How fickle are those dice gods?

[djreynolds]

My kid plays a rogue, who crits like its going out of style, 13th level, at least I can use it as a math problem for her and get something educational out of it. But her whole career, crits come at least 1 every battle to 1.5.

However the dice gods have a sense of humor or justice or balance, she has failed every almost wisdom save, even will paladin present. Every time we rest, she gets a level of madness, we spend money to heal it, and then she gets another. "roll two d10's please"

Honestly, I don't even want to fix it. Its become entertaining.

How about you, how do the dice fall?

[DanyBallon]

In the current game I'm playing, my High elf Eldritch Knight, who has a decent Int (13), with proficiency in Arcana, and Investigation, has for now, soon hitting level 5, never been able to succeed one of these two skill, most of the time I roll a 3 (I'm not kidding, not a 2 or a 4, almost always a 3), for these checks. While, using the same die, I mostly roll 15 and above for my melee attack or my cantrip attack roll. So it's now a running gag that my "sage" elf is mostly obvious to anything he's searching for.

[djreynolds]

Our cleric always fails his strength checks, our rogue always fail wisdom saves and especially when it comes to levels of madness, its quite funny now as she ate mushrooms that made her grow.

Wizards failing history and arcane checks, clerics failing religion checks, rogues failing stealth checks, its funny.

[Stormthroe]

I keep a running tally nowadays of my number of rolls in a session compared to my critical fails. Last game was a rather fortunate session with only 2 crit fails out of 11 rolls. It is a running joke that the party can base the success of the session on whether or not I roll a crit fail within the first combat scene.

[bulbaquil]

For the main 5e game I play (takes place in Forgotten Realms), praying to Tymora in-character actually seems to make the dice roll better.

For the solo 5e game I run (human player is a paladin sergeant with a small squadron of DMPC followers), one of the DMPCs - a rogue archer type - rolls 18 through 20 on attack rolls and random skill checks far more often than probability would suggest.

When I play Pathfinder, my dice rolls are usually very middling, typically hovering around the 6 through 12 range. I think my dice like it better when I play 5e than when I play Pathfinder.

[JackPhoenix]

In my Pathfinder game, dice falls about as expected, with one exception: the party paladin fails every single save against Charm Person. Despite having the best Will save in the group (even better then wisdom-based Inquisitor), many foes tried to charm her (she looks like a warrior, thus the enemies expect weak will, and try to keep her out of combat or turn her to their side). I think from 10 or so saves against Charm Person, her highest roll was 4, with multiple 1s. It has turned into a running joke for the group "I think we can trust him." "Wait, she's charmed again? He wasn't casting anything!"

[mgshamster]

In one of my games, the dice hate one of my players. He has yet to cast a spell that I haven't saved against, and he's failed almost every saving throw in the campaign. The last session, he rolled 3, 2, and 1 in a row for three consecutive wisdom saves. Being a cleric doesn't save you from the curse of the dice!

[Temperjoke]

My goliath barbarian gets horrible rolls in social situations, yet average to great rolls in combat. So, at least he's staying in character.

[bardo]

Fighter needed a 7 to hit. Rolled a 3. Bless was active so rolled a d4 and got a 4. Hit. Exact same rolls on the Extra Attack. Mob died.

Bardo.

[JumboWheat01]

I have probably spent more time in Neverwinter Nights 2 or Baldur's Gate watching the chat log, showing the attack rolls for both myself and my enemy missing, sometimes for several minutes on end, before one side suddenly gets lucky and the opposing one is utterly slaughtered, or I finally have enough of it, activate the cheat mode, and SMITE THE COMPUTER LIKE A WRATHFUL GOD.

RNG and I have a very strained relation with each other.

Oddly enough, when it comes to actual dice rolling, I seem to do fairly good. Never overly successful but I succeed far more often than I fail.

[Misterwhisper]

My kid plays a rogue, who crits like its going out of style, 13th level, at least I can use it as a math problem for her and get something educational out of it. But her whole career, crits come at least 1 every battle to 1.5.

However the dice gods have a sense of humor or justice or balance, she has failed every almost wisdom save, even will paladin present. Every time we rest, she gets a level of madness, we spend money to heal it, and then she gets another. "roll two d10's please"

Honestly, I don't even want to fix it. Its become entertaining.

How about you, how do the dice fall?

(Pathfinder Story)

In an almost 2 year campaign, played every other week, from level 1 - 16, I was playing a Sword and Board Paladin Warrior of the Holy Light with a Longsword.

Due to an amazingly lucky treasure roll, at level 3 I received a Keen Longsword, so threat on a 17 - 20.

