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whats the best epic fail that one of your characters have ever experianced...

ill start... my character, elegost, was a human ranger in my DM's world marbref. He had this feat that allowed him to do 1d8 +6 x4 damage each shot... he drew his first arrow (when versing a dragon) and crit missed, twisting his ankle... then he continued to crit miss again and shoot himself dealing 204 points damage to himself (he only had 32 )... and he somehow survived...

Elegost

Only played once but this was funny, so I had an elven magician me and my team fall into a pit and I decide to teleport up to the edge of pit wall so I pass rolling very well, but I see two ghost or ghouls when I get up and fall back down the pit and land on my head from shock. From then on in the game I was useless.

I had a char decapitate himself with a vorpal sword. Fantastic.

Kind of similar, one of the players in my old game (17 Mage) made a book with 20 maximized exploding runes in it. He let it slip while in a bar. Later he was acting like a d-bag to a lvl 1 mage NPC. The NPC was 25 feet away and cast Amanuensis on the book. That was on the PCs person. 720 unsavable, non-resistable damage.

Where to start...

The Ninja who failed her jump check, then her reflex save when leapeing between pillars. SPLAT!

The Half-orc who leapt of a cliff to rescue the Ninja from a flying monster, and succeeded. SPLAT SPLAT!

My character uhh....

Sorta raped a character in a western style DnD session.
Needless to say I was gunned down by cops and the sherif.

It would have to be you, Shadowbrand .

We did a pretty good job of accidentally killing the swamp elf bargee we'd threatened into transporting us downriver, when we were only trying to "teach him a lesson". Then we did a pretty bad job of steering the barge, given that we had no barge-steering skills. Then when we'd steered it into a big rock, we did an even worse job of repairing the leak, given that we were distinctly lacking in relevant Craft skills. We did just about manage to get to shore, clinging to bits of sunk barge, but by that point we were... well... up the swamp without a paddle, I guess. Stuck in the middle of a swamp in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by ghosts and now-hostile swamp elves.

another one happened a bit ago...

we was being chased by some crazy monster thing and our mage turned and let loose a fireball... which caught the entire forest on fire... which annoyed the local elves a wee bit... and it did not end well for us...

one of the characters after we were caught by the elves, decided to hug one... he died...

in rifts my charcter was fighting 2 borgs in a nuclear power plant and accidently threw a grendae and a c4 pack into the nuclear reactor... which killed him, 2 borgs, our medic, our vechiles, a alien ship, and 50kms of country side... oh and a farmer

Just going purely by the rules, we had some fun with Vorpal Swords in 3.0 & 3.5.

In our first big game of 3rd edition, my group played a long, epic game from 4th level up to around 17th, climaxing with a huge planar battle against demons, including multiple balors. At one point our Elf Rogue decided he needed to move past one of the balors to do something other than fighting said Balor. Sadly, he provoked an Attack of Opportunity. Any fellow big D&D geeks will recall what Balors are armed with. Yes, the Balor rolled with twenty on the attack, and yes, he confirmed it. Pop, goes the elf’s head, just like a dandelion. We told the player “don’t provoke opportunity attacks from a guy with a vorpal sword!”

Next big epic campaign, we’re fighting a group of evil NPCs, and we’re around 12th-14th level. Somewhere like that. One of them was a fighter with a vicious vorpal greatsword. One of our clerics was fighting him, and another PC went down elsewhere on the battlefield, and the cleric rushed to go save him. Provoking an opportunity attack. Again, the DM (different DM) rolled a twenty, and confirmed it. Again the PC (SAME PLAYER!)’s head pops off like a dandelion. And we tell the player AGAIN, “Don’t provoke opportunity attacks from a guy with a vorpal sword!”

At the end of that same campaign, my character had that sword, and we were fighting the final BBG of the campaign. A nasty Frost Giant cleric. So we’ve finally killed most of his bodyguards, and I’ve got him (nearly) cornered, and he tries to fly past me to get some breathing space. Provoking an attack of opportunity. Naturally, I rolled a 20. And confirmed it. And the BBEG’s head pops off like a Giant Frosty Evil Dandelion. And we tell the DM “Don’t provoke opportunity attacks from a guy with a vorpal sword!”



