Funny Dice Fails?

By immortalfrieza, in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG

Has anyone had any particularly notable fails on the roll of the dice that led to something unusual or hilarious?

i.e. (Hypothetical) I attacked a Kath Hound, average dif, 3 yellows and a green, I failed and got 4 threat. So I tripped and fell on my lightsaber and lost an eye.

Something like that.

Edited by immortalfrieza

We were hiding in a snowy forest, listening in on some NPCs plotting against us, and decided to scare them off by mimicking the growl of a snow panther. Our Big Game Hunter got the sound wrong, and instead attracted a snow panther looking for a mate. He got tackled by the creature.

One of my players, playing an Enforcer PC, rolled two Triumphs while swinging a chain at a gang thug charging him on a speeder bike. (His melee was YYYY, so one Triumph happened a lot.) He yanks the guy off the bike head first into a trash bin, and jumps on the bike in one fluid motion (free maneuver) to try to chase down a second minion who was making his escape. He catches up to the second minion, swings the chain again. This time though there was a pending difficulty upgrade from some previous roll, plus I flipped a DP (plus setback for driving etc). He blanks on all his positive dice (!), and gets two Despair (!!) So the first Despair was he hit and crit'ed his own bike, shutting it off temporarily, and the second was the chain wrapped around his own neck and he crit'ed himself. The minion jeered and rode off. The Enforcer then took a couple moments to try and get the bike going, and tried Athletics (YYGG) to get the chain unwrapped quickly...total failure with threat, causing Strain... He figures "screw it", gets the bike going again and takes off, chain flapping around his neck like a clunky scarf, and meets up with his buddies who have in the meantime managed to corner the second minion. The player narrated the scene perfectly: the Enforcer calmly getting off his bike and slowly, menacingly, taking his time, unwrapping the chain from his neck all while sizing up the minion and leveraging all the Coercion (YYYG) related Talents he could muster on the hapless minion, who dared not laugh but instead suddenly needed new underwear...

(as an aside, I have to say the Enforcer tree is the only one in the game I think is a real work of art, and the player really made the most of it)

My favorite was at the end of the race scene from Jewel of Yavin. The pilot of the cloud car rolled his final pilot check while neck and neck with his opponent, ends up succeeding with both Triumph and Despair. At high speed, he bumps his opponent, accidently locks their vehicles together, while trying to recover, sends them into a flat spin together, where his ship crosses the finish line first (still spinning and locked together) before wrecking both craft in the docking bay. But both pilots come out uninjured! And unaware of who actually won, they were spinning too fast to tell.

Whilst our group of smugglers and ne'er-do-wells where escaping from an Imperial base on a stolen freighter, our pilot was down so we tried to Astrogate underfire with YY and rolled two Triumphs, a Despair, no net successes or advantage/disadvantage.

It went something like this:

"You activate the hyperdrive and... nothing happens. There's a whine from the console and a massive, but harmless, discharge of energy that lights up your position. That last hit must have messed up your systems: with your pilot and engineer unconcious there's no way you can escape on this ship.

"The TIE fighters chasing you move in for the kill when suddenly an X-wing, then another, then another, drop out of hyperspace. As they make quick work work of the TIEs, rebel blockade runners, Y-wings and freighters join in on a full scale assault on the Imperial base.

What do you do?"

Well we put our campaign on hold, teamed up with the rebels and played through basically all of Assault on Ardawan. Which was interesting as no-one really wanted to join the Alliance and we were playing a real scum and villainy group (when the *spoilers* refused to evacuate, we didn't even try to convince them -- we stunned them and Wookie wrestled them onto a ship kicking and screaming, and the last part of the campaign was... bloody).

6 hours ago, Edgookin said:

At  high speed, he bumps his opponent, accidently locks their vehicles together, while trying to recover, sends them into a flat spin together, where his ship crosses the finish line first (still spinning and locked together) 

Ha! This is pretty close to how it ended when we ran the Cloud City Grand Prix! Those cloud cars must have really lousy gyroscpopes!

Since we're talking about crashes, I'll throw in another from our Big Game Hunter. (As one of our players likes to say all the time, "This guy just can't catch a break.")

He got knocked out of the saddle when the azurdactyl he was flying started hallucinating from a dream shimmer bite, but he was clipped in by a safety line so he didn't fall to the ground. He had a few unsuccessful tries to pull himself back up the side of the tack. Meanwhile, his passenger had moved up to take the reins, but she was unable to get the creature under control. So finally, with the azurdactyl about to crash into a mountain side, he tries to guide the beast from underneath, where he is near its little arms. It's a much harder check, and one with mixed Triumph and Despair. The creature slows enough that both it and the passenger will be okay on the skidded landing, great. The Despair we decide is a crit, and we rolled Discouraging Wound. We like to build our descriptions from the names of the crits, so we tried to think of something that would make him feel a bit like an idiot. This is what we came up with. The Big Game Hunter is underneath the azurdactyl, so he will be squashed if he doesn't do something. He swings to the side and lets go at the last minute, but he forgot he was still clipped into the harness! Everything seems fine for a moment, but then he is yanked off his feet. He got dragged for a bit, ending with a nasty case of road rash.