Never once, in the entire campaign did I every critically hit something. As a matter of fact I only rolled a threat 4 times.

[RickAllison]

I generally have really good luck (especially with character generation rolls!), but my criticals all tend to get wasted on trivial things. Cutting down goblins who would die to my sneak attacks in one hit anyway? Critical with excellent damage dice repeatedly. Need to take down a dragon? 19, 18, 16, but no 20. A minor complaint, but it is irksome to only be able to narrate gloriously dismembering CR <1 enemies...

[djreynolds]

so once again tonight, we rested and my kid the rogue, failed and got a level of madness and got amnesia. And the running joke is somehow see got an Oath Bow, but the rest of party is always trying to get it from her. She will go off scouting, and we are like " hey just leave the bow" or she fell in an underground river and we jumped in and asked the DM if we could just save the bow or if we had save them both.

So she gets amnesia for an hour and the whole time we are telling her that the bow is ours and she borrowed it, or its cursed, etc.

I really like the save system now.

[rlc]

Usually poorly.

[Madbox]

Not me, but last night one of the players in my group rolled a ridiculous amount of 20s, I think somewhere around 8 or 9 over the course of 3 hours. Thing was, he always rolled them while he had disadvantage, so he never actually got to use them. He always rolls a lot of 20s, I think he has been blessed by the dice gods. I have watched him purchase a new set of dice from the game store, go to the back room for a game, and proceed to roll a dozen crits and no crit fails in a session with those new dice.

[Douche]

That's funny, cuz I always roll high on skill checks and suck at combat rolls. I think it's just psychological at this point. I expect it to happen, so it does.

Of course, that's just superstition. But it is pretty cool to always succeed at persuasion or breaking down doors, haha

[randomodo]

Okay, this visualization of the results of a bunch of bad rolling was too funny to not post
https://mythjae.wordpress.com/2016/01/28/fated-3/

Edit: My most recent experience with dice strangeness was with the NPC Halfling bard who accompanied my PCs for several sessions. Even with Halfling luck she managed to fumble repeatedly. I ended up changing her characteristics to describe her as nearly perpetually drunk; it made the fumbles make more sense.

[JumboWheat01]

Okay, this visualization of the results of a bunch of bad rolling was too funny to not post
https://mythjae.wordpress.com/2016/01/28/fated-3/

Oh gods, it's a good thing there was a slight warning there before the link. I might've busted a rib.

[Segev]

Okay, this visualization of the results of a bunch of bad rolling was too funny to not post
https://mythjae.wordpress.com/2016/01/28/fated-3/

*falls over laughing, almost literally*

[gameogre]

As a DM I always roll out in front of the players and I have mixed results. Sure the players seem to think it's ungodly how often I roll well against them but they really don't look at it in context. I'm rolling a HECK of a lot more than them and still only get about as many crits ect as they one of them does!

When I am a player it's VERY frustrating. I have entire battles go by without hitting anything even when all I need to hit is a 9+. Sure sometimes it doesn't fall that way but it seems like it does a lot to me.

The Dice Gods are Fickle Indeed!

[tsotate]

Our gaming group has been running approximately weekly for about nine years. In that time, our fighter's player has successfully made a saving throw twice.

[djreynolds]

Okay, this visualization of the results of a bunch of bad rolling was too funny to not post
https://mythjae.wordpress.com/2016/01/28/fated-3/

Edit: My most recent experience with dice strangeness was with the NPC Halfling bard who accompanied my PCs for several sessions. Even with Halfling luck she managed to fumble repeatedly. I ended up changing her characteristics to describe her as nearly perpetually drunk; it made the fumbles make more sense.

Awesome, too funny

[JackPhoenix]

From tonight's game, first 5e combat for some players after switching my Eberron campaing from PF to 5e: The Immortal Zombie (and yes, it deserves all caps).

Zombies are tough, but not very dangerous...but some can be a lot tougher then expected thanks to Undead Fortitude. 4 zombified gnomes, no big deal...3 of them went down without much trouble. The last one, though? Multiple 20's on Con saves for Undead fortitude, this one zombie at one HP soaked more damage then a platoon of city guard. The 3 characters stabbed, bashed, slashed, splashed with acid and shot the zombie repeatedly for about 6 or 7 rounds before it finally went down to a dagger stab from an elf who didn't want to waste any more arrows.

The headless, broken zombie gnome was promoted to a recurring "villain". It will show up, again, and again, and again...

[Skylivedk]

As aDM, I had a player only rolling above ten once (12) during five sessions. I joked about reversing his die (1=20, 2=19, etc.). In the end, I let him do it. He was desperate. It worked.