Roll a natural 20

>roll a natural 20
>"You succeeded so well that you not only fail to achieve your goal, but you die as well!"

I had never heard of this situation until Veeky Forums. Has this ever really happened to anyone?

I've always wanted to do this as a DM where nat 1s would result in a hilarious insta-death. Nat 20s would result in an insane situation that may-or-may not kill them depending on how fast they adapted to the situation. Take that jump check to fail and snap your neck, or risk going into escape velocity?

Never did it though on account of knowing my players would riot, and rightfully so.

It's possible you play with one of the seemingly rare groups that actually read the rules and therefore know that skill checks don't automatically fail on a 1, or critically succeed on a 20.

Also this being Veeky Forums most of those stories are just bullshitting because some user thought it would be funny.

No, because mechanics don't work that way.
Once had a DM who'd "punish" us for acing difficulty checks he didn't want us succeeding.
Persuaded a king to make me royalty? The land given is INFESTED with monsters and bandits, no one wants to live there, and its right on the border of an extremely hostile nation. Also my title of baron means nothing to anyone because of this.

>Persuaded a king to make me royalty? The land given is INFESTED with monsters and bandits, no one wants to live there, and its right on the border of an extremely hostile nation. Also my title of baron means nothing to anyone because of this.

Dunno man, sounds like you got exactly what you wished for.

I can't tell if your logic is metal or just twisted.

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"I roll a natural 20 on my intimidation check. What answers do I get out of the guy?"
"None. He dies of a terror-induced heart attack."

>Persuaded a king to make me royalty? The land given is INFESTED with monsters and bandits, no one wants to live there, and its right on the border of an extremely hostile nation. Also my title of baron means nothing to anyone because of this.
Sounds about right. It was unclaimed domain since the last baron died. Valiant knight like yourself sure can fix it? Did you expect him to grant you the title of Duke of Big Cheese near the capital on fertile land with many trade routes? Although proper title for the holder of shithole marchland on the border should be marquess or margrave.

I have actually had this happen once before, not directly to me, but to someone in my party.

It was during an online seafaring game back in 3.5. Our group had to take our dinghy into a seaside cave to get to a hidden pirate hideout, and the currents took our boat. We had to take the rudder against the current to avoid hitting some rocks. I, being a halfling, couldn't really do anything, but the half-orc totally could. He grabs the rudder, rolls to control it, and rolls a nat 20 on the Strength check the DM asked for. He is then told that he rips the rudder off the boat, which proceeds to slam directly into the rocks. Pretty much the rest of the session devolved into arguing about why that was BS.

>5% chance to die on any roll

I'm glad you're aware this is a bad idea.

>The land given is INFESTED with monsters and bandits
>its right on the border of an extremely hostile nation
Solve these problems and the King would probably let you marry one of his daughters. Maybe even a hot one.

I'm pretty sure that quite a few Kings did exactly this. Kind of like how they promote incompetent people to get them out of their hair.

I run that in a post-apo system that uses THREE d20's
>single nat 1
you succeeded
>double nat 1
you succeeded in a borderline magical way
>triple nat 1
HOW THE FUCK IS THIS EVEN POSSIBLE
>single nat 20
Well, you fucked up, TRY THAT AGAIN
>double nat 20
You fucked up the thing you were working with beyond repair and hurt yourself in a varying degree
>triple nat 20
BRAVO, YOU'VE DOOMED US ALL, YOU COULD'VE PREVENTED THIS.
You have perished.

>The land given is INFESTED with monsters and bandits, no one wants to live there, and its right on the border of an extremely hostile nation.
So um, what's the problem again?

I dunno, seems like a great deal to me!

T. Ancestor

Problem is those monsters are all dragons or in mobs so big a geared up party would die in one round.
Beyond that there's like 8 dukes and barons we recently killed, including their families, as per order of the king so there was several pieces of land he could have handed out. Instead the DM literally carves out a chunk of hostile territory and hands it to me knowing full well its 110% deadly and entirely useless for everything including minerals and crops.

>I want to do 'x'
>"No"
>Well, I'll try 'y' then
>Could I at least do 'z'?
>There's no way I'm letting you do anything that nuts unless you roll a Nat 20, if you want to try, go for it.

No fun allowed DMs who refuse anything that may conflict with how they thought the story would go should be a federal offense.

Maybe there is a treasure hidden somewhere around this area and monsters are guarding it. GM turned your wish into ploot hook, he didn't mean to screw you.

Become a nigerian prince then, just keep writing letters that go like this:

"Ruin has come to our family... Do you remember our venerable house, opulent and imperial, gazing proudly from its stoic perch above the moor?

I lived all my years in that ancient rumor shadowed manor, fattened by decadence and luxury, and yet I began to tire of... conventional extravagance. Singular unsettling tales suggested the mansion itself was a gateway to some fabulous and unnameable power. With relic and ritual, I bent every effort towards the excavation and recovery of those long buried secrets, exhausting what remained of our family fortune on... swarthy workmen and... sturdy shovels. At last, in the salt soaked crags beneath the lowest foundations, we unearthed that damnable portal of antediluvian evil. Our every step unsettled the ancient earth, but we were in a realm of death and madness. In the end, I alone fled, laughing and wailing through those blackened arcades of antiquity. Until consciousness failed me.


You remember our venerable house, opulent and imperial, it is a festering abomination. I beg you, return home, claim your birthright and deliver our family from the ravenous clutching shadow
T. your ancestor."

i haven't heard of this situation and i live here. oic its summer

Me or the party would never find out. First trip killed half of us outright, again in the first turn, to rust monsters, hundreds of them, only reason bard, cleric, and i made it out was we were still in the coach and ran the second we saw the barb, warrior, paladin, and rogue go down.
Only reason we know dragons live there is locals have seen a flock go to and from the local mountain.

While we're whining about game situations, it seems like every game I'm in as a player dies while the campaigns I run hold together pretty well.
Should I take this as some sort of a sign from the dice gods?

>only reason bard, cleric, and i made it out was we were still in the coach and ran the second we saw the barb, warrior, paladin, and rogue go dow
Speaking about martials vs casters disparity..

They knew where they stood.

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>sticking their fingers in their ears
>not taking the higher verisimilitude route of having them simply not sharing a common language with the PC

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I mean monsters could just not care to negotiate. Diplomacy by rules does not work on the immediately hostile, and it takes a minute.

Hey, I'm just posting those shitty things I've saved for whatever reason.

Okay, that one's bullshit.

Provide some reason for it outside of mechanics, more like logic and situational context. A character that is literally invisible is one thing, but perhaps being in a well-lit room (or daylit open, featureless salt flat) that has good acoustics, few features, is staffed with alert and attentive guards who are already alerted to the presence of an intruder or intent of an intruder on sneaking in, and there are no otherwise magical or psionic effects in place to disguise the presence of the sneaking character (and also assuming that the character hasn't used Fly to be so distant vertically that he can come down from above or tunneled under the ground below)... Yeah, you should probably be stacking negatives so high that their base perception is higher than any result of the test you could conceivably roll.

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