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Two games ago, the highest combat number I rolled all night was a 7. Everything else were 2s and 4s. Blech.

Last game, my dice made up for it. Four natural 20s in a row. By the second one, I was letting players look over the screen so they could see I wasn't making it up.

Anyone else ever have a freaky run, good or bad?

In the original version of CoC, my PC would always get the worst possible results for sanity checks, but would always lose the absolute minimum amount of sanity possible. Meanwhile everyone else who made their sanity checks would be losing more than me.

In N&S the other week one of them was fighting an assassin on the rooftop of the Syndey Opera House and as the assassin rappelled down the roof on his winch the player character leaped off onto him (with no harness). If he missed he would fall to his death for sure. It was a leap/grab & head butt attack, from behind and he rolled a natural 20 for the grab and another natural 20 for the head butt (I gave him triple damage)! Great attack but unfortunately it killed the assassin so they couldnt question him!

The last game the group I am in played was like that. Between the GM and one other player they rolled a total of eleven natural 1s and no-one rolled a natural 20.

The villains could not hit the broadside of a barn, and no-one could save. Our heavy hitter of the group was taken out by a Cloud of Slumber because he totally failed a save.

In a homespun game which fused the settings of Starcraft & Starship Troopers, based on the system from the Mutant Chronicles system, my character had the highest Mental Strength of the entire group. Yet, each and every single time we were required to make a save/roll vs something mentally taxing (say 'shell shock' for example), I'd fail. And most of the time, when seeing how badly I failed (kinda like CoC, fail and loose 'x' sanity points), I'd roll near maximum. So my character, the one most people would have voted 'the most likely to keep his **** together', was the first to loose it completely. lol

The Dark Elf wrote:In N&S the other week one of them was fighting an assassin on the rooftop of the Syndey Opera House and as the assassin rappelled down the roof on his winch the player character leaped off onto him (with no harness). If he missed he would fall to his death for sure. It was a leap/grab & head butt attack, from behind and he rolled a natural 20 for the grab and another natural 20 for the head butt (I gave him triple damage)! Great attack but unfortunately it killed the assassin so they couldnt question him!

Sometimes...oversuccess...

I almost managed to pull off something like that in a convention game for some game setting I joined in on. The final battle was against some kind of terminator style robot that I managed to pull off a nice headshot to blow its head off but because the GM wasn't going to allow THAT it had a tiny little eyestalk pop up from the blown off head (like you'd actually engineer a robot with the expectation of its head being blown off) so it could continue to flee. I managed only one of the two natural 20's required to stop it the second time, so I hit the stalk but couldn't actually damage it and it escaped. Really cheap of the GM.

Yep. I've had a couple epic combat sessions where opposing natural 20s were rolled more than once. Then there was ApocalypseZero's infamous "Jack 20."

Nightmask wrote:I almost managed to pull off something like that in a convention game for some game setting I joined in on. The final battle was against some kind of terminator style robot that I managed to pull off a nice headshot to blow its head off but because the GM wasn't going to allow THAT it had a tiny little eyestalk pop up from the blown off head (like you'd actually engineer a robot with the expectation of its head being blown off) so it could continue to flee. I managed only one of the two natural 20's required to stop it the second time, so I hit the stalk but couldn't actually damage it and it escaped. Really cheap of the GM.

actually I could see the value in a series of secondary sensors as backups... that said not allowing you to damage the eye stalk was just a BS move by a GM who likely didn't allow for that in their storyline... this is why I approach my campaign from the concept of a sandbox game.

Years ago we had a guy who played a Gray Seer who was a devout pacifist and had taken a vow to never hurt a living thing. during fights he would use his powers only for healing and defense and would only parry and dodge.
Durring one battle while we were sneaking into the bad guys main base, one of his guards went running to activate the alarm ona nearby wall. The Gray Seer picked up a disgarded TW-Ion Pistol and told the GM "I'll fire a warning shot at him". the GM had him roll to hit, he rolled a natural 1. After a few dice rolls of his own the gm had him roll again, he got a natural 20, the GM then had him roll damage, he rolled three 6s (18 total). the GM ruled that the shot had hit the guard in the head and the now headless guard slumped to the floor.

