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View Full Version : The Dice Hate Me!: Your Unluckiest Roll



Callista
2010-11-06, 07:32 PM
When I was a D&D newbie, I was playing a halfling sorcerer and we were fighting a bunch of ogre-type enemies--you know, big, dumb, and capable of squishing a sorcerer to paste in one or two blows. And had reach, of course.

Being a newbie, I was stupid enough to get into melee. "Hey, I can survive this!" I thought to myself. "A critical is only a one-in-twenty chance, right?"

To make it seem even safer, this particular ogre was on his last legs. I knew he was in the low-single-digit hit points because of how much damage he'd taken; and I figured, "I'll just zap him with a magic missile and he'll go right down."

And I was also stupid enough to believe that if you have a +13 to Concentration to cast defensively, you're not going to roll a 1. I should've known better.

One critical hit from the ogre and one squished sorcerer later, I decided to play something more durable next time. Apparently, I haven't learned much since then, as I nearly got squished in a very similar fashion the last time I played... well, there were extenuating circumstances this time, but dang it, I really need to learn that wizards do not belong in melee!

So what's the worst luck you've ever had?

Gralamin
2010-11-06, 07:40 PM
I have to consistently build characters that always hit in order to be effective in 3.5 as a player. The game hates me, just like how I dislike it.

As a DM though, players look out!

Saph
2010-11-06, 07:45 PM
My wizard was fighting a Frost Giant. I was protected by a Greater Mirror Image spell. The giant decided to grab me and rip me to pieces. Since I was staying out of full attack range, he was only going to get one shot.

DM: "Natural 20. He hits."
Me: "OK - want to roll to see which image?"
Other player: "The rule we play with is that a natural 20 hits the right one."
Me: "Seriously?"
DM: *nods*
Me: *sigh* "Okay, okay. But he's still under my Unluck, so he needs to roll again and takes the worst of the two."
DM: "Natural 20."
Me: " . . . damn it."

1 in 400; pretty annoying.

AslanCross
2010-11-06, 07:46 PM
Not me, but one of my players was playing a Shifter Barbarian/Warblade in Red Hand of Doom. Skather there was a Swordsage instead, so he also had maneuvers.

He stabbed her with a Strength-Draining Strike supplemented with poison.
Guess what? She rolled natural 1s on both her saves. She took 10 Strength damage and went from 18 to a flopping 8 in one hit.

Duos Greanleef
2010-11-06, 07:48 PM
I was DMing a game for three players. The snobolds and wolves had knocked out two of them and the third was within a healing surge value of a similar fate. Deciding to be cool (he'd seen one of the snobolds snap his fingers like crazy and the wolves stopped eating his companions at one point), the third player makes a nature check and starts snapping his fingers to get the wolves off of him.
Natural 1.
The wolves got off of him alright, and went straight to the other players and CDG'd their helpless butts.
For anyone keeping score, that's: Players in need of divine assistance: -2 Dice: 1

Flickerdart
2010-11-06, 08:04 PM
I once rolled three 1s in a row on a caster level check to teleport away from an evil MacGuffin. We ended up in Khyber, with my character wedged inside a rock.

true_shinken
2010-11-06, 08:06 PM
Rolling a 1 on the Fortitude save against Disruption. Goodbye, epic battle with the vampire lord.

Lord Loss
2010-11-06, 08:08 PM
A friend's story:

D&D 3.5 They were exploring a gothic castle. The Cleric heals everyone up after an arduous fight. The fighter at full health goes first, he's at full health. He opens a door and walks down a staircase lying before him. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, he is struck twice by an unseen foe, both attacks are nat 20s. The damage is nearly maxed out, the creature kills him instantly. The player is :furious:.

zyborg
2010-11-06, 08:15 PM
I got a natural 20 once. When I was hitting my friend with a mutton leg to snap him out of his crazyness. That's...not exactly what I had in mind.

