How often do you roll ones?

[Hellborn_Blight]

Basic math tells us there is supposed to be a 5% chance of rolling a 1 on any given roll. Last night I was at 33% for the night. My group thinks that I am cursed. That I must have pissed in the face of some god of luck as he leaned in for a high five or something. I only made 15 d20 rolls in last nights session, but five of them were 1's. While this was annoying, it was actually better than the previous sessions four 1's in a row. That was just soul-crushingly unfun. I also regularly roll 3 ones in a row about on average every other session, usually in the attack role, save, attack role pattern, specifically. Trying different diceand/or surrfaces has been done, and no one in the room wants me even touching their dice anymore... So without a doubt the group is right; I am cursed.

So, anyone know a good gaming exorcist? Any luck bending tricks, or chance removing tactics that I can take advantage of? Any blasphemous fetishes that I can brandish against whatever hateful spirit has grabbed all my d20 rolls by the short an curlies? Or am I doomed to rolling cyclops eye forever?

And so I ask what are your 1 rolling rates like? Also general epic crit fail thread.

[Pluto!]

Asymptotically approaching once in twenty.

[lagninja]

Stop rolling on paper. It helps with the ones.

[Felyndiira]

Not very often, strangely enough, though that might just be bias since I roll more skill checks than attack rolls/saves, and a 1 on Knowledge: Religion tends to be overlooked.

Me: "Let's see. A 1. Guess I failed it."
GM: "You know that Lolth's name has five letters."

That is, assuming that you mean on a D20. I roll plenty of ones on D4's and D6's, of course.

[Hellborn_Blight]

Stop rolling on paper. It helps with the ones.

I recently made a felt lined box for rolling in before this last game and if there was any effect at all, it was only that it made it worse.

[ZamielVanWeber]

Granted with was a keen kopesh and auto-confirming crits but I once had a crit rate of 4/5 with my smites over the course of a battle. Given that the next highest source of damage was a dragon's entangling exhalation, this was highly useful.

I also banned using d20 dice roller when one guy failed to roll under an 18 over the course of a five hour session.

Only time he ever rolled a natural one was against a death effect in that battle where I spammed critical smites.

[endur]

Practice makes perfect.

[PaucaTerrorem]

New dice? I had 3 sessions in a row of many nat 1's. Went through 2 characters in 3 weeks. Bought some new dice and never had the problem again. For 2 weeks. I was famous in that group. Main reason I started playing casters that don't need the dice.

[Necroticplague]

Depends on which die I use. In some of my spare time, I like to roll my die a whole lot to see their stat distribution. For most, you end up with roughly even ones (for given values of roughly), but occasionally I get one with an off distribution. Most of these are barely statistically significant, but a few produce way off results. Like one d6 that rolls rolls 1s almost 1/3rd of the time.

[Hellborn_Blight]

New dice? I had 3 sessions in a row of many nat 1's. Went through 2 characters in 3 weeks. Bought some new dice and never had the problem again. For 2 weeks. I was famous in that group. Main reason I started playing casters that don't need the dice.

I've tried about seven different sets of dice, and probably over 30 individual d20s. Weird thing is, until I see that first one most of the time, the die rolls well with variable results. But once it rolls a one it just starts being a piece of sh*t all the time. On the time when I rolled 4 in a row, the first two were with the die from my Steampunk set, then I rolled a friends die, then I rolled one of my oversized die. It was mental.


Practice makes perfect.

It has also gotten worse over time, and in the last year has just become nearly unbearable. But when I started playing regularly in 2005 it wasn't like this. I'd roll 50 times a night and rarely see a 1 on something that wasn't a skill check, sometimes not for several sessions. I do remember always rolling them on things where it was really important to succeed though. Like on an attack roll to keep this Assassin from escaping down a ladder, which I then hurled myself 120 ft to the ground and knocked myself out. And another time when I got hit with knock out poison and the only way I could fail was a 1, meaning my infiltration mission of a corrupt arm of my church was a massive failure. I have also killed vital NPC's, burned down half a city with a terrible torch toss, and my Samurai dropped his katana the turn before the group teleported to safety (was actually my first catastrophic 1 that involved WEEKS of roleplaying to fix because of the whole honor thing for Samurai and the significance of the diasho).

[Val666]

Uhmm I don't think this fits tje topic but it's a cool story Dx Months ago, I was GM of a group of 3. They were playing homebrew classes (dragonknight, improved-bloodstorm
Blade and master of puppets) well there was this boss that had this power: HP 10 but attacks only hit on natural 1's and al damage he took was reduced to 1. That was the players "luckiest" sesion, they didn't roll any 1. The game ended that day :v

[Telonius]

I've tried about seven different sets of dice, and probably over 30 individual d20s. Weird thing is, until I see that first one most of the time, the die rolls well with variable results. But once it rolls a one it just starts being a piece of sh*t all the time. On the time when I rolled 4 in a row, the first two were with the die from my Steampunk set, then I rolled a friends die, then I rolled one of my oversized die. It was mental.



