web when I crash into her, the spell misfires and blamf, everything within sixty meters gets webbed to high hell, inculding both archers, the warrior still getting up, and in the center of it, me and the mage, one of my shortswords still in her my other with a backup dagger at her throat(Two dex checks and a to hit roll which ended up a nat 20)

I'm dead as far as I can tell, six heath left and the mage could probably kill me with a single spell, instead she's gone into system shock and I take a chance, scream nobdy move or she dies!

My DM stops turns to me and says, alright, two twentys for that to work, one to convice them your serious and one to get them to stop.
I rolled em. Our cleric heals everyone, and it all works out.
From party wipe to single handley saving the day.

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2005-07-10 02:42am

Battletech, I've got a damaged WVR-6R Wolverine, trying to hold off a BLR-1 Battlemaster. The Wolverine is a moderately armored, lightly armed, reasonable speed 55 ton mech. The Battlemaster is a 85 command mech of death.

My wolverine's missing an arm, so in desperation to hold off the BLR from advancing further into my lines and trapping the rest of my forces in a crossfire, I have my wolverine fire it's only surviving weapons.. an Autocannon 5, and SRM-6 launcher. SRM 6 hits all six missiles, that's 1 in 6 chance about. Now, 4 of the six missiles strike the enemy cockpit. Each cockpit strike is a 2.76 percent chance (natural 2's on dice roll, but this was RNG'ed). Then I roll a 7, center torso hit. No big deal. Last roll is a 12, Through armor critical. Location: Center Torso. Extent of critical damage roll: 12. 3 locations.

Now, the pilot's already half dead from 4 torso hits and is unconscious. But the next 3 critical rolls strike 3 Engine components, each with a 50 percent chance of being hit. Said mech loses fusion containment, explodes massively.

RNG luck is crazy, isn't it?

Captain tycho · Post by **Captain tycho** » 2005-07-10 03:09am

DnD, in a very long running Faerun campaign I DM (since college started, and is still going on, albeit very very slowly.) The party (2 human fighters, an elven bard, and 1 gold dwarf sorcerer, all at levels 9-10) are in Chult, having been hired out as bodyguards for a mining expedition into the Black Jungles, encountered a small group of yuan-ti. Beginning of the battle starts off fine, with the sorc using a wand of fireball to blow two of them into dust, while the fighters attack with crossbows before charging. This is the fun part. They had to charge over some rather rough terrain, consisting of wet and mossy logs and branches, so I had them make Balance checks. Critical failure for both of them. I determine that they fall prone.
The bard moves up close to them. I have the bard make a much easier Balance check, since he's not charging. What happens? He topples prone with another critical failure.
Yuan tis' turn now. 2 of the yuan-ti warriors approach the 2 fighters with spears at the ready, and BOTH make critical hits.

One fighter dies, the other is at 2 hp. The yuan ti archer behind the 2 warriors fires an arrow at the bard. Guess what? Critical hit.

Bard is seriously injured. Now the party's turn, the sorcerer, being RPed as a thoughtless opportunist, targets the 2 yuan ti warriors with a fireball.
Both easily succeed on their saving throws, but the fighter isn't so lucky, dying instantly. The bard takes more heavy damage, putting him at 5 hp. Yuan ti turn, warriors both attack the bard, and both score a critical hit each!

Bard is fucked, naturally. The only PC left is the sorcerer, who takes some time to cast dimension door away from the encounter and then to cast fly, back towards civilization and to a healer.

Talk about unluck.

Ford Prefect · Post by **Ford Prefect** » 2005-07-10 03:25am

Perhaps, this will fit. It's the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battlegame from Gamesworkshop, me with Balin and his personal bodyguard of tough as nails Khazad Guard, him with his goblin horde easily three times the size of my force points wise, not counting his Troll, Goblin Drum or Durburz the Goblin King.

Now, I fought with Balin alone, who sliced through almost two hundred points of goblins, beheaded Durburz and even killed the Cave Troll, all on his lonesome.

Second battle, we decide I'll use an army this time round. Balin is killed by a goblin archer in two turns. Same archer, rolling a five to hit, a six followed by a four to wound (I believe). I even failed my 4+ roll for Balin's Fate point. It was very embarrasing, especially when Balin even manage to charge him, hit him with his throwing axe, then charge in with a two handed weapon that has no penalties. I even won the combat!

salixfire · Post by **salixfire** » 2005-07-10 07:46am

In an AD&D game that I was in a couple of years ago my rogue decided to be slightly suicidal and go though an area of magical darkness. After having a rope tied around her which was held by the two fighters of the party she walked up some stairs and into the darkness. Slowly walking forward she hears a click followed by a whoosh. The two fighters see a spear shoot out the darkness, fly down the hole in the wall we made earlier and straight into the back of the silenced sorcerer who was looking up the other (male) rogues' skirt. I believe the DM rolled a 1, 1, 20, 20 to make that happen.