Okay, that last part wasn’t really an Epic Fail, though I think it happening twice to the same player in different campaigns qualifies.

I once without thinking shot off a fireball into a inclosed room with the intire party in it..... opps.

Hawkins wrote:I once without thinking shot off a fireball into a inclosed room with the intire party in it..... opps.

I lol'd

To expand on Vorpal retardedness a GM in one of the bigger games I was playing in gave his NPC a vorpal sword. At level 3-4. In his world there were only 2 that existed. Later on, about level 8, we fought a Mature Black Dragon. His NPC Crit and confirmed on the dragon. Then he told us that it didn't kill the dragon since it was so large. We argued and told him that he was a cheater for giving his NPC the sword in the first place. He then told us that if the dragon was killed in that fashion then we would get no xp since it was his NPC that did all the work, and he would level up two or three times.

We killed the dragon on our own after that. Later we destroyed the economy of his world and made millions of gold while not progressing his story. Suck it GM.

My biggest mistake was actually as a 3.5 DM, back in college. I underestimated how little players heed warnings from a DM, even one well known for killing off characters. I was the only DM around that didn't seem like I was afraid to kill PCs. Never really went out of my way to do so, I just enjoyed the combat system and didn't go out of my way to say "...but out of nowhere, [player's deity] smites the legions of foes you shouldn't have pissed off, causing them to all drop their loot, and healing you to full health" like some of the others around. That being said, they weren't the brightest group, and very rarely reached 10th level or above in any of their campaigns, as someone would invariably stick their head out the door and taunt the dragon, or something to that effect.

So for a change of pace, I decided to let them power-play for a while. All 5 players for this particular campaign were allowed to create level 14 characters to start, and were given 3 free levels worth of racial adjustments. I did warn them, however, not to go too crazy with their character designs, and to still create a balanced party, as they would be facing much more difficult encounters than normal. The idea was to see how many sessions they could survive.

I had never really pushed my players very hard with magical encounters, just a support character here or there. But I had given a background story in advance, pretty heavily influenced by Baldur's Gate 2. All of the PC's were subjects of magical experiments, and would be making good their escapes in the first session. After that, it was to be a Frankenstein-esque story, as the party attempted to find a faction to take them in, overlooking their differences of species and traditional alignments, all the while being chased by bounty hunters. I hinted to the fact that they might indeed have to fight their captor during the escape, a sinister Dwarven Mage of no small skill.

So, let's review again. The party was aware that they were starting in captivity, so no starting equipment. The party knew I wouldn't take it easy on them. The party had a pretty good idea that they would be fighting a mage early on. The party had about a week to discuss their character builds and plans. I had a week to design my wizard, I decided upon level 15, limiting myself to feats, skills, and spells available in the standard PHB and PHB2, and picking his spells ahead of time, but gearing him towards combat and a predefined plan (before I knew any character designs, even).

A couple days later at the first session, I was presented with everything from a Lion-Tiger-Shapeshifter hybrid monk, to a Half-Black-Dragon-Minotaur warrior. Most had taken full advantage of the racial modifier allowance, so all the characters were between effective level 16 and 17. But I kid you not, the only ranged attack in the entire group was the breath weapon of the Half-Dragon warrior.

So of course, the party trips an alarm on their way out, and are met in a large (100ft by 30ft or so) chamber by the lone mage, no support. Eager to try out their new melee powerhouses, they charge at their foe, all five running straight through the wall of fire he raises in the middle of the room. He proceeds to teleport to the other side of the wall. The party crosses through the wall again, all five taking the 17-27 fire damage again. He then casts a nasty spell out of PHB2: Mislead. Failing to spot the illusion as the mage goes invisible, they ALL cross the wall for a third time, charging blindly towards the illusory double created on the opposite side of the room. A couple whiffs ensued, as the beastmen tore the illusion to pieces, and then stood there stunned. Maniacal laughter ensues behind them, and a lightning bolt hurtles through the wall of flames, scorching several of them further. It only got worse from there. All in all, the mage took a single hit from the breath weapon, and the entire party dies.



