By all evidence, very few folks on Veeky Forums like all those possibly made-up "epic" stories where a player rolls a natural 20 at the peak of excitement and ends up doing some stupid exaggerated bullshit. A lot has been said why they're terrible, or to a lesser extent, why anyone complaining about them hates having fun.
But whatever you think about them, the fact remains that in any d20 system, you have a 5% odds of rolling down this number every time you throw the dice. It's more than likely that anyone here has gotten this result at least once in the past few sessions. Even though it really usually doesn't do anything special beyond a standard success - if odds were particularly long, it might not even succeed to begin with!
So tell us of the last time you rolled a 20, or otherwise got the best possible result on the dice (like 3 or 4 on GURPS). Tell us the context, what the roll was for, and what happened next.
Hard mode: because of the penalties or other circumstances, the roll entirely failed to do what you wanted it to do anyway.
One of my players ran into his ex-headmaster, upon which the quite insane headmaster began to barrage the said player with questions as to why he wasn't on the field of battle at that moment.
He then literally said "Whatcha gonna do about it." and rolled the nat 20 to intimidate
The headmaster collapsed into the foetal position and cried
Carson Diaz
Here's a NAT 20 and NAT 1 tale in one.
I was running a mecha campaign. One of the PCs had ended up fighting his mentor, the man who had raised him and trained him but lost his way in service of evil.
The mentor was wounded, he had been shot before the fight. His mech was on the ropes. But he insisted he still had life enough to duel his "wayward pupil" and see who was right.
The other PCs hung back to watch. Even dying, even with his mech battered and beaten, the mentor fought his pupil to a standstill.
He had one last move. One last weapon. He gave a speech.
As GM, I rolled his attack. A crit, that would have put the PC out of the fight. The PC burned his last power use to force me to reroll, describing how he remembered his master using this move as they sparred, and how he was trying to block it.
I rerolled into a 1. Total miss. The villain's final attack, the culmination of his life's training, had failed. The pupil had surpassed the master.
The villain surrendered, laid down his weapons and used his last breaths to congratulate his finest student for a good fight before dying.
The party gave him an honourable funeral, and visited his family to return his sword and dogtags. They told all who asked that he had died with honour and as a soldier. It was a perfect thematic end to a player's plot arc built up across a whole campaign.
Kayden Ross
Mine's kinda eh, but whatever.
Our party is at a tavern when the rival party that we had encountered a few times over the course of the campaign showed up. This party consisted of 2 PCs and an NPC that was their leader. The NPC's younger brother was the leader of our party, so him and a PC go start shit with him while the other PC comes over to start shit with the rest of us.After some back and forth, the PC calls my character's father a deadbeat drunkard.
Some background on my character. Female bard who's father taught her to play the didgeridoo before getting drunk one night, leaving, and never coming back, so this really hits home for my character.
"I punch him in the face."
"You realise that's a called shot, right?"
"Don't care."
NAT 20, don't even react as I break his nose and do something like 6-10 damage.
Wasn't anything special, but felt good in the moment.
Lucas Diaz
Got another one from the same campaign, this one's just kinda funny.
We're in the middle of a dungeon crawl, when one of my party members attempts to trip me. (This was our first ever campaign, so we were a bunch of idiots just doing whatever.) Anyway, he gets a NAT 20 so I bash my teeth on a door frame and don't even realise he did it. Another party member goes to hi-five him. DM thinks it'd be funny to make them both roll for the hi-five. They both roll NAT 1 and end up smacking eachother's face. Made for some good laughs.
Camden Howard
>playing a module for pathfinder >currently trying to open a really strong box >has some nice intel in it apparently. >trying to open it in a variety of ways >Me: "Could i take it to a locksmith" >DM: "You only have about 1 hour to get it open, and with the city burning and guards swarming, you won`t make it in time." >Me: "i`ll try to crowbar it open" >have 17 strength, roll decently, still fail. >we´re level 1 >rogue tries to pick it >doesn´t work >a level 5 npc helps us >dents it after 10 minutes nicely enough to get us a 3mm hole >wow so useful >half orc sneaky dude goes "let me try" >Me: "we tried to crowbar it you know, the hands aren´t going to work" >Half-Orc: "it didn`t cuz you´re a stupid elf" >Fine >He rolls a Nat 20 to open it >DM: "Alright well roll to see how much you ope-" >He rolls another fucking Nat 20 >the discord goes apeshit insane at the wombo combo >DM: "You ripped the box wide open and destroyed any artisanal value it had" >Thanks
Guess racism isn`t completely unfounded after all.