12 hours ago, whafrog said:

He figures "screw it", gets the bike going again and takes off, chain flapping around his neck like a clunky scarf

When I came to this point, the fate of Isadora Duncan came to mind. The Enforcer was lucky that he didn't roll epic Despairs while riding the bike and wearing a chain scarf! :o

5 minutes ago, Bellona said:

When I came to this point, the fate of Isadora Duncan  came to mind.

I had to look that up, but...sure, it was a risk :)

I have nothing so epic as the above-mentioned tales, but very recently one of my characters suffered 3 dark pips on her Force dice while trying to make a Force Leap action/manoeuvre ... three times in a row. So she's currently still in Petranaki Arena on Geonosis (uncomfortably close to the nexu which was previously trying to snack on Obi-Wan Kenobi), while Jango Fett is taking potshots at various Jedi.

MY group split up and the pilot was flying away being chased and shot at and was getting damaged. He tried to swerve through an outcropping of Rock pillars to get some of the ships behind him to crash. He rolled failed the roll, had some disadvantages, 2 despairs and a triumph. Huh....

Failure - you crash in to one of the Rocky Pillars

Triumph - He asked, can the wall that I crash into be the back side of a cave? So it will damage the ship but not as badly . Sounds good to me.

Disadvantages - you take a critical injury

Despair- Your ship takes a critical injury

Despair - After crashing through the wall it causes a cave in and you are trapped.

The people chasing them believed no one could have survived that and left him alone. To try and escape and make it back to town through the desert.

1 hour ago, damnkid3 said:

MY group split up and the pilot was flying away being chased and shot at and was getting damaged. He tried to swerve through an outcropping of Rock pillars to get some of the ships behind him to crash. He rolled failed the roll, had some disadvantages, 2 despairs and a triumph. Huh....

Failure - you crash in to one of the Rocky Pillars

Triumph - He asked, can the wall that I crash into be the back side of a cave? So it will damage the ship but not as badly . Sounds good to me.

Disadvantages - you take a critical injury

Despair- Your ship takes a critical injury

Despair - After crashing through the wall it causes a cave in and you are trapped.

The people chasing them believed no one could have survived that and left him alone. To try and escape and make it back to town through the desert.

So typical bad guys then.

My players were sneaking in to a corporate data center to do some slicing. Ziplining onto the roof, they managed to draw the suspicion of a Trandoshan guard, "John," who they ambushed and knocked unconscious. They felt kinda bad about all the trouble he was going to get into, just doing his job, but continued toward the data servers, which were massive cylinders suspended over an ice volcano (because Star Wars!). While slicing the systems, they accessed John's files, improved his quarterly performance reviews, and gave him a raise. Then, as they finished raiding the server for the data they needed, the alarms lit up. they ran for the elevator, only to see that it was coming down the shaft towards them. The Would-Be-Jedi readied a stun grenade and hurled it just as the door opened. Success, lots of advantage, and a Despair. John stepped out of the elevator ahead of the rest of the security guards, the grenade smacked him right in the head, bounced off, and detonated in the elevator. John stumbled forward, tumbling off the catwalk and into the... ice lava? I guess ice lava. The group collectively threw their hands up, crying, "NOOOO! JOHNNYYY!"

47 minutes ago, The Grand Falloon said:

My players were sneaking in to a corporate data center to do some slicing. Ziplining onto the roof, they managed to draw the suspicion of a Trandoshan guard, "John," who they ambushed and knocked unconscious. They felt kinda bad about all the trouble he was going to get into, just doing his job, but continued toward the data servers, which were massive cylinders suspended over an ice volcano (because Star Wars!). While slicing the systems, they accessed John's files, improved his quarterly performance reviews, and gave him a raise. Then, as they finished raiding the server for the data they needed, the alarms lit up. they ran for the elevator, only to see that it was coming down the shaft towards them. The Would-Be-Jedi readied a stun grenade and hurled it just as the door opened. Success, lots of advantage, and a Despair. John stepped out of the elevator ahead of the rest of the security guards, the grenade smacked him right in the head, bounced off, and detonated in the elevator. John stumbled forward, tumbling off the catwalk and into the... ice lava? I guess ice lava. The group collectively threw their hands up, crying, "NOOOO! JOHNNYYY!"

