Character for someone who has rotten rolls

[Mercurias]

We all know that dice rolling is random chance, or it's as close to random chance as we can get if people are doing it fairly and not fudging their rolls.

I...Have legendarily bad luck. In the last year, I got curious and made a spreadsheet for the number of rolls that I pass. I recorded close to 450 rolls, and the data is so disheartening that I almost quit tabletop:


10% success rate on any non-proficient save with a modified of +1 or higher.
35% success rate on any roll on a skill with proficiency with a modifier of +4 or higher.
41% chance to roll a natural 1.
38% chance to succeed on an attack roll with a modifier of +4 or greater.


If I were better with numbers, I could probably analyze the sheet and come up with stronger examples, but yeah. My fortune with random chance has unbalanced campaigns by causing me to fail checks that could only be failed by a natural 1.

Strangely, enemy checks and saves against effects I place seem to be fairly normal.

I ended up getting around my bad luck somewhat by playing an Evocation Wizard, thanks to Potent Cantrip and regular use of Bonfire as well as Toll the Dead. Relying on checks that force enemies to save, or giving me half-damage on successful checks (or just straight up abusing magic missile and spells that change circumstances without requiring a roll) has taken me a long way. I enjoyed that Wizard, and I'm going to miss his campaign now that it's going on hiatus for a new one.

Is there another character, build or specialization outside of Wizard that can help compensate for consistently bad rolls?

[Talsin]

I think perhaps a dataset of the following may be helpful to us:

What you were rolling towards: e.g. Attaking a Mindflayer
Your Modifier on said roll:
If you had Advantage or Disadvantage:
What each die showed each time:

That may help us out - since your DM is arbitrating whether or not you pass/fail, it may just be that they are throwing particularly tough stuff. Alternatively, maybe you should ditch your bad dice?

[Christew]

Those are some really tragic numbers. You have my sympathy. Either:
A) build a halfling Divination wizard with the lucky feat in order to have as many opportunities to influence the dice as possible, or
B) stick to builds that rely on saves instead of attacks. Get your spell save DC as high as possible and make the DM do the rolling.

[clash]

Play support. Spells that buff your teammates have no chance of failing.

[Eldariel]

Wizard is indeed the best option (Diviner in particular; rolling low is a boon for Portent though any rolls work), but Bard works too and Cleric can kinda-sorta be also made to work (Sacred Flame is reliable and they have a good number of offensive save-or-X effects). Other than that, minionmancy is out if all your minions roll poorly too (ask your DM to roll for your skeletons/animals/whatever?) and any kind of martial or skill class is entirely out.

[MaxWilson]

We all know that dice rolling is random chance, or it's as close to random chance as we can get if people are doing it fairly and not fudging their rolls.

I...Have legendarily bad luck. In the last year, I got curious and made a spreadsheet for the number of rolls that I pass. I recorded close to 450 rolls, and the data is so disheartening that I almost quit tabletop:


10% success rate on any non-proficient save with a modified of +1 or higher.
35% success rate on any roll on a skill with proficiency with a modifier of +4 or higher.
41% chance to roll a natural 1.
38% chance to succeed on an attack roll with a modifier of +4 or greater.


If I were better with numbers, I could probably analyze the sheet and come up with stronger examples, but yeah. My fortune with random chance has unbalanced campaigns by causing me to fail checks that could only be failed by a natural 1.

Strangely, enemy checks and saves against effects I place seem to be fairly normal.

I ended up getting around my bad luck somewhat by playing an Evocation Wizard, thanks to Potent Cantrip and regular use of Bonfire as well as Toll the Dead. Relying on checks that force enemies to save, or giving me half-damage on successful checks (or just straight up abusing magic missile and spells that change circumstances without requiring a roll) has taken me a long way. I enjoyed that Wizard, and I'm going to miss his campaign now that it's going on hiatus for a new one.

Is there another character, build or specialization outside of Wizard that can help compensate for consistently bad rolls?

If I'm understanding you correctly, out of 450 rolls, 181 of them were natural 1s?!?! That goes beyond bad luck. Those are poorly-balanced dice.