Jason Perry
A player's character was fighting a vampire. He has terrible luck and misses for several rounds. He tries everything to help his odds, but he keeps missing. In the end of battle, all players had taken down the rest of the vampires. Only this one player couldn't take down this one vampire. At this point every player helps him to get a hit in. He has a huge amount of bonuses, chance of failure is about as low as it can be. He rolls a 20.
Adam Smith
Out party encountered some unholy beings, which only (as far as we knew) holy weapons could destroy, my plain (buy good quality) greatsword kept knocking the unholy beings around each time I hit them at least, giving the warrior and priest a chance to destroy them. Nearing the end, the priest goes down, followed by the warrior. There is still 1 left, I have no way of hurting him and in desperation I pick up the warriors sword (some kind of sword specific for his culture) I try to hit him a few times, but even though I roll a 19 my final thac0 is still to low due to all the negative modifiers and I realize I need a 20 to hit him (a 20 is a guaranteed hit and counts as a critical as well) I keep rolling for my dear life while the unholy being keep clawing, biting and pummeling me (good thing I am knight and take quite the beating) by now, the rest of the table is almost standing, chanting for a 20, if I go down that would be the end for us, becoming food for the tomb dwellers. Lo and behold, a 20 finally arrives, I would not be able to hold out much more, I even had to burn of several faith points to have my diety temporary empower me to stand fast. Still, just because I got a 20, but I still had to throw a d100 to determine how well the critical was and the being had hardly taken any dmg before the others fell. A low roll would just mean a small dmg boost, a really high one could mean instant dismemberment of the foul being. I roll, get fairly decent, roll all my extra dice while the table is cheering and I slay the unholy being, with at least two times the needed dmg (if my calculations were right) I stabilize the rest of the party, bandage them and get them out, layer the warrior is slightly pissed (in character) because I wielded his special sword, much honor and so on, so we had fun role playing clearing up that problem by drunken wrestling, arm wrestling and other manly feats of drunken strength, while the priest tried to mend whatever we broke or injured.
Nathan White
Party is fighting a somewhat small dragon. Thing is still like 40-50 feet long so pretty big.
Wizard is throwing large rocks at it. Swashbuckler is flying around and stabbing it (was given flight potion by Alchemist, me), Synthesist Summoner is on its back punching it and trying not to get thrown off, I'm with the wizard on the ground pitching acid grenades at it.
DM tells the swashbuckler and Summoner to make reflex saves, Dragon is about to pitch and try to throw summoner off. Swashbuckler makes it, summoner doesn't. Can't get his wings out in time and hits the ground pretty hard, barely conscious.
I aim for it's wings to try and take it out of the air. Nat 20 and confirm critical, basically melt right through one if it's wings. Starts to fall towards downed summoner. He tries to make roll to dodge out of the way, gets a 1.
Managed to kill the party summoner with a Dragon.
Bentley Clark
Pathfinder.
My party was in the feywilds, looking for answers to our big quest. We got in to all sorts of hijinks, including the warpriest trading their ability to free people for a deck of many things.
I came across a hooded figure, with an insectoid limb poking between their robes, the needle on it twitching incessantly. They identified themselves as a master of tattooing, a fey being who knows the true words of inscribing ink to flesh.
We made a wager. If I win, I would gain that insight. If I lose, I yield upon them my magical tattooing needle.
My party helped me prepare. There were potions, scrolls, spells, every buff we could think of, and I rolled the check at a ridiculous bonus.
And it's a 20.
Upon the flesh of the warpriest, who gave up both both of his arms as canvas for this contest, I inscribed the night sky.
