So. Okay. I had my first Wednesday D&D session tonight (normally, I play Saturdays; I joined a Wednesday group too, so I have two separate games going now).
And this is the ongoing saga of how my character nearly ruined everything.
Session one!
Okay, so. For a bit of background, I built my character for flavour rather than for optimisation. This means that I built a High Elf Fighter, with a focus on raising my Dexterity (stay out of the way of damage) and Intellect (know all the things!), rather than building something that could dish out damage or whatever was necessary.
Ideally, I'm planning to go for Eldritch Knight if I can speak to my DM and roleplay something cool to learn spells from. Otherwise, I dunno. I'll probably go Battlemaster and just shoot shit all the time and read books.
But yeah; unoptimised Fighter.
Since it's the first session, I decided to just give my character some basic traits and see what personality would evolve over the session and see if it was worthwhile again. Eventually, I decided on four major traits; an ideal (wants to become a respected sage, and thus values knowledge above all else), some bonds (respects all members of their guild and will seek to aid them whenever possible), and two flaws (sly and secretive).
I bet you can already see where this is going, but let's press on a bit.
We're all level one, so we're just doing a basic adventure at the moment. I'm not really sure what adventure we're doing, but whatever it was, we were fighting demonic goats in a barn. Yes, you read that right; demonic goats. Apparently a farmwife had asked the party to assist in birthing some goats, and the goats had been possessed by a demon or something, IDK.
Anyway, the fight proceeded well at first; we slaughtered four of the five demonic goats in the first turn, while only one of us took any damage, and that was a minor 3. Then the remaining goat grew to a massive size and got really, really pissed off at us.
That was where I fucked things up.
In-character, I made two simple checks. First, I made an Insight check, asking my DM if I could learn anything about the nature of the goat. I rolled a combined 11, so I just got basic information, telling me that it was a goat possessed by a demon. Then I rolled a History check, asking him if I could learn anything about the demon from the history books I'd studied. I rolled, and only got a 15- but I had a total bonus of +5, bringing my check to 20. So I learned a fair bit about the demon, where I learned that it was a pretty old demon that liked to possess animals and healed over time and blah blah blah.
So, I took a look at my character sheet, and saw that I had Persuasion as a proficiency, and a Charisma of 13. And that was when I made my fateful decision; I rolled a Persuade check to convince my party that we should keep the goat alive.
I mean, come on. With a total bonus of +3, what harm could it do? I'd just roleplay a bit, I might convince someone and we might have a bit of a lark.
But no. I rolled an 18, for a total bonus of 21.
And everyone else in the party, bar the barbarian played by the DM's ten-year-old brother, failed the Wisdom check necessary to combat my Persuade check.
So, for the next turn, everyone was persuaded that we needed to try and keep the goat alive. This meant that pretty much the whole party did everything they could to save the goat; the Druid blew his last spell slot on a Cure Wounds spell, the other Barbarian failed a Strength check trying to tie it up and got hit by an AoO, and so on.
Eventually, the DM saw that we were going to wipe, and arbitrarily declared that everyone could roll a Constitution saving throw (representing a gut feeling, IDK) to beat my previous Persuade check. Everyone except the party rogue, played by a friend of mine, succeeded on the throw; my friend didn't roll, wanting to remain convinced.Mind, though, that at this point several characters had taken a serious hit, and were low enough on HP that another hit would kill them (being level one and all).
So the turn rolls around to the other Fighter, and he chose to make a History check himself, trying to figure out what I knew. He rolled a natural 20- and, learning that the demon was possessing both goats, attacked and killed the goat captured in the DM's brother's backpack. The very same goat the DM's brother and I had made a pact to keep alive so we could tame it and keep it as a pet, and grill for information, respectively.
At about the same time, a character played by the seventh player finally arrived. And, seeing the situation, he decided to toss a vial of Alchemist's fire at the goat, figuring either it'd have to tank an ongoing 1d4 fire damage to counteract its regen or waste its next attack putting the fire out. Well, he hit- but it was the goat's turn next, and it rolled a 1 on its Dexterity check, resulting in it rampaging everywhere and setting a nearby hay bale on fire. This caused the damage it took per turn to double, but also spread the fire to the rest of the barn. The DM's brother then took the opportunity to cut off one of the goat's heads, halving the damage it could do, and then lugging the head around for the rest of the fight because ten years old.
I rolled a Persuade check to get a nearby farmer, who was cradling the corpse of the dead mother goat, to put out the fire that was spreading to the rest of the barn. It was DC 20 (he was really upset), but I rolled a 21 again, and he decided to put it out... with the only non-straw material around, his shirt. Yes.
And then, pissed off that he'd killed the goat I was planning to study, my character shot the other party fighter in the leg. Luckily, I'd declared that I just wanted to hurt him and not kill him, because the DM declared that I'd only roll a d4 for damage, resulting in the fighter taking seven damage.
... Not quite so luckily, the goat was killed by the party rogue the next turn. In its dying throes, it unleashed a psychic wave at the injured fighter, dealing enough minimum damage to knock the fighter I injured unconscious and force him to start rolling death saving throws.
The party Druid rolled a Medicine check to stabilize him, and he succeeded- and that was when the farmwife walked back into the barn.
And that was the story of how I nearly wiped the party in our first session with a Fighter optimized for roleplaying.
We'll wait and see how much damage I can do next week.
Out of curiosity, what's the most someone has ever rolled in a single turn. 5 for me