Moose Man
2010-11-06, 08:20 PM
A friend's story:
DM:You see a gazebo in a clearing.
Eric: i hide behind a tree. Does the gazebo see me?
DM: no, it's a gazebo.
Eric: i draw my rapier. does the gazebo see me?
DM: no, it's a gazebo.
Eric: i charge the gazebo. does it see me?
DM: no, it's a gazebo.
Eric: i attack the gazebo.
DM: the god of gazebos becomes angered. roll a new character.
Eric: .....nuts.

darbythegambler
2010-11-06, 08:43 PM
my unluckiest was also kind of my luckiest also. This was my second character ever and I decided to make a duskblade. Rolling for stats, don't ask how, but I got 6 18's in a row! I was stoked, all 18's and only my second character! I thought my character would be invincible, nothing could possibly take him down, right? Wrong... first encounter DM sends a wolf after me and rolls 3 natural 20's in a row (and showed everyone each roll)...

kemmotar
2010-11-06, 09:20 PM
My first ever D&D roll on an elf rogue.

me: I shoot the goblin
DM: ok roll
me: uh...1...
DM: ok, that's a fumble, roll again
me:uhhh...1 again
DM: ok roll v your AC
me: 20...is that good?
*DM shakes head*

Almost killed myself in the first battle of the first session...with a bow...good thing DM didn't apply sneak attack:smalltongue:

Eldan
2010-11-06, 10:05 PM
In a game today, the party (level 2) tried to take on a beholderkin far above their level, along with it's guards.

After a few fairly clever tricks, they were running. They tried to bluff the guards outside the door, telling them to run inside, since there was a fire there and their boss needed them. Sense motive for the guards? 2, 6, 2, 9. Yeah.

Then, a round later, the beholderkin comes out. Eye rays? 5, 1, 8, 15.

They still lost in the end, though.

Dusk Eclipse
2010-11-06, 10:16 PM
Rolled a 4 on a stat generation... 4d6b3 (2, 1, 1, 1)...and THAT is why I prefer point buy.

Grommen
2010-11-07, 01:08 AM
So the Party Palidian decides she really can take on 40 5th level Drow in a cave with Driders backing them up.

Even though in character and out of it I tell her she does not have a chance. I say "Just run in and kill a few, give the players the cover story they need (they were going under cover as Drow), then get back out with the rest of the elves attacking.

Coarse the Palie is so full of Righteous Furry she forgets and takes them all on, even after the backing contingent of Elves retreated, like was planned.

Well now be being a good DM I did what I had to, and began tossing every horrible, nasty, down right dirty spell in the book at her. To her credit she did manage to kill a considerable amount of the drow and driders before she finnaly rolled a "1" on her Will Save to get held by a Hold Person spell cast by one of the Drow Clerics (Told her she was not making it out).

Now even though I'm prevented from a Cop De Gras'ing someone when they are held I was going to do it anyway, just cause the players were p##$@ing me off that day.

Me... "Ya well watch This ya %$$%in' Paldian!"

Why I bothered to roll is beyond me, character is held, helpless....Easy hit...But nooooo I picked up the dice!

"1!" A stinken "1". I fumbled on a kill shot, delivered to a held person. Then to add injury to insult I rolled on the fumble chart we use, "Hit self, critical...Instant death!"

I hate Palidians. :smallfurious:

Grommen
2010-11-07, 01:19 AM
Worst luck I've ever seen was in a Warhammer 40K game.

Kid pointed out that his blast template just barely touched the fender of one of my Ork Buggies, so he wanted to roll an attack on the buggy. I'm all like, what ever dude it's a cheep ass buggy and not really a threat to your TERMINATORS, but if you must.

So he rolls, and naturally blows up my buggy.

It promptly flips over landing in the middle of his squad of costly troops, then explodes taking them all out. It was a quarter of his army. Then it gets worse (and I swear to the gods this was all random dice rolls). The exploding Termanator's safety mechanisms fail and they launch their Cyclone Missiles directly into the other squad of Terminators he brought. It was over three feet away on the other side of the game board. The missiles destroyed that entire squad of Terminators. Half his army, cause he wanted to blow up a vehicle I tossed into my army to fill a few extra points.

So apparently you can kill Two Squads with one buggy.

Callista
2010-11-07, 01:25 AM
Well, ya know, if they're gonna play a foolhardy paladin, they're planning to die in a messy fashion anyhow, so... you only gave them what they were asking for anyway!

Okay, so I'm DMing for a two-person party, a wizard and a rogue. The wizard has a raven familiar.

Enter the Pit Trap of Doom.

It's a normal pit trap. Unfortunately that doesn't stop the rogue from running into it and rolling nearly max damage, putting him at -1. The wizard immediately starts trying to figure out how to save his buddy, and climbs into the trap to try to get a healing potion to him. The wizard botches his Climb check, horribly, and ends up falling on top of the rogue, and into negative hit points himself.

At this point the entire party, through no fault of their own, is lying unconscious at the bottom of this pit.