Eli Gray
had a character roll a 20 on pushing open massive stone doors on an ancient tomb that monsters were hiding in. it was great because i had been bigging up how my character has a strength of 20 and was basically lv1 Hercules.
Ryder Thompson
This one happened two days ago.
Im playing a paladin, my party and i are trying to infiltrate a stronghold to weaken it for a siege, buddies disguise themselves as scouts and i volunteer to be the captive to sell it.
My character gets taken tk the dungeons and the party is now split trying to their bits to help with the siege once it starts; HOrc Bard and Gnome Sorceress are wandering around using a wand of grease on everything with amazing bluff rolls, the human ranger is ninjaing her way into the keep to finda place to light the signal flare that would 0 in the queen and her siege bows. Meanwhile my Paladin is sitting in a jail cell with none kf his gear, meditating in the even that shit goes pear shaped and he meets his deity face to face. I figure i might as well contribute tk the gane and do something.
"Im gonna sing off key"
Dm tells me to roll perform
Im chuckling. I got nothing. There is no fucking way this will go well.
Roll.
20
"user, you sing perfectly off key. You sing so perfectly off key that with the acoustics of the dungeon your off key singing reverberates throughout the castle and nobody can figure out where its coming from. You have successfully caused a distraction for your party members."
I laughed my ass off then and there.
The song i decided to sing?
Hooked on a Feeling
Austin Lee
>War Humans vs elves >party is fighting elves outside the main city >giant ice glacier above the town about to destroy the city >bard halfling with one recently cut arm says he wants to try and hit the glacier with his slingshot >said to him "roll me to natural 20 and you hit it" >the motherfucker actually did it >hit glacier with a rock, rolls damage and then it breaks(not knowing it was something else that destroyed it
Thomas Perry
In one of the earliest sessions of the current campaign I'm in with my friends, one of my fellow players rolled to "distract" a soldier who was guarding a hefty crate of drugs. The player got a natural twenty and the distraction turned into a seduction.
Several sessions later and that soldier is a still a dedicated part of our party and the two characters make a cute couple. Other than that the character's a quest-suggesting non-entity, the DM did a good job of not making her presence in the party overbearing.
Jose Evans
So... there was nothing inside and the value was the box itself?
Ryder Nelson
My second time as DM I very much adhered to the Nat 20 rule. To me it was a writing challenge.
So we had this character named Roulin. We we took to calling him Roulin DaVente because he was always rollin' dem twenties.
1st dungeon >Town being brainwashed by idol ghost. >Secret cave connecting town to church where ghost lives. >There's a long narrow hallway with treasure at the end of it and a guard. >They call out and the guard won't come to them. >Obvious trap is obvious. >Roulin decides to bluff that they're with the brainwashed townsfolk, and that the village is being raided by knights. >Guard panics. >Throws weapon to party first. >Prepares to jump the 15ft gap. >fails miserably and falls into the pit. >Roulin plays the game "How many guards can we get into a pit?" >Nat 20s another pair of guards to help with guard who fell into pit. >1st guard leans over pit to pull the first out. >Roulin nudges him into the pit. >2nd guard runs over to see what happened. >Roulin pushes him into the pit too. >With all guards safely in the pit, he grabs a ladder and returns to "help" them. >he lays the ladder over the pit and walks across it. >Takes treasure chest and returns triumphant. >Local guards humiliated.
Ayden Adams
>>He rolls a Nat 20 to open it >>DM: "Alright well roll to see how much you ope-" >>He rolls another fucking Nat 20 So what was the first roll for?
Carson King
Bumpan for better stories
Jaxson Lewis
We were interrogating an acolyte of the Dragon Cult and he kept spitting on everyone who asked him questions so I spit back on him. Biggest lougie ever.
