When Dice Attack

[Uhtred]

So today one of my players rolled single digits all day long, except for a couple of skill rolls that, obviously, did not require the Nat 20's he rolled for them, so every save, every attack, even a stealth roll all failed horribly and left the player so frustrated and angry that he was throwing his phone (in a lifeproof case, of course) around. The guy's got bad luck, his name is a synonym at our table (long before today) for rolling poorly when the situation needed a good roll. But I can see that it's getting to him.
He's one of my best friends, and I love playing with him, and I love his character concepts. He's also one of the very rare player types who look at a whole party, see what it needs, and build a character to fit the gap, but his terrible luck means that he very rarely sees any of his builds through to the point of maximum effectiveness (Abandoned a Summoner at lvl 6, a Magus at 8, and a Sorcerer at 10) because he feels he's "Useless," when any of those builds obviously comes into their own around lvl 12 or so when Summoners start getting more powerful spells and eidolons, Magi get cool class features, and Sorcerers start getting higher-level magic.
So this goes out to all my fellow DM's: What do you do when somebody's terrible rolling begins to negatively impact their feelings about the game? I can see he's frustrated and getting down on himself and his builds, but I obviously can't hand the guy a set of cheater dice or telepathically move his rolls, and the dice are what's killing him. Give him a cloak that has a continuous Heroism effect on it to bolster his roll totals? Set up certain rolls where rolling low is the goal? Or do I take the rest of the party aside and let them know they need to encourage him even when he rolls like crap so he doesn't get down on himself? Thoughts? Ideas?

[AvatarVecna]

There are only three known solutions to Cursed DiceTM: one, perform some sort of esoteric ritual fueled by Mountain Dew, Doritos, and desperation; two, destroy those dice in whatever creative manner appeases your frustration, and then get new dice; three, build a character that doesn't make so many d20 rolls, or whose success does not depend as much on die rolls.

If you've any interest in that third thing, I'm sure that I and many other munckins here ITP have ideas that can help.

[KillianHawkeye]

I can see he's frustrated and getting down on himself and his builds, but I obviously can't hand the guy a set of cheater dice or telepathically move his rolls, and the dice are what's killing him.

Question: How many dice does the player actually have to use? Have you actually tried giving him new dice?

I mean, just because you're right that giving him "cheater dice" isn't the right solution, it doesn't necessarily mean that his existing dice aren't a problem. Dice that aren't manufactured well or made from substandard materials are not going to have a properly random outcome. Environmental issues can also have negative effects on dice, as can a long period of normal wear and tear.

I know some people don't think you should blame your dice for a streak of bad luck, but sometimes you just have bad dice.



If, instead, this is a problem that's been observed across a wide variety of d20s, then I agree with AvatarVecna's suggestion of making a character that doesn't rely as much on dice rolls. Actually, I'm curious why a Sorcerer would have been abandoned for bad rolling, since spellcasting is the easiest way of forcing your enemies to roll all the dice (unless he was too focused on rays/orbs or other ranged attack spells).

[Uhtred]

Question: How many dice does the player actually have to use? Have you actually tried giving him new dice?

I mean, just because you're right that giving him "cheater dice" isn't the right solution, it doesn't necessarily mean that his existing dice aren't a problem. Dice that aren't manufactured well or made from substandard materials are not going to have a properly random outcome. Environmental issues can also have negative effects on dice, as can a long period of normal wear and tear.

I know some people don't think you should blame your dice for a streak of bad luck, but sometimes you just have bad dice.



If, instead, this is a problem that's been observed across a wide variety of d20s, then I agree with AvatarVecna's suggestion of making a character that doesn't rely as much on dice rolls. Actually, I'm curious why a Sorcerer would have been abandoned for bad rolling, since spellcasting is the easiest way of forcing your enemies to roll all the dice (unless he was too focused on rays/orbs or other ranged attack spells).

He's got seriously SO many dice, in so many materials. Plastic Chessex dice, goldstone dice, even a set of Tiger Eye dice. I got him a Cup o' Dice at the Chessex booth at Comic Con one year, mostly d6's and d8's, and for some reason, across the board, his dice seem to hate him. We as a group are typical superstitious gamers; we don't let him touch any dice we care about lest his curse rub off on them, though we all carry a loaner set if he chooses to vote his own d20's off the island, and he plays a PF Ninja, so he's rolling mostly 20's and 6's, though it is his d20's that are the worst offenders. And he rolls skill checks and attacks quite often since he's proactive in scouting and sneak-attacking.
He WAS focused on rays and orbs, mostly Scorching Rays, since my standard Bandit build includes levels of Rogue and they were Evasioning out of his fireballs and lightning bolts.