That would be water .He had a nice, albeit very cold, swim. Cryovolcanos (there actually a real thing) spew very cold water, ammonia or methane, rather than molten rock. He should be fine, if a bit frostbitten.

First time running the game, 2 friends of mine were playing a Han/Chewie clone duo (not actual clones, just realized I need to clarify that in this franchise :P ) , just with a female twi'lek instead of Han, and a Wookiee historian instead of a combat guy.

They were on....I think it was Nar Shadda, heading to a contact for work, basically the typcial tavern scene where they pick up their storyhook quest. I had a random encounter of them bumping into a local street gang, and having to deal with that.

The player who was the Wookiee, didn't really want to go the "violent Wookiee" trope, and tried to play him as a violence-light kind of PC. So, he decides to just try and scare away the minion thugs with an Intimidate check.

Well.....it worked....but he rolled a Despair.

So, I ruled that his Intimidate check worked, sadly it worked too well, and he basically freaked out the entire city block where the encounter was taking place. So the various background NPCs, and stall vendors nearby were all like "OMG IT'S A RABID WOOKIEE!! HE'S GOING TO KILL US ALL! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!" *chaos insues, which gets the attention of the "cops" that actually police Nar Shadda, who were much, MUCH tougher.* These cops proceeded to beat the Wookiee a LOOOOOT, as they were Rival level stats (I didn't know how tough a Rival was for fresh PC's , so it was kind of a test run of a sorts). The 2 players basically had to run away, steal a speeder, and get into a chase encounter while we tested out the chase mechanics.

Probably my favorite fail of that game, especially my friends face as he realized what his Despair meant. :D

Edited by KungFuFerret

Sooo many to choose from.... well there was the time my group's ship gets boarded by pirates.

A firefight ensues, my character(not the big gun) and another(the real big gun) are trying to hold off 4 groups of minions until the rest of the team can make it too is(why did the turbolifts have to fail NOW?) Anyways, one minion group gets downed, but so does our big gun. My character, a smuggler, probably won't survive until the others arrive for backup... so he waltzes out of cover, juggling a plasma grenade, and orders the boarders to surrender...successfully with 2 despair...

Well, the grenade goes off, setting himself aflame in plasma fire, then calmly explains to the boarders "if you don't throw down your weapons, all burn this whole ship to ****!!!"

Weapons dropped, pirates surrender, chicks dig scars, glory last forever!

On Tatooine, the group wanted some grenade (to blow things...). After some time, they found a Jawa who sell second-hand grenades (he try to scam them).

One of them want to negociate with him : success with thread and despair... And so... while handing the grenade saying "This is a second-hand grenade, I will not paid for that!" the pin just drop on the floor.

The player just drop the grenade behind the counter and everyone jump on the floor. Threads for everyone and the grenade didn't blow up.

At the end, the Jawa gives them first-hand grenade for half the price. And these one have blow up things with a lot of success.

Had another party member going up to a low-level street drug dealer to talk to him and try to find out where his suppliers worked.

My assassin-type was trying to sneak around and get in a good position to provide cover fire, should the conversation go south.

Stealth check - 4G, 1Y, and 3B vs. 2 purple. I think 'oh, yeah, I got this', and say something to that effect to the other players.

Net result: 2 Failure, 10 Advantage. We all stare at the dice for a minute.

NPC sees my character sneaking around, becomes super intimidated, tells the other PC everything he knows, drops his pack with the goods and his credits, and takes off running...straight into a wall, knocking himself out.

23 minutes ago, Subhntr said:

Had another party member going up to a low-level street drug dealer to talk to him and try to find out where his suppliers worked.

My assassin-type was trying to sneak around and get in a good position to provide cover fire, should the conversation go south.

Stealth check - 4G, 1Y, and 3B vs. 2 purple. I think 'oh, yeah, I got this', and say something to that effect to the other players.

Net result: 2 Failure, 10 Advantage. We all stare at the dice for a minute.

NPC sees my character sneaking around, becomes super intimidated, tells the other PC everything he knows, drops his pack with the goods and his credits, and takes off running...straight into a wall, knocking himself out.

I'm not sure that counts as a fail. It's definitely epic whatever it is.

I had a player who was a PC trying to dock a freighter into a massive capital ship, at high speed, whist being chased by a couple of starfighters. His intention was to land quickly to drop off some other PCs and then get back out to keep attacking the starfighters.

I upgraded the difficulty using a Destiny Point, so his roll ended up something like YYGRPPB.

His roll succeeded with a Triumph, but a Despair was also rolled.

