Hey all, I wasn’t really a contributor over at r/dndmemes, but I was there at the end. Yikes. Anyway, here’s a small contribution to help this place grow.
Context (possible spoilers for Waterdeep: Dragon Heist):
Our party was trying to get information out of a locksmith about the installation locations of some extremely elaborate locks and generally not getting anywhere. Locksmith says something to the effect of making locks that “his type” (gestures to my Rogue) can’t get past.
I’m an introvert at a table with multiple extroverts that normally dominate the role play. I’m generally okay with it, but this is my moment and I’m taking it!
“Wanna bet?” I ask.
Locksmith looks at me.
“Bring me your best lock. If I can pick it, you tell us what we want to know. If I can’t, I’ll give you 10 gold”.
Challenge accepted! My Rogue has 20 DEX and proficiency in Thieves’ Tools, so I’m sitting at a comfy +8 to lockpicking challenges.
Natural. 1. FML.
These are actually my table’s favourite type interactions. Comically appropriate flubs. The funniest one from recent memory is playing arkham horror (card game with a bag if random tokens). I was attempting a dex check against falling down some stairs and was fine for every token in the bag except for the “you fail” chaos token. So confident was I that I declared “watch this”, a maneuver where I bet money and double my bet on a success.
Well I pull the crit fail token, lose all my money, tumble down the stairs taking damage, and land in a room with a fellow wanting a fight.
Edit: I remember the instance that began our fascination with fumbles. Playing the Witcher RPG, I was a dwarf merchant, another player a witcher. Coming up against a locked door, I declared that I was dramatically diving through the window. My Reflexes (REF) are abysmal but I play my characters suicidal anyway. Rolled a 10 on a d10 (dice explode), rolled another 10, etc. rolled a 36 with 3 REF, which means my unadjusted roll was 33.
The witcher, not wanting to be upstaged and having super high REF, dives through another window. Only he rolls a 1 (which explodes, except the total die roll is subtracted from your REF score). Naturally he fails and gashes his leg on a shard of glass. And thus an obsession with fumbling rolls was born