Epic.
Fail.

Biggest fail was probably during game last week-my first game ever, acually. My dragonborn warrior, in the middle of a barfight, tried to save a fellow PC. While fighting off 3 enemies (and taking a gakload of damage in the process), I attempted to jump over a table to save myself. Unfortunaetly, the dice gods looked unfavourably upon me, and I tripped, crashed into the floor, and killed myself.

I just hope my luck gets better in time .

LLF

oh... just remembered another one

didnt happen to me but still is hilarious

two characters were poor... lvl 1 and had no quest (at the time), and so decided to shoot apples off each others heads to get money... the bets were put in and they both fired at the same time. the first player rolled and got a critical miss, followed by 'critical hit other', and then rolled 100, or 'stuck in head, immediate death'. so charater 2 died. then character 2 fired (since they fired at the same time) and rolled a crit miss, followed by crit hit other, followed by 100. 'stuck in head, immediate death'. another PC then took all the items and bets that were made and continued through his life to become the most rich man in the world

elegost wrote:two characters were poor... lvl 1 and had no quest (at the time), and so decided to shoot apples off each others heads to get money... the bets were put in and they both fired at the same time. the first player rolled and got a critical miss, followed by 'critical hit other', and then rolled 100, or 'stuck in head, immediate death'. so charater 2 died. then character 2 fired (since they fired at the same time) and rolled a crit miss, followed by crit hit other, followed by 100. 'stuck in head, immediate death'. another PC then took all the items and bets that were made and continued through his life to become the most rich man in the world

So they both rolled 1s and isnta killed each other with rolls of 100 on the dmg chart? Could a mathmagician please tell me the odds of that?

A roll of 1 on a D20
I don't know what die you used to get the "Critical hit other" D4? D6?
Then a roll of 100 on a D100

Then repeated exactly.

I am not denying it happened. I just want to know how unlucky these people are.

The Ninja just broke her lockpicks off in the lock. The Halfling Barbarian tries to kick down the door, failing twice. Then A troll and two rage drakes, attracted by the noise, come around the corner behind the party. The Halfling finally manages to bust down the door (After being warned of the new monsters). He then hoofs it back to the Troll+Co. The Mage turns around and sees 3 more RageDrakes comeing after us. His first blast of spells causes only light damage, then his Blade Barrier fails to deter them. He shoves the Ninja in front of him, Blasts one RageDrake, then he and the healer dive down the ladder, followed by the halfling.

Fail.

My favorite is me and our group were going down a tunnel and find a brown mold(Doubes the str and distance of all fire spells) so our monk takes it. We come accross a demon which charms my fighter. My fighter in turn Crits the monk killing him and forcing the party to flee.
Now this is where it gets awesome. Our war mage has his pride wounded so he must exact his revenge, disregarding the other party members warnings. He marches back to the cave and fails his spot check. He sees the demon and decides that a fire nova(not sure what it is called) is the best weapon against the demon.... ya i know.... The spell goes off and he rolls incredable. Over 100 points of damage slams into the demon (Which is immune). However the brown mold return the 100+ fire nova at the caster for over 250+ damage which incinerates the war mage....... Everyone fell over laughing.

Probably 20 years ago now, I had a dwarf fighter, who had a hatred for the undead. Party encounters a room full of ghouls - no biggie, and we start hacking them up. One runs, I chase. It jumps into an open pit, so of course, I jump after it.

Pit turns out to be a lot deeper than expected, and all the ghouls in the world live at the bottom. Bob the dwarf was never seen again.

A while back, I was playing an elf wizard. We had recently picked up another wizard traveling companion (a friend of ours was in town for a few days and wanted something to do) to help us in driving some goblinoid critters out of a network of tunnels. The tribe was known to have a few magic-users of their own, and the following exchange occurred when our scout found a large group headed in our direction:
(keep in mind that fireballs used to use volumetric calculation).

Me: Ok. I've got this. Everyone stand back. Hey, new guy. How far do you think I need to put this thing?

Other mage: Uh... *quick calculation* You should be good at about...