[Telonius]

Had the opposite problem happen to me just this past session - my Beholder Mage had Greater Blink up, and the percentile was coming up 90 something like six times in a row. First time I've ever called shenanigans on a die, and it was my own. I went over to d20srd's die roller and got a much more reasonable result.

[Uhtred]

Had the opposite problem happen to me just this past session - my Beholder Mage had Greater Blink up, and the percentile was coming up 90 something like six times in a row. First time I've ever called shenanigans on a die, and it was my own. I went over to d20srd's die roller and got a much more reasonable result.

My favorite is when a Nat 20 means that ridiculous things happen; I had my party's Gnome Illusionist use Major Image to make a dead animal carcass, complete with scent, appear on a road to lure a Dire Bear out of their path. The bear rolled his Will Save...Nat 20. A freakin' BEAR disbelieved a mid-level Shadowcraft Mage's illusion of something it would actively want to be true. The bandits who ambushed them believed in the illusion and gave the carcass a wide berth; but the bear was unconcerned.
My player gets very few 20's, and when he does they're on non-impactful things like a Perception check on a hallway that has no traps, or a Disable Device check on a DC 15 Lock. And when it counts, you can bet on him rolling no better than a 5. He's fond of "voting dice off the island," wherein the offending die, after a number of terrible rolls, is exiled to the dice pouch for the remainder of the session, but there are still only so many loaner dice at the table.

[Quertus]

So today one of my players rolled single digits all day long, except for a couple of skill rolls that, obviously, did not require the Nat 20's he rolled for them, so every save, every attack, even a stealth roll all failed horribly
He's also one of the very rare player types who look at a whole party, see what it needs, and build a character to fit the gap, but his terrible luck means that he very rarely sees any of his builds through to the point of maximum effectiveness (Abandoned a Summoner at lvl 6, a Magus at 8, and a Sorcerer at 10) because he feels he's "Useless,"


There are only three known solutions to Cursed DiceTM: one, perform some sort of esoteric ritual fueled by Mountain Dew, Doritos, and desperation; two, destroy those dice in whatever creative manner appeases your frustration, and then get new dice; three, build a character that doesn't make so many d20 rolls, or whose success does not depend as much on die rolls.

If you've any interest in that third thing, I'm sure that I and many other munckins here ITP have ideas that can help.


Actually, I'm curious why a Sorcerer would have been abandoned for bad rolling, since spellcasting is the easiest way of forcing your enemies to roll all the dice (unless he was too focused on rays/orbs or other ranged attack spells).

First question - does the player realize that it is his bad rolls that are making his characters "useless"?

Second question - what kind of rolls did he have to make that his bad rolls made the sorcerer useless? - actually, the example of saves and a stealth roll could do it, I suppose...

Third question - to what extent does the player like to make his own builds?

If he doesn't want to play "someone else's character", then the playground making a build for him won't help much (although I would love to see what people here can come up with, just in case it ever comes up in one of my groups). Although I'm pretty sure they're not generally terribly good, I believe there is a stance that lets you take an 11 on a great many rolls (including saves, IIRC), and a feat that lets you take 10 on skills even when you normally couldn't. Those sound like something you could drop into almost any build for the "low" cost of 3 feats. Perhaps there are spells or abilities that the other members of the party could take to allow rerolls, depending on the composition and helpfulness of the party.

[Evolved Shrimp]

So the guy seems to roll badly with any die.

Given that this is exceedingly unlikely from a purely statistical point of view, I'd suggest to keep a log of all his rolls and see whether they really are subaverage. (Excluding ones that he feels are unimportant, such as skill checks.)

My expectation would be that it turns out he doesn't really have bad dice luck; that he just remembers the bad rolls much more than the good ones and so has convinced himself (and his friends) that he is cursed.

Note that you'll need a fair number of rolls to make this a meaningful exercise. A statistician can give you precise numbers, but I'd guess that you need at least a hundred rolls. And it's crucial that you decide before each roll whether to record it. If you do it after, the exercise becomes subject to bias and therefore pointless.

[Crake]

So the guy seems to roll badly with any die.

Given that this is exceedingly unlikely from a purely statistical point of view, I'd suggest to keep a log of all his rolls and see whether they really are subaverage. (Excluding ones that he feels are unimportant, such as skill checks.)

My expectation would be that it turns out he doesn't really have bad dice luck; that he just remembers the bad rolls much more than the good ones and so has convinced himself (and his friends) that he is cursed.

Note that you'll need a fair number of rolls to make this a meaningful exercise. A statistician can give you precise numbers, but I'd guess that you need at least a hundred rolls. And it's crucial that you decide before each roll whether to record it. If you do it after, the exercise becomes subject to bias and therefore pointless.