David Baker
Was with a party of 3 others vs an entire bandit camp, rolled to intimidate to prevent a fight. Rolled a nat 20 and skipped an encounter the dm had prepped for (he later railroaded us into the fight after we came back through the area)
John Jenkins
>The headmaster collapsed into the foetal position and cried
You know how I know you are a D&D playing new-fag? Its because you and your group fell for the nat 20 meme. a nat 20 only gets you the best that can be reasonably expected, 95th percentile. What happened there should not have been anywhere near a 1/20 chance; your DM did not sit there and think "hmmm, if someone said to this guy 'Whatcha gonna do about it' in a rather intimidating manner, then he would collapsed into the foetal position and cry". What happened there was some newbie DM read some "hOW tO bE a gOOD dM" guide on tumblr and fell for the meme that nat 20 = automatic win (in a funny and humiliating way if possible). As OP said, "if odds were particularly long, it might not even succeed to begin with!", and having someone collapsed into the foetal position and cry is far too long a set of odds. I don't mean to be bashing you in particular, I'm sure that if I read the rest of this thread there would be a pile of other people doing the same stupid shit, but this meme in particular triggers me hard.
Dominic Parker
in some systems you need to confirm your crit. however i havent seen this used for skill checks.
Elijah Lopez
fine sweetie, you can have your (you), but get to bed, it's a school night
Jace Kelly
I think it's time for another story...
The second instance of Roulin DaVente >Group comes upon small coastal hamlet overrun by orcs >Attacked by scout group >Easy win and gives them a vantage point over the town. >Too many to fight. Better to kill the leader. >Roulin has an idea >"I want to disguise myself as an orc." >Decides to use the orc corpse in his disguise. >Nat 1. Ruins the body. Loses the head. >decides to go ahead with the plan anyway. >Backed up by shapeshifter party member who disguises themselves as an orc, Roulin rolls into town with the headless orc body in front of him, large enough to obscure. >Together they encounter the first group of orcs, being careful not to let Roulin be seen. >Orcs naturally suspicious of headless talking orc. >"I'm so tough I don't need a head to live." >Shapeshifted party member backs this story up. >Roulin rolls nat 20 bluff. >Orcs still mildly suspicious, but curious. >Orcs begin to argue how it could be possible, like a chicken that still runs around without its head. >Arguing escalates until one orc orders another to lop off his own head. >Does so. Orc dies. Clearly the headless orc is indeed the toughest orc. >Finally Roulin says they should go see the leader and since he's the toughest orc they should all listen to him. >Rides off ahead of orcs who are now behind him. >Where the disguise falls apart. >All hell breaks loose.
They did wind up fighting the orcs with the help of some captured town guards. Made it all the way to the boss and beat him down pretty quickly. Even though Roulin's horse died.
The moral of the story is a bad costume can still work with a good enough bluff.
Isaac Mitchell
Level 3 fighter took on 3 orcs while trying to draw them away from the badly injured cleric (note: part of her backstory was she had a special hatred for orcs and goblins because her brother was killed when her village was raided). I killed two of them but the last one got me down to 1 point of health and was about to chop off my head when he rolled a nat 1, and on my turn I got double 20s in a row.
The DM asked me to roll a straight d20, saying I needed to get more than 15, I roll a 17. He described the orc bringing the axe onto my head but the head of the axe cracked and splintered while still embedded in my forehead. My fighter fixed the orc with a maddened, terrible glare and howled before cleaving him in two. She toppled over with -10 health and the remaining orcs fled at the sight of her while our cleric healed me back to consciousness.
I took a couple of levels in barbarian after that, it seemed appropriate.
Hudson Morales
>party finds a piano in old mansion >barbarian says he wants to play it >dm says okay but remember that you don't know how to play >barbarian says yeah whatever >nat fucking 20 >dm explains how the barbarian presses the keys in discordant combinations, as he did not know how to play a piano
I was worried when I saw the nat 20 and relieved when the DM handled it correctly.
Gavin Nelson
What did the barbarian player said?
Lincoln Hughes
It's not really so much a single nat 20 as the party fighter's pechant for chaining together a crit and a few other high rolls, immediately turning the tide of battle. He chews through encounters when it happens, but it's usually really hype and everyone loves it.
Justin Bennett
I was playing a droid with a big ass claw for a hand in the Star Wars 3.5 ripoff (I can't remember what the version's called) and I tried to pick this (fairly inmocent) guy up by the neck to choke him. Ended up rolling a nat 20 and the DM just said I completely crushed his head. The party Jedi was obviously not amused.