So the bird had to fly down there and save everyone by pouring a potion into the wizard's mouth (not so easy to maneuver when you haven't got hands). The raven had a very superior attitude after that.

Lesson learned: First-level characters are fragile.

BobVosh
2010-11-07, 03:53 AM
Exalted: Eclipse Solar (Social + sneaky; I'm Solar so I don't settle for one role) with just enough of every socializing to make sure we don't lose to anything other than another maxed out solar socialite, or possibly a sidereal. Here comes a happy sidereal as we were sneaking into Yu Shan for some shenanigans or other. On a 16 pool I managed to get 5 1's and no successes. Long story short, I was attempting to bring in my friends who were kind "deathlords" seeking political asylum. The Sidereal didn't believe us, and was mildly upset. Along with the c. lions. Also heavenYu Shan.

grimbold
2010-11-07, 05:37 AM
this one was for the Big Bad not the players.
The Big Bad was supposed to stay for a 20 level campaign he was a super cool demilich who was not supposed to be killed until the players were really high leveled and maybe not even then (i was considering making the character's children continue the campaign.)
At 12th level the fighter had some boots of speed and really loved having his extra attack.
They were in the bbig bads castle tryin to steal his war plans. The characters (given ample warning) decide to enter the throne room. I say out of character "You know theres a demilich in there hes like cr 25" The fighter says, "we got this".
The wizard casts haste among other buffs and the characters get a surprise round and then the following round they win initiative over the lich and all of his guards.
In the first round the fighter charges forward to the lich but does not attack the second round he yells his battle cry of 'BACON FOR ALL' (seriously) and attacks the lich with a flaming greatsword. He rolls a nat 20 and high damage w/ his sword.
"ok i say, he is hurt pretty badly"
the fighter rolls another nat 20
and another nat 20
(he had some sort of build that allowed him AoO even after movement)
1 in 8000, we all just sat their in awe for a minute.
Then i realized my campaign was killed.
my big bad had died

Aidan305
2010-11-07, 07:12 AM
Once in my fourth ed game we were fighting against a bunch of rakshasa and my paladin was unconcious. The DM had to head off for five minutes so I took over for him while he did so. I looked at the list of abilities the rakshasa had, chose a heavily damaging area attack, chose the most suitable area for it to hit which included my character and rolled to hit. I missed everyone except myself. I critted against myself and rolled max on the bonus damage.

I ended up killing my own character.

Lord Loss
2010-11-07, 07:22 AM
This happened to my players once.

One of them was messing with the NPCs, mocking them and trying his best to annoy them as much as possible. The other, sick of his antics said. That's it, I slap him in the face. Grinning, I said. Okay, roll a d4 for damage. The other player pointed out that he hadn't rolled for damage. Sighing, he rolled, he got a nat. 20 and nailed the other player for 12 Damage. (I've homebrewed that unarmed damage has a 3x crit multiplier to give back a tiny bit of an edge to monks).

Ernir
2010-11-07, 07:45 AM
We, the group of mid-level adventurers, found ourselves attacking a castle unprepared. I, the Swordsage, tried to Searing Charge someone to get up to the battlements.

Nat 1. Which means I fly up to the battlements, botch the to-hit roll, and end up holding on to the ledge with my fingertips. The soldiers knock me down.

I take a round to re-ready my maneuvers, collect some healing, and try flying up again.

Nat 1. I fall flat on my face below the castle wall again.

At this point, the enemy mage notices me, and casts Dominate Person. I am not immune to Mind Affecting, but I did have something like a +18 on the save.

Nat 2. I ended up ripping out a party member's heart.

Sal'lavan
2010-11-07, 08:04 AM
DM: This will be like a bomb, you know... if you don't stop it, or you don't do it properly, everything will explode
Sal'lavan (ranger, me): ok, i'll try it!
Gaskogran (barbarian): Sal'lavan, you have bad luck... i'll try it

Gaskogran pushes me with natural 20... and when he tried to stop machine............... natural 1... the end of the campaign :smallannoyed: xD

2-HeadedGiraffe
2010-11-07, 08:27 AM
In an epically awful series of botched checks, my bard fell off his horse (it might have been when he was already effectively paralyzed), and then preceded to miss the platform below him. At the time, we were in a forest of massive trees so large they supported walkways, buildings, etc. Typical elf village or something. After missing the platform (I'm pretty sure my strength was too drained from poison to move with the gear I had on, which I couldn't remove myself), I was facing the prospect of falling to the ground and likely my death. I hit a branch, and happened to slump over it into a fairly stable position. From which I fell again. At this point, the DM took pity on my inability to roll double digits on a skill check that night and had my wake up several hours later in the home of a druid who rescued me.