Mallak's Place wrote:Years ago we had a guy who played a Gray Seer who was a devout pacifist and had taken a vow to never hurt a living thing. during fights he would use his powers only for healing and defense and would only parry and dodge.
Durring one battle while we were sneaking into the bad guys main base, one of his guards went running to activate the alarm ona nearby wall. The Gray Seer picked up a disgarded TW-Ion Pistol and told the GM "I'll fire a warning shot at him". the GM had him roll to hit, he rolled a natural 1. After a few dice rolls of his own the gm had him roll again, he got a natural 20, the GM then had him roll damage, he rolled three 6s (18 total). the GM ruled that the shot had hit the guard in the head and the now headless guard slumped to the floor.

man oh man that had to be super traumatic... did the char get an insanity out of the deal?

Slight001 wrote:

Nightmask wrote:I almost managed to pull off something like that in a convention game for some game setting I joined in on. The final battle was against some kind of terminator style robot that I managed to pull off a nice headshot to blow its head off but because the GM wasn't going to allow THAT it had a tiny little eyestalk pop up from the blown off head (like you'd actually engineer a robot with the expectation of its head being blown off) so it could continue to flee. I managed only one of the two natural 20's required to stop it the second time, so I hit the stalk but couldn't actually damage it and it escaped. Really cheap of the GM.

actually I could see the value in a series of secondary sensors as backups... that said not allowing you to damage the eye stalk was just a BS move by a GM who likely didn't allow for that in their storyline... this is why I approach my campaign from the concept of a sandbox game.

Yes it was the final battle in a standalone game and my shot should have taken care of the killer robot for a victory for us players but he just couldn't let the players have the win and just had to have his protected NPC escape. As far as secondary sensors go, yes they can be understandable but you aren't going to have things engineered where the head getting blown to pieces has it pop up a viewing eye through what would be the remains of the head assembly if you had one it would be in another location like the shoulder a spot that's not going to have the sparking shorted remains of the head in the way.

I had a laughably good string of rolls in a Star Wars D20 game. Our little smuggling ship was getting out of Dodge as fast as we could, pursued of course by a small squadron of small fighters. Basically think of the scene with TIE fighters chasing down the Millenium Falcon, inspiring the classic "Great, kid. Don't get cocky!" quote.

I was manning one of the ship's laser cannons, and couldn't manage to roll anything other than a natural 20 -- somewhere between 4 and 6 in a row. Damage rolls were excellent as well. One shot, one kill, and a swiftly evaporated fighter squadron. The rolls were witnessed by another player, and I really don't think the GM intended for us to escape in that manner, but he just couldn't argue with fate, so he rolled with the punches and adjusted his storyline to fit.

Of course that sort of makes up for the time in Rifts that I managed to launch a mini-missile salvo into a party member instead of a Thornhead demon, who looked up at my Titan Combat Robot confused-like, smiled, and finished what my salvo didn't. Or tried to use the same Titan robot to grab and restrain a horrible nasty human on the streets of Ciduad Juarez, only to topple over and destroy a building and land almost our entire party in jail. Or the time in Champions a party member (not me) intended to use his staff to give a little rap on the head to an uncooperative NPC who had vital information, and accidentally knocked said NPC's head and the information contained therein near about halfway to Egypt. Or that horrible little D&D Ring of Three Wishes (though you can write that off more to a DM twisting the words of a wish too literally).

Isn't statistical clustering fun?

Had a character get the nickname "Punching Bag" because in his first fight, he rolled natural 1's for all his defensive actions (It was like 8 or 9 in a row).

--flatline

PC makes a bad tactical move. He and one other character are in a smoke cloud with three Gromecks. He says, "Break off and run!" into the open radio channel and runs, leaving an armed frag grenade in his wake. The gromecks don't get the memo and can't see the grenade in the smoke, he rolls to attack, gets a natural 20! He is overjoyed because he'll deal critical damage the unsuspecting Gromecks.

The problem being that now they both need 20's to dodge the attack.

Things did not end well that night...