Leo Brooks
>orc rolls a one >still connects their blow to the head
Xavier Perry
It's all just fluff. What a failed attack roll means is that they fail to do damage, not that they didn't hit at all.
Liam King
Playing Rogue Trader our sneaky beaky friend with a James Bond flavor snapped the neck of some heretic, then aimed his silenced pistol at the next heretic. He rolls his d% and d10, it rolls a 00 and 7. Technically not the best roll in the system, but the DM let him just shoot the guy square between the eyes to kill him instantly.
Lucas Johnson
I rolled three 20's in a row in my first game. Those were supposed to resolve practice swordplay against knights from holy order PC was hired by. She beat first two, third "won with minimal overpoise" as per DM's wording. I think it was a Fighter 6 vs. Fighter 10 or such, 3.5.
Blake Foster
>Just recently became part of a D&D campaign >Start off on first journey, everybody level 1 >Ambushed by some low level goblin fodder >Dwarven Berserker instantly flies into rage and starts slaughtering them. >"I want to rip one in half." >DM: "Okay, well, to succeed you HAVE to roll a 20." >Nat 20 >"You grab the goblin by the legs and rip him apart crotch to neck. He screams in terrible agony until you get to the lungs."
Since it was our first adventure and at low level it wasn't necessarily, "epic." But the fact that he got his 20 at that exact moment after the DM said he had to was hilarious and we all kind of flipped our shit.
Connor Martinez
>my first game >dnd 3.5 >you're all in a tavern >level 1 human fighter >sitting in a booth with the halfling >an enemy sorcerer in the booth next to us gets up and starts casting at high level NPC. >roll init >my turn, stand up and charge with greatsword >nat 20 >kill sorcerer who is level 8 in the following round
Hunter Flores
>be me >5e, Dm'ing >fighter is a good friend of mine, likes to bullshit alot >fighting a large group of cultists >rogue is really squishy, and cleric is dead >cult surrounds him >decides that it would be a good idea to try to deter this group of unwavering cultists by farting >farting
i fucking hate nat 20's
Wyatt Gonzalez
Natural 20 does not make for an automatic success, you autist. If you think someone trying to fart his way out of trouble is flat-out impossible, then there's fuck-all a natural 20 can do to change that.
Jace Lopez
>By all evidence, very few folks on Veeky Forums like all those possibly made-up "epic" stories where a player rolls a natural 20 at the peak of excitement and ends up doing some stupid exaggerated bullshit
And yet people repost Old Man Henderson all the damn time.
Anyway, good thread user.
Ian Gutierrez
Our group has something of a running joke that whenever someone rolls a 20, or whatever's the best possible result in the system we're currently playing, the result is that the character does what they're doing "beautifully": a bit of extra flair or flavor added in with no stupid "le epic meme" auto-successes or other moments. Sometimes even the failures have been beautiful.
Christian Campbell
I do like describing things like that though.
"It's a great fart. Like, perfect. People in the next room heard it. Everyone pauses as you start to fart and waits for it to finish, but it just takes forever. And just when everyone thought it was over, you let loose a cute little toot fart as a sort of epilogue.
Once you're done farting, the cultists look at you in disgust and charge.
Levi Scott
I came to this thread to get mad and I found what I was looking for. thank you. I'm going to need you to flog yourself for your stupidity though.
Chase Sullivan
shit story, just another random "You intimidate the wall!" random yawnfest, where 5% of the time anything happens common sense just takes a break >"you succeed so hard you FAIL hahaha good game amirite?"
Sebastian White
"aw"
Owen Butler
I mean you aren't wrong about the nat20 meme thing, but I felt the context of the situation was sorta justified, the headmaster was fully insane by this point
I mean if everyone had fun was it such a bad thing?
Brayden Reed
For some setups, a nat 20 being ridiculous and unlikely can be fun though.
In a "realistic" world, sure, crazy stuff doesn't happen 5% of the time. But it might in a weird heightened world. Comedy games can be improved by common extreme success.