Flickerdart
2010-11-07, 08:36 AM
A friend's story:
DM:You see a gazebo in a clearing.
Eric: i hide behind a tree. Does the gazebo see me?
DM: no, it's a gazebo.
Eric: i draw my rapier. does the gazebo see me?
DM: no, it's a gazebo.
Eric: i charge the gazebo. does it see me?
DM: no, it's a gazebo.
Eric: i attack the gazebo.
DM: the god of gazebos becomes angered. roll a new character.
Eric: .....nuts.
The story of Eric and the Gazebo is considerably longer (http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/98/Jul/gazebo.html) than that.

Morbis Meh
2010-11-07, 09:38 AM
This was a fellow adventurer not myself:
So we are in an expedition to ravenloft campaign and we decide to storm a church with an evil cleric. My char being a good cleric who loved breaking down doors promptly went to a door; however, the other three characters decided to go in via jumping through a stain glass window therefore arriving first. Upon entering, the evil cleric casts circle of death from a scroll so the three characters in range had to make a respective fortitude save to resist death. Ironically our monk, who is a newb, with the highest fort save by a large margin rolled a natural 1 and died instantly... Fortunately for her the DM really favors her monk and allowed her to take the prestige class risen martyr because she had vow of poverty.

Skjaldbakka
2010-11-07, 11:50 PM
I had a player that too this day, years since I ran the campaign, that will throw things at me if I tell them 'don't roll a 1'.

The reason?
She played a sorceress who disintigrated and killed the party druid. The odds were very small. She cast into a grapple. With the size of the thing he was grappling, only a 1 on a 1d8 would result in the druid getting hit, and he needed to roll a 1 to fail the save. Previously, she had rolled a nat 1 twice throwing disinitigrate at some bad guys, and I tended to say 'just don't roll a 1' whenever something was really easy to accomplish.

Naturally he died.

Later on after a TPK, her next character, a Dwarven Defender, died of con damage from a DC 10 poison. Granted, she was hit 3-4 times with that poison, but the two nat 1s starting it off really didn't help.

Dwarven Defender dieing from poison - you can't ever live that down. :smallwink:

Morithias
2010-11-08, 02:25 AM
There was one die my friend had that was driving him up the wall with unlucky rolls, eventually he threw it across the room and declared never to use it again. I used some insane troll logic to think maybe if you rolled two unlucky dice at once (I had one like it) the lucky would negate each other.

Needless to say I have proceeded to roll the most unlucky rolls in existence for him, over 5 sessions using the "combo dice" technique, and calling which die to use in advance, there have been 4 times in total it has rolled less than a 15, and 8 times to roll below average (e.g 10 or less). After 5 10+ hour sessions, it is on average BETTER for me to never take 10 using this combo.

Needless to say he wasn't happy, although it did give a funny scene where I managed to pin a barbarian with a teenage female character and stab him to death with a mundane dagger.

Hironomus
2010-11-08, 04:48 AM
One of our players in a recent campaign had notoriously bad luck.
He had already lost his last two characters (both clerics) to an unfortunate crit and a botched save respectively. He decided to make his new character a dread necromancer.
It was sort of a running gag that he would declare he was using an ability roll his dice then quickly retrieve them and say with an embarrassed expression: nevermind...
This effectiveness handicap, coupled with the fact that our DM seemed to favour the use of enemies with high fort saves (a poor match for a necromancer) led to us concluding that this character, whilst a very enjoyable person to play with, wasn't going to be a great deal of use to us.
I think I have already mentioned this in these forums, but in one fateful encounter we faced a green dragon named seketrix. as usual the necromancer declared his intent to cast a spell. we all groaned. surely his magic would be inneffectual against a dragon. but he insisted.
the dragon rolled a natural 1 and was promptly slain by a phantasmal killer.
we were even more impressed a couple of rounds later when a large skeletal green dragon dubbed 'skeletrix' joined our party.

Mastikator
2010-11-08, 05:23 AM
Once played a rogue character who was stuck in the some enchanted forest. We encountered a huge boar, far too dangerous to fight. I rolled my knowledge about animals to find out how to act to not provoke it. I double fumbled and had the opposite idea.
The pig ate me.

