On the right I have a Ko-Fi affiliate link titled “Buy Me Dice!” Well I had an opportunity to order a special die that arrived the other day. The Jason Fox Lucky D20 is a die that has the number “20” on all sides. So you would always roll a 20 every time.
I’ve gotten back in the habit of reading online comics. Some are the mainstream comics that a lot of people have heard of like Dilbert, The Far Side and Bloom County. But when I found some of my older bookmarks, I was amazed to find out that some of my non-mainstream comics were still in production (or on a repeat). Comics such as User Friendly, Irregular Webcomic, Dork Tower and Real Life.
One of the comics I started following again (which only posts a new comic every Sunday) is Fox Trot. I really liked the geeky adventures of Jason Fox. At the bottom of the page was a link to the Jason Fox Luck D20. When I saw it, I knew I had to have one. $11 bucks after shipping and handling and a week later it arrived in the mail. My wife gave a good laugh as I had her open up the package.
Part of the reason I wanted to get this is because of a house rule that my D&D 3.5 DM had in his campaign. If you rolled a natural 20 it was an automatic hit and it threatened a crit. You had the opportunity to roll the D20 again and if you successfully rolled a to-hit roll, you added the special crit damage as per the weapon’s stats (usually double the damage). If you rolled a natural 20 a second time, you had the opportunity for an instant kill. To obtain this, you had to roll a natural 20 a third time. Yea, it didn’t happen to often. But it did once…
The Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 campaign that wrapped up in 2019 ran for 5-6 years. We had a ton of fun playing in this game. I played an Elven Wizard named Tovark. So my character didn’t do a lot of physical fighting. But he did get creative with some spell combinations. However, even a wizard needs a good dagger and staff to protect himself. In one particular dungeon hallway that had six wooden doors down the hall the party had just encountered a mimic disguised as one of the doors. Luckily we were able to defeat this particular monster. This, of course, made the party a little nervous about the remaining doors and we went into “slightly paranoid PC” mode. This included throwing daggers at the other doors to see if they would react.
When it came time for Tovark to pitch a dagger at the door, I rolled a natural 20. Dang, I could have used that in battle, but I’ll take the hit. What? My second roll was a natural 20 as well? Well if it is a mimic, it’s going to be hurting from the start. Then my DM said, “Go ahead and roll your D20 again.” As fate would have it, I rolled my third natural 20 in a row. The DM smiled and then described how the plain and ordinary wooden door had shattered into a million pieces. The fates smiled on us and there was nothing dangerous behind that door, but I still groaned on the inside. Three natural 20’s used on a normal wooden door. No, it couldn’t have been the big bad guy at the end of the dungeon we were trying to find, just a door to a room. Sheesh. Tovark’s attempt to use the battle cry of “You are a door!!!” didn’t last very long.
So with this new die, I should be able to get a good laugh out of the table when I first “use” it. And that is the purpose of getting this prop. I’ve done things before to try to make the players or DM laugh. I’ve even earned extra experience points if I could make the DM laugh at the right time. Would I earn some more XP with this die? Perhaps. We will have to see when we can all get back together around the table.
Oh, and I’m looking for any good suggestions for online comics. There are some real gems out there that I’m sure I haven’t read yet. Send me any suggestions to my email. Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com.