>Kawasaki Tadataka I THOUGHT I RECOGNIZED THAT ART STYLE!
Nathaniel Sanders
>my character is meant to be guarding a sacred tome with zealous conviction >keep it with me at all times, no one is allowed to see it >DM turns it into a macguffin we need >party is trying to reason with me, it's basically like pulling teeth at this point >eventually I give in and angrily set the book upon a table >DM interprets this as 'slam the fucking book as hard as you can' >makes me roll for it, nat 20 >the table explodes into splinters and I get thrown out of the tavern into the mud
stopped playing after that session
Nolan Murphy
Heavy railroad GM that I try to derail all the time
>get into a specific inn (because the dm wanted us to go there, even if cleric and I were obviously against it (like the most visited inn of all the city, while we wanted to stay stealthy...)) >in character, completely unwilling to go there, and really aware of the surrounding (also not drinking, not eating...) >a harlot-like lady take my character and bring him to dance >try to resist >"it's kinda magical" >then, can I make a will roll ? >yeah, go on >nat 20 >it doesn't work >mfw
In the end, the harlot, who threatened my life in a dark corner was the DMPC who was not with us for like two sessions...
Logan James
Not really a 20 because it was a system based on multiple d6's, but anyway... It was about ten years ago. Party got ambushed by a fiendish stalker - basically a fantasy Xenomorph on steroids. It reduces three characters to critical wounds, but at last, after a couple good hits from the wererewolf's scythe and from the tainted monk's cursed blade, the fucker was badly wounded as well and ran away, climbing up a wall. The party missed its aoo's and lacked ranged weapons; out of frustration, the monk threw a pebble at the fleeing fiend. He scored hilariously high, so the pebble took away the monster's last wound.
They kept it as a blessed relic.
Charles Perez
Either your dm is great and allowed you to kill his obvious "should not die" character, or was already pissed off and send a high level character...
In some kind of way, it reminds me of a trick in the first baldur's gate which allowed you to kill a high level mage in the starting inn, thus gaining a lot of xp and scrolls...
Parker Bailey
>A failed attack means it fails to do damage, not that it doesn't hit at all But also >Hit points don't represent how many times you can be hit, but also how good you are at avoiding or reducing damage D&D sure is stupid
Ryder Gray
Note the "but also".
Hit points are a fluid concept. However much they represent your toughness, your skill, your luck, or the will of the gods, all depends on the exact situation and the circumstances surrounding it. Sometimes it's full meat. Other times it's a lucky near-miss. It all varies.
But it makes for a common argument anyway because this board is full of autists who don't understand such things.
Luis Sullivan
There's no need to have taking damage always mean exhaustion of luck, or always mean actually drawing blood, or anything else. Hit points don't represent anything except the point at which you fall down and start dying (and become susceptible to certain spells and effects). Everything else is fluff.
Grayson Johnson
>Be me >Roll20 game >New game, old players, enjoy the GMs work >GM likes critical failures, has d100 chart >One player crit fails so often GM just stops using chart
My last nat20 was on a perception check. I noticed... Something? I forget what, it wasn't very important in the long run...
Hunter Collins
They represent badassitude
Asher Barnes
This happened about a month ago and today it's the best thing I think I'll ever do.
>playing gunslinger in Pathfinder >we get into last boss of the dungeon which is a corrupted Archon >it's absolutely huge and intimidating >roll high on imitative and unload four shots into it >DR out the ass, doesn't do much damage >Inquisitor in our party gives me Named Bullet for next round >Shaman and Skald both got hurt pretty badly and our Magus is preparing a big attack >my turn rolls around and I use Dead Shot to minimize DR and roll a fucking 20 >everyone in the room goes crazy, we even scared the DM's bird for a few minutes >after all the damage calculating, (had to ask a second GM to make sure everything was correct) I dealt 215 damage in one shot >blast a huge hole in its head and falls dead instantly >party overcome with shock and happiness that we can't even speak for a few moments
Gunslingers are cool.
Jayden Russell
Stealth roll or something.
I don't have a funny story for it. I just wasn't seen.
