"Sameo" is a game tale about a player character paladin who, after the unceremonious deaths of the rest of his party, goes to face the BBEG of the campaign alone and under-levelled, without much hope of victory. Hoping at least for a noble death, the paladin's quest ends with a dramatic critical failure.
The tale was originally posted to 1d4chan by the user Errany on 27 June 2008.[1] Since then it has been posted to other sites such as Funny DND Stories[2] and referenced in places like TVTropes.org.[3]
The tale of Sameo[]
"Sameo" is a story about a level 7 paladin (technically unnamed in the tale, but sometimes assumed to be named Sameo) who was left behind by his party when they went to do something in violation of his moral code, and was therefore the only one in the tavern to learn of the approach of the long-feared orc army and its high-level, part-fiend leader, the BBEG of the campaign. The paladin headed off alone to halt the approach of the army.
Although the paladin single-handedly won a battle against the army's scouts, the rest of his party were killed elsewhere and wouldn't be able to come as backup, effectively ending the campaign prematurely. Regardless, the paladin's player asked to play out his final (now doomed) mission, and the story continued as a 1-on-1 game.
The paladin took on the rest of the orc army, starting by picking them off at range. When the BBEG arrived on a powerful undead dragon, the paladin launched himself into the air (sacrificing a horse to do so) to grab onto the dragon, hurl the BBEG to the ground, and force the dragon to crash (killing it) by damaging its wings. Despite taking out a large and dangerous enemey, the BBEG was still alive and powerful, whereas the paladin had been injured in the fall.
On the ground, the BBEG attacked the paladin, bringing him down to 4 hit points with a single attack, then paused briefly to applaud the paladin's efforts and promise to wipe his name from living memory. The paladin had only a single attack action and no realistic hope of defeating the BBEG, but attacked anyway.
The paladin's player rolled a natural 1, indicating a critical failure.
To determine how bad the critical failure would be, the player rolled twice more, both times rolling natural 1s. The DM consulted a random table of critical failures and, to their shock, read out the result:
- "Character and adjacent target die."
References[]
- ↑ Errany et al. (since 2008-06-27). Revision history of "Sameo". 1d4chan. Retrieved 2020-07-11.
- ↑ Captain ZM (2017-08-24). "Sameo". Funny DND Stories. Retrieved 2020-07-11.
- ↑ "Critical Failure". TVTropes.org. Retrieved 2020-07-11.