*goblins finally see us and let out a war-cry*

Me: Quickly...

Other mage: Uhm... 42 feet!

Me: You sure?

Other mage: Yes! 42 feet-

Me: Okay! FIRE IN THE HOLE! *casts spell with specified parameters*

Other mage: S***! I meant yards!

*FOOOOOM!*

...

The smoke clears, and the only ones left standing are my mage (made the resist and had some other equipment) with 1HP, and an enemy goblin mage. We both had the same initiative, both cast Magic Missiles at each other, and subsequently fell to our deaths. Kind of like the OK Corral. Or Jonestown, morning after.

Moral of the story: Math is your friend, and be careful with fire.

Grimpost wrote:

elegost wrote:two characters were poor... lvl 1 and had no quest (at the time), and so decided to shoot apples off each others heads to get money... the bets were put in and they both fired at the same time. the first player rolled and got a critical miss, followed by 'critical hit other', and then rolled 100, or 'stuck in head, immediate death'. so charater 2 died. then character 2 fired (since they fired at the same time) and rolled a crit miss, followed by crit hit other, followed by 100. 'stuck in head, immediate death'. another PC then took all the items and bets that were made and continued through his life to become the most rich man in the world

So they both rolled 1s and isnta killed each other with rolls of 100 on the dmg chart? Could a mathmagician please tell me the odds of that?

A roll of 1 on a D20
I don't know what die you used to get the "Critical hit other" D4? D6?
Then a roll of 100 on a D100

Then repeated exactly.

I am not denying it happened. I just want to know how unlucky these people are.

without the crit hit other, the chances are 1/4000000. If you find the chance of crit hit other, square it and multiply by 4000000 and you have the total odds

Two (idiot) players in the party cast fireball, killing all of the monsters and all of the party. There were two clerics in the party, and if one of them would have passed one of their saves, they would have been still alive (Albeit with 2-3 HP, but that's enough!) and would have been able to heal the other cleric then the rest. It was the end battle of the module! Gaaahhh!!!

Where to start where to start...

Well, my friend's VERY proficient assassin character managed to mixed up the poisoned food with the safe food and manajed to wipe out half of the party. The intended target figured out what happened and happened to be the leader of a large and wealthy and VERY powerful nation. The resulting combat (which to begin with was one sided because half the party was dead) was short, and none to amusing for the PCs.

I was the DM and was laughing so hard that gak was coming out of me ears.


And when I played, after a harrowing encounter with black clad cultists (a staple in D&D no?) we brutally assaulted more black clad figures. After an hour of arduous combat (his moded D&D system was super lethal and trying to stay alive against massive numbers was insanely hard) we realized that the people we had been massacring were in fact the town Constables... DM FAIL!!!

my best epic fail was with my 4e human Feypact warlock Theren. Our Party had just arrived in a large cavern chamber filled with lots of cultists and demonish things, we got rushed and were blocked from entering the room any ferther, I managed to Teleport myself past all of the baddies and get behind them (to give my party combat advantege) But suddenly more cultists minions (those hp 1 dudes) started entering threw a tunnel in the back of the chamber, I was out numbered and could only kill one each turn, I was basicly cornered and stabed to death, taken away and then turned into a mindless Cultists, the whole party was killed besides theren and our paladin, which were brainwashed, but we survived, sort of....

Oh and Praise Bellsheara!!! (God I hate cultists.)

Hmmm oh I know one. Ok one time as we set up camp our Mage being the paranoid idiot he is sets up explosive runes around his leomund tiny hut. All of us stay away from his hut. Except our Halfling their decides he wants to take someof the rich Wizards money and tries to avoid the runes. Ten seconds later the Wizard come out to check on the camp and finds a very blackened forest and 3 charred skeletons.

Fail

Lol, sounds like my 3.5 Halfing Sorceror, he was a funny little treasure hunter. He never did do things himself though, always tried to get the big stupid fighters to do his dirty work xD

I have one, where a new character died over a fictional muffin.