I feel like this is the most likely explanation, he probably rolls decently over time, but pays no attention to the hits/successes, just the misses/failures. If that's the case, he needs a higher success/failure ratio to make him feel good about his character, meaning he needs higher bonuses to his rolls, or lower DCs to meet in order to keep him at a neutral attitude (which is bad, because it makes the game more trivial for the others who are fine with a normal success/failure ratio)

[Mystral]

I feel like this is the most likely explanation, he probably rolls decently over time, but pays no attention to the hits/successes, just the misses/failures. If that's the case, he needs a higher success/failure ratio to make him feel good about his character, meaning he needs higher bonuses to his rolls, or lower DCs to meet in order to keep him at a neutral attitude (which is bad, because it makes the game more trivial for the others who are fine with a normal success/failure ratio)

Not neccessarily. If his successes are more likely, but less powerfull than the successes of the other players, it stays balanced.

Think of power attacking versus not power attacking.

[Crake]

Not neccessarily. If his successes are more likely, but less powerfull than the successes of the other players, it stays balanced.

Think of power attacking versus not power attacking.

I was more referring to the DM scaling down the DCs, which would affect all players. Boosting the player's bonuses is out of the DMs hands, short of just fiating him, the player needs to make those decisions for his character.

[WalkingTheShade]

Another possibility is using this variant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/bellCurveRolls.htm).

I second the point about perception biases regarding luck.
I must admit seeing gaming session where the whole party was very unlucky, with one character standing out (the warlock needing a 7+ to hit and not hitting once in 8+ rounds). Usually it evens out after a time (during next combat, you get 5+ confirmed criticals in 3 rounds, and near-max damage on each roll).

One DM trick to reduce swings due to luck is to actually cheat. Add reinforcements on the fly if the PC are having too much of an easy time. Arbitrarily reduce the AC or HD of some mook, that the currently unlucky the player is attacking, so they one-shot it, etc. Give the BBEG some DR/- so he can survive or better AC so a critical is not confirmed. Remove the BBEG DR/- so he doesn't curb stomp the party...

[Segev]

Statistical Discussion of Dice Luck
Interestingly, I have friends who epitomize the two extremes in luck: one who rolls ludicrously well (and, when he fails, it's usually on the unimportant rolls), and one who rolls very poorly (to the point that a 6x6 matrix of D&D 3e stats, rolled with 4d6 drop low, in which he could choose any row, column, or diagonal he liked as his set of stats...qualified for a re-roll with every possible choice under 3.5 rolling rules).

Statistically, this is unlikely; dice are dice, right?

Well, in fact, if you were to take the data of every person who's ever rolled dice, and taken their average roll, to form your set of "averages," you would find people whose averages were well above and well below norms; it would be a very sharply peaked distribution about the statistical average, but it would still vary.

In point of fact, in one semester-long game, my friend with the bad dice luck kept track of his d20 rolls...and averaged somewhere around 7.5, with the mode being 4. (That is, his most common roll was a 4 on the die.) This is using a variety of d20s.

Potential Solutions For the OP's Friend
When I'm having a bad dice luck day, I tend to grab an extra die that is distinct from the one I want to use as my "real" die, and declare before I roll which one "counts." Sometimes, I do this by having a d6 and a d20 when I want the d20 result; others, I have two different colored dice of the same side count (say, red and green) and declare as I'm throwing "red counts" or "green counts."

This tends to bump my performance back up to something approaching average. I suspect it's something to do with the way I'm picking up and attempting to roll the dice in my hand; having a second die probably provides more jostling and thus greater randomization. Gamer superstition-wise, I attribute it to "fooling" the dice into rolling well (while other friends claim it's the competition that "motivates" them).

Another solution, which would guarantee average results over time (but at the risk of predictability if he's keeping track), would be to number a stack of 100 index cards from 1 to 20, with 5 of each number appearing in the deck. Have him draw from that deck each time he should roll a d20. When he exhausts the deck, re-shuffle. This will guarantee that he gets EXACTLY even results on his numbers, if he goes through the entire deck. Having 5 copies of each makes "card counting" harder, and preserves a sense of randomness for a bit longer.

[Zakerst]

Among my group I'm our version of OP's friend, its usually not as much as a problem for me as I'm the dm so NPCs and MoBs having bad roles isn't too bad. That said I've found that while digital dice rollers aren't "truly random" (though with sufficient information nothing is), they often give me better results than physical d20s. Maybe have your friend download a digital roller and just use that and if you're worried about cheating just double check his roles. you could even have him roll on something like roll20 which keeps track of rolls.

[Jay R]

True story: I once looked over at the bad-luck player, and suggested that he use a d20 instead of a d12 for attack rolls and saving throws.

[Segev]

True story: I once looked over at the bad-luck player, and suggested that he use a d20 instead of a d12 for attack rolls and saving throws.

That would tend to improve his average results.