It has also gotten worse over time, and in the last year has just become nearly unbearable. But when I started playing regularly in 2005 it wasn't like this. I'd roll 50 times a night and rarely see a 1 on something that wasn't a skill check, sometimes not for several sessions. I do remember always rolling them on things where it was really important to succeed though. Like on an attack roll to keep this Assassin from escaping down a ladder, which I then hurled myself 120 ft to the ground and knocked myself out. And another time when I got hit with knock out poison and the only way I could fail was a 1, meaning my infiltration mission of a corrupt arm of my church was a massive failure. I have also killed vital NPC's, burned down half a city with a terrible torch toss, and my Samurai dropped his katana the turn before the group teleported to safety (was actually my first catastrophic 1 that involved WEEKS of roleplaying to fix because of the whole honor thing for Samurai and the significance of the diasho).

Somewhere in the world, there is a player who is rolling 20s. It is your destiny to find this player, and engage in single combat. The fate of the world will hang in the balance.

[Ellowryn]

I can understand this, on the opposite end of the spectrum we have a guy in our group who tends to GM a lot and has this really nasty habit of rolling 20's (we tend to play that you don't need to confirm crit's). To be honest, i would try out some dicerollers. As people have pointed out already they tend to skew the results up so it should even out given your rolls.

That or make some sacrifices to the dark gods. I recommend live chickens and a well ventilated room.

Also, as a side note, does anybody know how to get chtulu gunk and the smell of infinite death out of upholstery?

[Sacrieur]

5% of the time. In fact I roll each number about that often.

[Blackhawk748]

Your dice must be punished!! Put it in the Freezer for a few hours until it learns its lesson. Seriously ive seen this work, a buddy's dice refused to roll above a 6 that night so after an hour he stuffed it in the freezer for an hour or so and used a different one (this one wasnt rolling great either but it was better) he then retrieved his original dice. It rolled great the rest of the night.

Also he has executed a D20 in front of the others. I kid you not, it rolled so many ones and rolled so consistently bad that he smashed it with a hammer in front of the others, seemed to work.

[Larrx]

Math trumps so called curses, the perception problem exists because even a hundred rolls is really too small a sample size to approach 5% very closely. It gets pretty close, but some aberration from the mean is expected.

The being said, if you are superstitious there is a ritual you can perform to appease the dice gods. Spread 10-20 d4s on the floor in a smallish square and walk across them in stockings. Preferably this should be done barefoot, but some people think that's gross.

[Telonius]

Also, as a side note, does anybody know how to get chtulu gunk and the smell of infinite death out of upholstery?

A mix of febreze, borax, and a crushed shard taken from the peak of Mount Gl'brslyzstx should do the trick.

[Ellowryn]

A mix of febreze, borax, and a crushed shard taken from the peak of Mount Gl'brslyzstx should do the trick.

Easy enough, but industrial strength borax? Or can i just grab some of whatever they have at the local chemical plant?

[Nibbens]

I'm just going to leave this (https://statisfaction.wordpress.com/2011/11/30/psycho-dice/) here.

Happy rolling, guys.

PS. I don't believe in Wikipedia, but I do believe in the American Journal of Psychology - which is listed in the references of that wiki article. So it bears researching.

[fishyfishyfishy]

I am a DM primarily, and from my perspective I most commonly roll a 1 whenever it matters the most. I've had many instances of "ok, this guy needs to roll anything except a 1 to succeed on this save or die/lose. Oh look at that."


As a player it doesn't come up very often because I play as a paranoid wizard that buffs up the team to be immune to most all the really bad status effects.

[Firechanter]

My bad luck with dice is legen-waitforit-dary. Most people I play with notice sooner or later that my rolls often suck worse than can be statistically expected. Doesn't even have to be D&D; in one particular Savage World oneshot I rolled kinda like eight Snake Eyes in the course of the session. I spent literally all my bennies for snake-eye rerolls, and at some point I had run out of bennies.

About 4 weeks ago was another such cursed night, in our weekly 3.5 session. I didn't exactly count, but despite my selection of five different d20s, I hardly ever rolled higher than a 4. And also around four or five Nat 1s over the course of the session. It was simply ridiculous.

Luckily, nothing bad came of it save some embarassment, because the encounters were rather easy that evening. Afterwards, the DM said that my character would have rocked pretty hard if I "had rolled like a normal human".

The week after, a fellow player who witnessed my plight gifted me a fresh, shiny, new d20, and I have made this my exclusive die for this campaign. I don't use any other d20s in this game, and I don't use this die in any other game. My luck seems to have turned now, rolled maybe one Nat1 in that game, and otherwise that die seems to slack off sometimes, but so far it delivers when it counts. ^^

[Kish]

Not being superstitious, I have two suggestions.