That character was created and killed in one singular session.

Not entirely bad, since the character I had after that was pretty cool actually. We were stuck in the forest for a while, but I build a blast furnace and was well on my way to start crafting a better suit of armor and arsenal of weapons. (then my elf friend provoked some Blòtgiants and was able to escape them, and I wasn't).
Good times.

Dr.Epic
2010-11-08, 06:04 AM
Why would you go into melee range when magic missile can be fired from a distance? Also, how was your roll not successful? A natural one with a skill check isn't automatic failure like with attacks and saves.

faceroll
2010-11-08, 07:41 AM
Why would you go into melee range when magic missile can be fired from a distance? Also, how was your roll not successful? A natural one with a skill check isn't automatic failure like with attacks and saves.

She needed a 16 on the check, and 1+13 is not 16. Of course, failing the concentration check only means she loses the spell and doesn't actually provoke an AoO.

panaikhan
2010-11-08, 08:42 AM
My most recent unlucky roll was with a Rogue trying to detect traps. Not the detect roll (though an 18 on the dice still didn't find it) but the saving throw afterwards. Nat 1.
So, lightning bolt doing 40 damage hits my rogue with 20HP. And because I failed the save, no Evasion. <POOF>

Callista
2010-11-08, 10:07 AM
She needed a 16 on the check, and 1+13 is not 16. Of course, failing the concentration check only means she loses the spell and doesn't actually provoke an AoO.Yep. And I was in melee because I was new and stupid, and instead of retreating from the enemy who had just closed with my character (would've taken a full round because he had reach), I thought I could make the concentration check to take him out with a magic missile instead. Since I didn't, he took my character down next turn with a critical (which was the only way he could have done it, since my character was still at full health). A little bit of newbie bravado, a lot of bad luck.

oxybe
2010-11-08, 12:00 PM
on the day i forgot to prep up my anti-death effect buff:

"roll a fort save". rolls low. die.

i had to sit out 2 sessions. fun times.

dsmiles
2010-11-08, 12:44 PM
Killed an Ancient Red Dragon. By accidentally teleporting into it's heart.

JonRG
2010-11-08, 01:01 PM
This didn't happen to me but to the DM I was buckling swash with. He was running a module where the LBEG was a half-[black] dragon mummy (an execption to normal half-dragoning). It was supposed to be a major encounter at our lowish level. Unfortunately for him, the cleric rolled high initiative and went first. Then he rolled a 19 on his turn check. So this uber-templated monstrosity cowered for 10 rounds while we beat it to death unopposed.

To this day, anytime a bBEG goes down like a wet sack, our group says it got "half-dragon mummied." :smallbiggrin:

Dust
2010-11-08, 01:20 PM
One of our usual groupmates is well known for his awful rolls, so much so that we jokingly refuse to ever touch his dice or let him use ours, etc. Once, he was incredibly fed up with our superstitious silliness, and frustratingly grabbed all the d20s that happened to be in front of him at the time. 'Look, what are the odds...' he had started saying and ended up unceremoniously dropping/rolling them all back on the table. Four dice. Three 1s and a 2.

So now 'WHAT ARE THE ODDS?' is a running gag whenever he starts doing anything particularily dangerous that requires a decent roll. Most of the time, he rethinks the plan and stops.

super dark33
2010-11-08, 01:40 PM
My DM used a system where when you roll a 1 you need to roll a d10 to check what accident happens (I.E hitting yourself etc)

so i rolled a 1 after 1 and when i needed to pass my own AC i rolled a 20

Skjaldbakka
2010-11-08, 04:20 PM
I'm reminded of another amusing dice-rolling incident. We were gaming at a cafe, and one of the players was borrowing my d20 (I was dming at the time).

Throughout the session, he would roll horribly, and I would roll well with that die.

At one point he proclaimed that the die was cursed to roll low for him and high for me. I said that was preposterous, and then rolled the die and got a 2. As he walked away to get a drink I roll the die again - 19.

Zieu
2010-11-09, 07:04 AM
In a one-shot campaign where I played a rogue for the first time, we entered an old yet magically preserved mansion that had plenty of chimneys.

As a rogue, I figured it was my job to search everything. Every fireplace I saw, I stuck my head up. Occasionally finding a loose brick was very encouraging, and once I even found a jewelry box + lever. Now in the main study, which was absolutely MASSIVE, there was "the biggest fireplace I'd ever seen and would ever see for the rest of my life."