Keevan_Colton · Post by **Keevan_Colton** » 2005-07-10 08:05am

2nd ed D&D, in a schools competitin, we'd split the party, the casters went to protect a convoy of travellers while the two rangers and the bard (my character) followed some bandits back to find their camp.

The camp was in some old ruins, we're hiding in the trees nearby using an interesting mix of an invisibility spell and a portable hole to keep out of sight...

But as we're watching we realize their digging for treasure and stuff in part of the ruins...next thing you know there's a flaming unded monstrosity rising from in front of an archway and starting to lob fireballs about....we realize that it's nearly out of bandits and it's heading in our direction...we figure holy water might have been a good bet, or lots of water...unfortunately, the druid and the cleric were several miles away...we between us had one flask of holy water the cleric had given to one of the rangers...he handed it to the other who had amazing skill at throwing...who then critically fumbled and soaked the three of us...

My character then true to spirit lept up as the monstrosity turned to blast some other bandits that had come out the far side of the clearing and ran at it...stabvbing into it's back with his longsword and dagger...rolling criticals on both, max damage on both and watching the thing collapse....

This however was not the end of the streak of almighty jammy rolls...the archway behind where it had been shimmered and we realized it was a gateway thing we'd been warned about....we'd had a briefing from an elf sage earlier...so one of the rangers dives through it to grab the stone holding it open and managed to get back an instant later with four drow on his tail...

I think "Shit." My character had only one spell left and as the drow looked around, dazed by the light, he cast it...

Sleep.

There was then the rolls for their 95% resistance to sleep...which were all beaten...end result, 4 peacefully sleeping drow on the floor.

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2005-07-10 09:04am

salixfire wrote:In an AD&D game that I was in a couple of years ago my rogue decided to be slightly suicidal and go though an area of magical darkness. After having a rope tied around her which was held by the two fighters of the party she walked up some stairs and into the darkness. Slowly walking forward she hears a click followed by a whoosh. The two fighters see a spear shoot out the darkness, fly down the hole in the wall we made earlier and straight into the back of the silenced sorcerer who was looking up the other (male) rogues' skirt. I believe the DM rolled a 1, 1, 20, 20 to make that happen.

Wait hold on, ok we have one rouge, two fighters... and another Rouge(Male) and silenced Sorcerer from were now?

I'm missing the setup.

The Dark · Post by **The Dark** » 2005-07-10 09:07am

In D&D we were playing with an adventuring party who had a drow nemesis. We had been pursuing her for some time, and knew she was in the city we were in. We're resting for the night, and my monk is looking out the third-story window to try to figure out where to look tomorrow, when guess who walks by. He jumps out the window, taking no damage from the fall (natural 20 tumble check), but lands in a passing manure cart (natural 1 attack roll). Pursuit begins. The drow slips across a bridge, using faerie fire to spook a horse and clog up traffic. My non-swimming monk jumps into the river and makes it across (18 roll, +stat bonus). I see her turn into an alley, but when I walk in there I don't see her in the dimness. I pull out a stone enchanted with Continuous Light that my mage friend had given all of us. I notice it start dimming, and tell the DM that the moment it starts to brighten again, I'm turning around and sweep-kicking across the narrow alley at neck height (I knew he used a slight variant where magical darkness worked like light...there was a source radiating darkness). Roll high on the Wisdom check to tell when it begins brightening, and natural 20 on the kick attack. Result? One unconscious drow, one happy monk, one party of other characters going

.

salixfire · Post by **salixfire** » 2005-07-10 09:29am

Wait hold on, ok we have one rouge, two fighters... and another Rouge(Male) and silenced Sorcerer from were now?

I'm missing the setup.

I'm confused, what do you mean? Are you asking what happened earlier or something else?

Pcm979 · Post by **Pcm979** » 2005-07-10 09:37am

He's wondering where the male Rogue and the Sorc come into it.

salixfire · Post by **salixfire** » 2005-07-10 10:12am

Ah sorry, I'm terrible at explaining things.