So I'm DMing a new campaign, with brand new lvl 1 characters. They are prisoners in a town. When they escape they drop down into the sewers, and come up in a room with an owlbear. Now they manage to kill it because a monk with dex score of 20 keeps doging the bear while punching it to death. To make things intersting, I drop in 30 hobgoblins, and have them start threatening the PCs. Now the monk askes why are they here and the mage gives him and me the answer.

"There here because we killed their owlbear."

So the hobgoblin leader askes why did you kill the bear.

The Monk thinks fast and says it was in self defence. He makes a bluff check, and askes if he can get a circumstance bonus by telling them that the bear was attracted by food on his person. I have the hobgoblins ask what food. The monk thinks fast as says muffins.

He makes his test, and fails, but only by 2, so I say the hobgoblins are unconvinced, and ask to see the muffins. The monk says no, because they don't exist. The hobgoblins proceed to kill the party.

Death over a fictional muffin. Fail.

Perhaps if you had a sorceror handy he could of used minor image to make a fake muffin xD

Didn't happen to me, but at Origins 2008 (or 2007) I was in a Living Greyhawk game. I don't remember the name of the module, I do remember that it deatured a red cap and a rust monster. I was playing a LG Cleric of Heironeous (building towards a Prestige Class from Book of Champions, never got high enough) and I recognized the description of the rust monster right off the bat (I mostly DM for local groups). I of course make some feeble excuse to stay back (my character of course wouldn't know what a rust monster was, but I sure as hell didn't want to lose my armor).

Anyways, our group ended up doing fine, myself and a fighter killing the red cap while a rogue and monk dealt with the beasty. After the event, I chilled for a while as someone else leafed through my DMG looking for a particular Wondrous Item. I happened to catch another group doing the same module as we had just run. As a matter of fact, they were just fighting the rust monster. It was painful to watch the Paladin's Masterwork Mithril Chainmail dissolve before his eyes.
---
The next closest fail that I can think of was a friend of mine's ill fated attempt to make a DnD campaign. I actually joined after their first adventure. I'm not to sure of the details, but I know their had been some ruckus with a prostitute in their earlier session, so we spent most of my first session with them springing our fourth party member from the custody of town guards. Anywho, before we actually got around to playing, my friend that was DM'ing decided that in order to try and stimulate RP'ing, he would make us all roll on a table of one hundred NPC traits (from the DMG I think). Anyways, I got "mental disorder" (or equivalent).

So, not being content to leave it at that, I fished through my collection of sourcebooks as I knew that either DMG II or Unearthed Arcana had several lists of diseases. Finding the lists I was searching for, I promptly rolled up...necrophilia. As you might imagine, the prospect of me graphically describing my character sneaking into the bushes to have my way with dead guards convinced my friend to allow myself a reroll.

Edit- The Book of Champions is actually Complete Champion. The class I was going for was the Ordained Champion. The table of random insanities I used was taken from the rules for sanity starting on page 190 of Unearthed Arcana. Hmmmm, thank you Dakka. This reminded me I need to work either taint or sanity into my current game of 4th edition.

I was in a school D&D club in my freshmen year of high school. A lot of my friends were in it, but one really annoying guy was in it that seriously gave us nerds a bad name. All he knew how to be was a tank, and just to try to get in a hit he attempted to jump over one of my friend's charcter. The DM said he failed, thus hitting my friend with a greatsword. Even though we all told him to not try it again, he did anyway and once again failed, knocking my friend's character unconcious for the round. That guy's done a lot of stupid things, but that was his biggest epic fail of the two-year club.

Hmmm...epic fail or annoyance. I had a minotaur in a friends campaign many years ago. I ( the character I assure you not me) had "beastly odor". Making it difficult for me to even try to hide my differences in town as townsfolk would walk a wide berth around me to avoid the smell. Our mage decided to try to cure me of my ailment, he failed miserably. The DM upgraded my odor to an ungodly stench, he stated no way I could travel in town, my charisma was terribly low for a being minotaur anyways so you imagine how low now. I killed the mage saying never make a minotaur mad we all had a laugh. After that I stuck with dwarfs.


Been over 10 or so years since I have role played. Couple of good groups I see have offered, I just have no time anymore.