Alrik Vas wrote:PC makes a bad tactical move. He and one other character are in a smoke cloud with three Gromecks. He says, "Break off and run!" into the open radio channel and runs, leaving an armed frag grenade in his wake. The gromecks don't get the memo and can't see the grenade in the smoke, he rolls to attack, gets a natural 20! He is overjoyed because he'll deal critical damage the unsuspecting Gromecks.

The problem being that now they both need 20's to dodge the attack.

Things did not end well that night...

If the grenade has a delay, why do they need to dodge at all? Unless they're in wheelchairs, 1 or 2 seconds is plenty of time to clear the crazy small blast radius that Rifts MD grenades all seem to have.

--flatline

Game record for nat 20's is 12 total. 7 in a row for the GM. A shuriken may only do 1d4 damage, but when that's doubled it starts to stack up.

It is honestly a wonder how those 2 ninja's (in tmnt) are still alive.

flatline wrote:

Alrik Vas wrote:PC makes a bad tactical move. He and one other character are in a smoke cloud with three Gromecks. He says, "Break off and run!" into the open radio channel and runs, leaving an armed frag grenade in his wake. The gromecks don't get the memo and can't see the grenade in the smoke, he rolls to attack, gets a natural 20! He is overjoyed because he'll deal critical damage the unsuspecting Gromecks.

The problem being that now they both need 20's to dodge the attack.

Things did not end well that night...

If the grenade has a delay, why do they need to dodge at all? Unless they're in wheelchairs, 1 or 2 seconds is plenty of time to clear the crazy small blast radius that Rifts MD grenades all seem to have.

--flatline

because we don't run on a fluid, non-attack-per-melee system like you do. Also the grenades in our version of Rifts have real blast qualities. You aren't safe from a grenade until you're about 15-20 meters from it. It's not deadly out to that range (well, it's MD...so it is if you're out of armor), but it can still damage you.

Alrik Vas wrote:

flatline wrote:

Alrik Vas wrote:PC makes a bad tactical move. He and one other character are in a smoke cloud with three Gromecks. He says, "Break off and run!" into the open radio channel and runs, leaving an armed frag grenade in his wake. The gromecks don't get the memo and can't see the grenade in the smoke, he rolls to attack, gets a natural 20! He is overjoyed because he'll deal critical damage the unsuspecting Gromecks.

The problem being that now they both need 20's to dodge the attack.

Things did not end well that night...

If the grenade has a delay, why do they need to dodge at all? Unless they're in wheelchairs, 1 or 2 seconds is plenty of time to clear the crazy small blast radius that Rifts MD grenades all seem to have.

--flatline

because we don't run on a fluid, non-attack-per-melee system like you do. Also the grenades in our version of Rifts have real blast qualities. You aren't safe from a grenade until you're about 15-20 meters from it. It's not deadly out to that range (well, it's MD...so it is if you're out of armor), but it can still damage you.

Ah. That makes sense.

--flatline

Our higher-level group was chasing a McGuffin that BloodMist (from FoM) was also after. He got the McGuffin & we had decided while battling for possession that it would be better to destroy than let him keep it.

As he zipped away on a TKbarge/skiff, my PC got nat 20 strike w/ BFG, nat 20 to hit the engine, max damage on 2d6x10 (or 1d6x100, it's been a while).

The GM got 00 on the teleport roll to get his ass outta dodge. BloodMist lived up to his name.

While praised by some, we also ended up banned form Dweomer so they wouldn't incur Dunscon's wrath while waiting for DM to get reborn the quick & messy way.

I'm running a HU campaign where the PC's are playing the villains. I had a team of Hero NPC's that I was sure would give them a challenge. The first encounter the heroes could not get a good roll to save their lives, literally. Half of them died or were severely injured by the end of the combat. The kicker was that only one of the PC's was designed for heavy combat. The other two were con men and tricksters.

Not really a die roll, but we were gaming on a bus once with super simple rules that used coin tosses instead of dice for resolution. I lost 16 flips in a row.

--flatline

You weren't riding the bus to vegas were you? because i can imagine you turning around and forgetting the whole thing.