There were two rooms, one with the sorcerer and male rogue. The rogue was climbing about on the walls and the sorcerer was silenced earlier that session because he had made some comment that a NPC paladin (I believe it was) didn't like. Between the two rooms a hole had been created in the wall by using a pillar as a ram and busting our way through so was fairly small. My character and two fighters were in the other room which had a flight of stairs up to some magical darkness. I went into the darkness with the rope around me and the fighters directly behind me. So the spear shoots out of the darkness completely missing me, the fighters behind, down a flight of stairs and passes through the narrow hole in the wall and stabs straight into the back of the silenced sorcerer who could only say "...".

I hope that makes more sense.

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2005-07-10 10:13am

Pcm979 wrote:He's wondering where the male Rogue and the Sorc come into it.

Exactly, I see or understand that we have one Female rouge walking up stairs into the darkness, she hears a click and a woosh(Inside the darkness) and then suddenly there is another rouge and this socr from somewhere and I'm not sure who's they are.

And back on the thread, I have a house rule when I DM, if thy crit roll agian, if you land a twenty(Not your native crit range of X-X but a twenty) you get a triple crit, if you land a third twenty after that, its instant heroic death for whatever you were fighting.

Which made it very hard to explain when our fourth level wizard threw his shoe at the eight level Doomknight..

Me:.... Ummm hmmm roll agian
Wizard: Third twenty! house Rules he's dead!
Me: But you hit him with a bloody shoe!
Rest:Yes how did he die exactly Bean?
Me:(Thinking fast) Well with a burst of strength you did not know you had in you, you fling the shoe across the room where it strikes the knight in the forhead, stunned he reaches up to clasp his head, forgetting he's still holding his Bastard Sword and stabs himself through the eye.
Wizard: But its an animated suit of armor! Its does not even have eyes
Me(Thinking faster): Well NAMLESS NPC #5 thinks the same thing and walks over there pulls off the Helmet, its not a Doomknight! No its old man Winters the Bartender!
Smartass Rouge(Treasure-hunter!): Ahh and thats the end of the Mystiery of the Haunted Bar, it was old man Winters all along scaring people with this Doomknight getup.... and killing those villagers messily... anyway lets get out of here gang.
Wizard: Wait does that make me Shaggy?

At that point I gave up, and had a dragon eat them.

*Edit ahh the above makes much more sense now, and its twice as funny.

The Dark · Post by **The Dark** » 2005-07-10 10:58am

Found one from our session notes I had forgotten about.

In Silhouette, there's a phenomenon known as the "damage cascade." You see, when a vehicle is damaged, you roll on a table to see what actually happens. A result of 6 means you roll two dice and take both results. Either or both of these dice can also come up 6, in which case you keep rolling until you no longer get a 6. Normal weapons start with one throw, Haywire weapons start with two throws. I'm piloting a light exo-armor (think mobile suit) that has a gun with Haywire, attacking a battleship. I pull off a miraculous hit that actually penetrates the armor. Roll my two dice - both sixes. Roll again, and two of those four dice come up sixes. I keep rolling, and by the end of the whole saga, I roll 17 damage dice. However, the ship got lucky in that my rolls for what damage I actually did sucked, so that instead of destroying the ship, I "only" slowed it down and took out its anti-ship weapons.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2005-07-10 02:08pm

Starfleet battles...

The "Chrydis and Scyllia" map....

ok we're playing Tourney rules SFB roll for map features got two.

Large Asteriod field and Black hole.

so the collapsed star is bringing in matter into it's self. the asteriods are of course moving at speed six to the black hole, the whole area is full of space dust causing roles that need to be made constantly when moving at greater then 50% speed.

I am playing tourney rule Orions, my toruney partnet is playing toruney rule tholians and we have just been handed the perfect map for our two races. The scaryier part was that the favoured team went with Kzin/Gorn and the third team went with Klingon/Fed...

We crippled and the black hole destroyed their entire fleets using only piloting rolls....

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2005-07-10 03:21pm

In a Dark Ages: Werewolf campaign I was in awhile back. Myself and a few other wolves were going up against some Black Spiral Dancer that was basically wiping the floor with us. The guy was basically mocking us, so I said screw it. Pulled out my char's daggers, threw 'em at the BSD, and amazingly managed to take out the sucker's eye on a called-shot. As it is the difficulty of the roll was an 8 or 9, and with about 7 dice to throw I managed to land almost all 9s and 10s on the roll itself. (The highest difficulty on a roll like that being roughly 10). Easily one of the best rolls I've ever scored.