I told him whilst he managed to dodge the attacking starfighters and enter the docking bay successfully, he unfortunately didn't slow down in time. His ship skidded in the landing bay and ended up lodged under a structure, but not taking any damage. He would need to use the next round to try and dislodge the ship. I thought all up that was fair and a good description of both a Triumph and a Despair.

HOWEVER, this play is a die hard WEG D6 Star Wars fan form the past, and pretty much only plays 5E D&D these days. He hated that he succeeded and failed at the same time, and was silent and grumpy for the rest of the game, despite me trying to get him involved more into the story-line.

The next day he pulled out of the campaign.

Its a shame as we have been role playing together since 1987! He is now no longer interested in any narrative games, whether it be FFG:SW or Genesys, or even other systems. He just plays D&D, which is a shame because I love this system and intend on GMing SW or Genesys sessions for a long time!

55 minutes ago, Andreievitch said:

I told him whilst he managed to dodge the attacking starfighters and enter the docking bay successfully, he unfortunately didn't slow down in time. His ship skidded in the landing bay and ended up lodged under a structure, but not taking any damage. He would need to use the next round to try and dislodge the ship. I thought all up that was fair and a good description of both a Triumph and a Despair.

HOWEVER, this play is a die hard WEG D6 Star Wars fan form the past, and pretty much only plays 5E D&D these days. He hated that he succeeded and failed at the same time, and was silent and grumpy for the rest of the game, despite me trying to get him involved more into the story-line.

The next day he pulled out of the campaign.

Its a shame as we have been role playing together since 1987! He is now no longer interested in any narrative games, whether it be FFG:SW or Genesys, or even other systems. He just plays D&D, which is a shame because I love this system and intend on GMing SW or Genesys sessions for a long time!

So, what you're saying is that a grown man - in his late 30's at the youngest - pulled off a perfect "Like a glove!" moment and was upset about it? That's rough, my dude. That's rough.

Relevant Link

Astrogation check from three ships, all flying together. All rolled despair . . . and came out of Hyperspace as a collision.

13 hours ago, Andreievitch said:

I had a player who was a PC trying to dock a freighter into a massive capital ship, at high speed, whist being chased by a couple of starfighters. His intention was to land quickly to drop off some other PCs and then get back out to keep attacking the starfighters.

I upgraded the difficulty using a Destiny Point, so his roll ended up something like YYGRPPB.

His roll succeeded with a Triumph, but a Despair was also rolled.

I told him whilst he managed to dodge the attacking starfighters and enter the docking bay successfully, he unfortunately didn't slow down in time. His ship skidded in the landing bay and ended up lodged under a structure, but not taking any damage. He would need to use the next round to try and dislodge the ship. I thought all up that was fair and a good description of both a Triumph and a Despair.

HOWEVER, this play is a die hard WEG D6 Star Wars fan form the past, and pretty much only plays 5E D&D these days. He hated that he succeeded and failed at the same time, and was silent and grumpy for the rest of the game, despite me trying to get him involved more into the story-line.

The next day he pulled out of the campaign.

Its a shame as we have been role playing together since 1987! He is now no longer interested in any narrative games, whether it be FFG:SW or Genesys, or even other systems. He just plays D&D, which is a shame because I love this system and intend on GMing SW or Genesys sessions for a long time!

Meh, if he's that immature, to be that butt hurt about a single action, that he literally rage quits and refuses to play anything but the one game, frankly, good riddance.

I have a player that is a bit of a min/maxer. He's worked his way up to a 6 yellow ranged heavy roll for combat. On top of that, he's able to stack some blue dice with aiming and some automatic advantages giving rolls that are usually beyond crazy. He's using a range heavy weapon that is fully tricked out with auto-fire. The guy can typically take out multiple minion groups each time he fires just due to the crazy amount of dice he throws. Something has 5 soak and 10 damage, he's going to get 6 instances of 14 damage in one roll or something.

Combat encounter against imperial army, stormtroopers, officers, mercs. Huge battle scene. He anticipated the retreat of a commanding enemy character and moved in a way to cut him off if he made a run for it. Everything lined up perfectly for him to have a full roll with all his advantages, aim, he even had an additional blue passed to him...2 purple difficulty roll. Dude missed. Every positive die either came up blank or with advantages only. He had enough advantages to trigger auto-fire 3 times, and he typically does so even if it's overkill.

I described it as one of those warner brother cartoon scenes where the wall surrounding the target was basically obliterated except for a perfectly shaped form of the guy as every single energy bolt somehow missed him.

1 hour ago, kmanweiss said:

I have a player that is a bit of a min/maxer. He's worked his way up to a 6 yellow ranged heavy roll for combat.

How did he manage six yellows? Only characteristics max out at 6; skill ranks max out at 5. Does he keep using destiny points, or is there some talent or weapon attachment which allows that last upgrade?