Without a second thought, I stuck my head up it and started searching.

First roll?
1.
In poking around, I pry out a rock that falls on my face. 1d4 damage.

Okay, but there MUST be something great here. I wait until the DM says I can make another check, at which point the rest of the party has left the room unbeknownst to me. My roll?
1.

The DM's as surprised as I am, and hadn't prepared for such an occurence. So....a bigger rock falls on my face, knocking me unconscious. 2d6 of damage.

Fortunately, when I awoke, enough time has passed for me to make another check, because DAMN IT ALL, there must be something valuable in that chimney. The DM raises his eyebrows, and I laughingly say "Oh, come on. What are the chances?" while rolling.

Another 1.

After a few moments of shocked silence, he ruled that a sturge flew out and started eating my face. While I'm alone. With 1d4 + 2d6 hp missing. A sturge latched to my face. I killed it by smashing my face against the mantlepiece repeatedly.

Nearly died that day.

Turns out there was nothing in the chimney, and the cabinet opposite the fireplace was trapped with some sort of paralyzing dust. Spent a lot of that day lying on the floor...Very uncool.

Bruendor_Cavescout
2010-11-09, 12:03 PM
Hah! Amateurs! All of you playing with your single die systems! Of course you can have a run of bad luck - that's what the law of averages is for. Sometimes you're on the good half of the 50%, other days, not so much.

No, to really show that you've had bad rolls, you need a die pool system. I've got terrible luck with dice, but die pools allow me to at least mitigate some of that. Sure, you'll get a few rolls off to one end of the bell curve or another, but by and large, you'll be able to bank on what you can reasonably expect to pull off.

Except for recently. I played a Bayushi bushi in a game - for those of you unfamiliar with L5R, think of a unscrupulous rogue sort, but quite skilled in the art of duelling. I don't know what was going on, but the dice were quite against me that night. I had to make several Raw Void rolls to avoid becoming stunned. I had to roll 3 10-siders, add them up, and get over a 10. I consistently failed this over the course of the next two hours, along with pretty much every other roll, including the duel at the end. I finally just decided to sacrifice him and make a new character - it felt good to tear up that sheet. Since then, my dice have behaved. Clearly, the universe does not want me playing a Scorpion.

TheEmerged
2010-11-09, 02:08 PM
I've told the story before and been told I'm either making this up, or cheating was involved. I assure you, it happened. And since it was my copy of the game and the dice were mine, no cheating was involved either.

Game is Risk(tm). For those not familiar with the system, the attacker rolls up to 3 six-sided dice and the defender rolls up to 2 six-sided dice, but no more dice than the number of pieces on that side. Highest roll wins, defender takes ties. Depending on the results, 1-2 pieces are removed at each set of dice rolls (if the attacker rolls 6-2-2 and the defender rolls 5-5, each loses a piece).

After a turn in of cards, I'm rolling up on the last territory I need to win -- Iceland, which has two defenders against 44 attackers (not counting the 45th army to hold the territory). We split the first turn, leaving 43 attackers against 1 defender.

I then go on to lose 43 rolls in a row -- 41 rolls of 3 dice versus 1 dice, followed by one each of 2 vs 1 and 1 vs 1. I've been told the math on this is astronomical.

Kaww
2010-11-09, 02:17 PM
I've told the story before and been told I'm either making this up, or cheating was involved. I assure you, it happened. And since it was my copy of the game and the dice were mine, no cheating was involved either.

Game is Risk(tm). For those not familiar with the system, the attacker rolls up to 3 six-sided dice and the defender rolls up to 2 six-sided dice, but no more dice than the number of pieces on that side. Highest roll wins, defender takes ties. Depending on the results, 1-2 pieces are removed at each set of dice rolls (if the attacker rolls 6-2-2 and the defender rolls 5-5, each loses a piece).

After a turn in of cards, I'm rolling up on the last territory I need to win -- Iceland, which has two defenders against 44 attackers (not counting the 45th army to hold the territory). We split the first turn, leaving 43 attackers against 1 defender.

I then go on to lose 43 rolls in a row -- 41 rolls of 3 dice versus 1 dice, followed by one each of 2 vs 1 and 1 vs 1. I've been told the math on this is astronomical.

If I was in your place I would have pulled out my gun and I would have shot the last tank, also I would throw the dice into a furnace. If you rolled avg the math on that is astronomical... You might not be lying, but I still don't believe you.