1) You're sabotaging yourself by throwing in a way that favors a 1; a die roll isn't actually random (people can learn to roll a die so that it comes up the number they want, and con artists use this). Instead of using your hand to roll the die, get a dice cup.
2) Your die is actually improperly balanced. Change to a new die.

[Flickerdart]

A spectacular indication of the principle that each individual coin die spun individually is as likely to come down heads as tails one as any other number, and therefore should cause no surprise each individual time it does.

[Quild]

Out of 15 dies, you had approximatively 0,061468% chances to make 5 or more fumbles.
You had 46,33% chances to make none, 36,58% chances to make only one, 13,48% chances to make two 3,07% chances to make three and finally 0,49% chances to make four.

Nicely done!

Note that the 5% chances per roll are accurate for a d20 perfectly balanced and randomly thrown, but not in many other cases :p.



We once had a game with many different dies in which in a single one battle, we (the players) rolled a 1 on 19 times. Don't remember why we kept a track and the total number of dies thrown, but I think it was probably way closer from your 33% than from an expected 5%.


The only one I do remember is when I made a DC check to have my character mounting his mount while performing a full-attack with his bow (there's a feat for that). That specific full attack was aiming for a monster about to kill another character of the group without any doubt if not killed before. It was easy for me to kill that monster with a full attack, but would I fail my DC check, I would have been limited to one shot.

Obviously the other player wasn't fond of me attempting that check, but my character's life was also threatened (we were in fight after all! A man has a to be prepared to flee if he wants to survive the day and flee another day!), but I was confident since only a 1 on the die would make me fail that check and we already had lot of these. What were the odds? (5% actually, I knew that, he didn't)

I obviously rolled a 1. Followed a brief argument about how you can't fumble a DC check (everyone agreed but it was shortened by the fact that I wasn't fumbling, it's just that I was failing the check on a 1) and a check of what I could have miscalculated (nothing).


In a sense we had some luck that day, his character had been the only one to die!


Do you know that tumblr about dice shaming?

[Deophaun]

Somewhere in the world, there is a player DM who is rolling 20s.
Fixed.

In one of my 4e sessions, I rolled nat 20s about 50% of the time. And those times I didn't roll nat 20s, I frequently rolled max damage. I rolled 8d6 and came out with 48. To make the horror all the more real, I did this in front of my players. I did this with their dice when they insisted (jokingly, in good fun) mine were rigged. The party only survived because I was having so much fun with the stupidly lethal dice that I abandoned the creatures' powers (they really didn't need them). I fluffed it as some kind of profane bloodlust inspired by their ritual sacrifice.

Meanwhile, I've had sessions as a player where I could not roll over a 6.

[LoyalPaladin]

I've noticed a lot of the "fancy" dice roll inconsistently... I bought some neat ones and could not roll those things above an 8, I swear. Bought some standard Chessex ones after a couple months and boom. No more problems.

[Zaq]

I don't roll ones. I roll fours. Doesn't matter which dice I'm using, or whether I'm rolling by hand or with a tower. I get fours way more often than 5% of the time. (When it's in my power, I try to optimize my characters such that I'll succeed on a four, but sometimes that's easier than others.)

In all seriousness, what I think you should do is get some paper and keep track of every d20 you roll for a game. Write down what the roll was for, the natural result on the die, and whether it was a success or failure. Do this for at least a month, if not longer (a single session isn't a meaningful sample size). Don't keep track of rolls that aren't part of a game—only track the ones that count. (You can also do this with a spreadsheet, but I find having a sheet of paper on hand is less disruptive to the game than having a laptop with a spreadsheet open, and I don't know of any spreadsheet programs for mobile devices that I actually like, though I haven't looked that hard.)

After a month or two doing it (the longer, the better; make your sample size as big as possible), tally up the numbers and see if you're actually rolling low (or rolling high) significantly more often than you'd expect from fair dice. If the numbers show that you're not actually rolling that far away from what probability would predict, then it's just perception—you remember the low rolls more than the average rolls, and/or the low rolls just happen to come up for the more important checks. If you really are rolling low more often than you should, then something's wrong. Either you're sabotaging yourself by rolling in a predictable way (in which case I'd recommend you get a dice tower), or your dice truly aren't fair (in which case I recommend you get new dice), or something. But recording each and every roll you make for an extended period of time will help remove perception as a bias—that nat one on the SoL that took you out of the fight all evening may stand out in your memory, but the paper will correctly record it as just one roll among many.


A spectacular indication of the principle that each individual coin die spun individually is as likely to come down heads as tails one as any other number, and therefore should cause no surprise each individual time it does.

This is not the first time we have spun coins dice! (Tails.)

[Jay R]

5 1's out of 15 should happen about one time in 1600. Given that there are more than 1600 people on giantitp, it should have happened to at least one of us in our last game.