2000AD · Post by **2000AD** » 2005-07-10 03:39pm

WH40K: Inquisitor

My imperial guardsman (bog standard) fired 3 laspistol shots at my opponents Imp GUard, all of them were placed hits and all of them hit where the only option was to make them placed shots to the groin. Put that guy down.

In the same game my opponents inquisitor just finished a titanic sword fight against the 3rd players mutant only to be killed when my inquisitor turned the corner and snap shotted a single bolt pistol shot into his head causing max damage possible.

CaptainChewbacca · Post by **CaptainChewbacca** » 2005-07-10 06:54pm

I've had 2 improbable things:

1. I was DMing a 2nd edition D&D for my brother, who had a dwarven fighter/cleric. He decided to get tested for wild talent psionics at the "mind tower". Now, given his class, race, and wisdom, he has a better chance of permanent stat-damage than psionic abilities, but he rolls a 01 on percentiles (for psionics you roll low). So, he's a wild talent. Go to the power-tables. He proceeds to roll 99, 97, 98, 99, 41. 4 major powers and 7 minor powers, the equivalent of a 4th-level psionicisist!

2. I was playing as a Chaotic-Neutral halforc fighter with some wizard classes. We were fighting the avatar of an evil fire-god and its familiar, which was a talking bat. The bat had an insane AC and damage-reduction, but it was pissing me off. I did a charge, then jumped (with my boots of jumping). 19 on the jump check, 20 to hit, and maximum damage. I forced a system-shock check on him, and he failed his fortitude save and so I destroyed his coporeal body while I was only level 7.

Post by **weemadando** » 2005-07-10 07:21pm

I took out an Ogre bushi in L5R 1st ed with one hit...

Rolled 5k2... 2 tens, then 2 more tens, then 2 more tens, then a seven and a eight for a total of 75 damage in a single hit. The GM then went off his chops at me.

For some reason in L5R I am forever just rolling 10s, just all the fucking time.

lPeregrine · Post by **lPeregrine** » 2005-07-10 07:32pm

Only two that I can think of right now...

1) The insane beginner's luck had by one of our new players on her first game. It's Star Wars d20, and for an entire game (or more, I can't remember), she doesn't roll below a 15. My character, an ex-military sniper, is missing shot after shot, like the rest of the party, but the complete newbie just can't miss.

2) Probably the better one... it's pretty generic hack/slash campaign of D&D 3.5e. The halfling rogue, the good cleric, the half-orc barbarian, and me playing the typical high dex/low con/low str elvish archer.

So we come to this bridge held by a group of enemy soldiers (not quite sure that our party is their enemy). They offer the following challenge: if one member of our party can win a joust with their leader, we can cross. Only problem is the DM has given this guy every mounted combat feat in the game.

And just to make things worse, my low str/low con character is the only one with the ride skill and proficiency with the lance. So somehow I get talked into being the one to duel him. We make our first charges, somehow I manage to hit him, and not surprisingly, he hits me. By some miracle, he rolls pathetic damage, and I'm just barely holding on as we turn and prepare for round 2.

Once again, we charge. I take a hit and drop unconscious (using padded lances), but by some miracle, manage to hit with my own attack. Apparently the cleric blessed the damage dice, because I roll high. The DM checks the other guy's HP almost as an afterthought, and looks quite stunned as he finds that I somehow did just enough damage to knock him out too.

Not quite the most impressive single roll ever, but a miracle string of good rolls.

Solauren · Post by **Solauren** » 2005-07-11 12:33am

Halfling monk scoring a natural 20 to hit the red dragon with a Stunning Fist
Said Great Wyrm Red Dragon rolling a natural 1

Then his human monk friend delivered a coup'd'grace and killed it.

and THAT is why I use premade monsters alot of the time.

Imperial Overlord · Post by **Imperial Overlord** » 2005-07-11 12:37am

A 2nd edition Vampire campaign. We had just found the head villian. My buddy jumps him with his aggravated damage dealing shortsword. Does 5 levels aggravated. The bad guy has 13 soak dice. Fails to roll even a single success.

Glimmervoid · Post by **Glimmervoid** » 2005-07-11 02:28am

In War hammer fantasy battles me and some friends were having a 12 thousand (6000 each side) battle. The enemy was using a vampire count and because he forgot his model he was using an empire priest with a sigma comment on his shield. Any way he got in to combat with my main army and killed a few guys but then this great eagle (controlled by my friend) charged the count (after killing some of his other charters). The vampire missed all of his 5 attacks the first tern (needing anything but 1 and 2) and the second turn he rolled 5 ones whereupon he was kill by the eagle. The eagle killed server hundred times its point value that battle.