No shit, there I was at RiverCityCon 2025, when two game sessions gave me two of the most perfectly-placed criticals I’ve ever rolled. Spoilers follow for two modules: Doom in the Red Wastes for Shadowdark and The Balance Blade for Dungeon Crawl Classics.

Boo Scary Boo

The first perfect moment came during the climactic fight of Doom in the Red Wastes. To set this up, I’ll note that the pregenerated character I received was a knight of St. Ydris, an antipaladin-type martial class with limited spellcasting, all of whose supernatural abilities were powered by mostly-controlled demonic possession. This will be relevant later.

Also: instead of Vancian expendable magic, Shadowdark casters can cast each spell they know until they fail it. Casting requires a d20 roll + casting stat versus a target number of spell tier + 10. Failing the casting check strips that spell until the character can rest.

The party had fought and bullshat our way to the rakshasa master of the fighting arena in which we’d been imprisoned. He offered us a wager: defeat him and his minions (a succubus and an incubus) and he’d release us. He warned us, though, that if we killed him, he’d be unable to release us from this pocket dimension suburb of hell.

In that liminal moment between the party accepting the deal and the DM calling for initiative rolls, I looked at the incubus and, in his native language of Diabolic, said, “he didn’t say anything about you.” Then I uncorked a spell I hadn’t yet cast:

Boom. Natural 20.

Normally, a crit on casting produces double effect. The DM leaned into it and described the incubus realizing what I was, recognizing the much more powerful demon riding under my skin, and nopeing out before combat began. I’ll count that as a success.

Gordian Familiar

In The Balance Blade, I was playing a dwarf (DCC uses the old race-as-class convention, so just… dwarf) of lawful alignment. The rest of the party was two wizards, a priest, a fighter (replacement for a dead elf), and a thief (replacement for a dead halfling). One of the wizards had a familiar, Rabbibat – a winged rabbit – who’d been exceptionally useful as a scout.

We’d reached the point in the module where the magic sword we were sent to retrieve attempted to compel one of our party’s wizards (the one without the familiar) to start murdering the rest of the party. She resisted the urge, and we went through a few iterations of trying to find a loophole. I wound up holding the blade, which immediately began urging/demanding me to kill one of my companions.

Not being inclined to betray my adventuring comrades for the blandishments of a magic blade (remember, lawful alignment), I was searching for something else to provide what seemed to be the necessary sacrifice. Unfortunately, we’d already killed everything else in the dungeon to reach this point.

Hmm.

I looked at the DM. “I’m swinging this thing at Rabbibat.”

Boom. Natural 20.

Before the pact’s fulfillment took effect and some sort of divine intervention sent me to my eternal reward, I had just enough time to look at the wizard – aghast, while his player was cracking up – and shrug with all of my Charisma 5. “Sorry.”

Dice Calibration

While recognizing that it’s all uncontrollable entropy, I will still nod to gamer superstition. When Elalyr and I went to CharCon last year, I failed to pack any dice. I hit up the huckster room and snagged two polyhedral sets of Chessex’ steel/teal/white dice and a matching brick of d6s, designating that my convention dice set. So far, they have not let me down in any meaningful way.