But as far as how to get around... if you play a summoner like a Shepherd Druid, you could offload your die-rolling onto the DM. Same thing if you play a Bard or something and cast lots of crowd-control spells like Hypnotic Pattern and Fear--it's not you rolling (or your dice), it's the DM, and even if it were you rolling, natural 1s would be good in that case because the enemy would be failing the save. You could also focus on enhancing other PCs by playing a Warding Bond cleric, or a Trickery Cleric with Polymorph.

[Garfunion]

Sorcerer
Metamagic: empowered spell
Magic Missile
With this build there is no rolling to hit just damage. And according to sage advice, you only roll one d4 and that d4 determines the damage for all your missiles. With empowered spell you can help your chances to get higher damage.
Maybe add 1 level of Warlock Hexblade for added damage.

[MaxWilson]

Oh, I forgot to mention Druid as a possibility. Druid has a number of spells like Spike Growth, Wall of Fire, Plant Growth, and Wall of Thorns that just straight-up impose damage on enemies with no save involved, if they travel through the affected areas. (There's a save on the round when you first summon the stuff, but not on subsequent rounds.)

[TigerT20]

Wild Magic Sorceror gets some dice control, and it gives you access to metamagics like Empowered that can help boost up low rolls. Play into control and support with Web and Haste.

Another option I could see that isn't presented earlier in the post is begging the cleric or paladin for Bless, or going out of your way to try and generate advantage.

[Lunali]

If I were better with numbers, I could probably analyze the sheet and come up with stronger examples, but yeah. My fortune with random chance has unbalanced campaigns by causing me to fail checks that could only be failed by a natural 1.

Find a DM that doesn't houserule nat 1s into auto fails on skill checks.

One option if you want to do skill checks is rogue, if you survive till 11, you automatically get a 10+ on anything with proficiency. The downside is you're completely dependent on attack rolls to do damage in combat.

[Zetakya]

Bury your old dice at a crossroads at midnight on full moon and get another set.

Failing that, go Life Cleric

[elyktsorb]

Just play a Halfling, a Divination Wizard Halfling that takes the Lucky feat at some point.

I always play as Halflings (for the most part) and I cannot tell you how many times I've rolled a natural 1, only for halfling luck to turn it into an 18, or a 15, or even a natural 20. Of course I've had the opposite happen, where I once rolled a Natural 1, and then Lucky rerolled it to another Natural 1. But you know, Halfling helps. Either that or get 2 people in your groups to both play Halflings, each of you take the feat Bountiful Luck that lets a Halfling give up their Lucky use to let another player reroll any ones they have within the halflings 30ft sight. If 2 halflings have this ability, and all party members stay within 30 ft of them (the halflings stay withing 30ft of each other) then every time anyone rolls a natural 1, they get to reroll it.

[Contrast]

Chance of succeeding on stuff isn't super relevant as it depends on the difficulty of the test you do. For example if one party member always insists on doing trick shots and bouncing arrows off things he's going to have a far lower success rate than the PC who just shoots enemies normally, even if he has the same rolls. Plus without recording everyone elses numbers, everyone else may have similar success rates because your DM just likes throwing enemies with good stats/difficult challenges at you.

If you're actually looking at your luck the only number that is important is the one on the dice face.


41% chance to roll a natural 1.


Strangely, enemy checks and saves against effects I place seem to be fairly normal.

Almost half your dice rolls were natural 1s? What? Are you sure this is correct? I feel like this should have been very obvious that something was up without spending a year on a spreadsheet.

You have bad dice. Not in a superstitious way, in a you should get rid of your dice and buy new ones because those are clearly badly manufactured way. Alternatively, do you always hold and throw the dice in a particular way? The fact that enemy saves and checks are normal (i.e. when someone else is rolling) and yours are so badly skewed definitely implies there's something specific going on here.

[Sception]

Primary casters with save-based offensive spells, or even ones that focus on buffs & battlefield effects that might not even allow saves in the first place, tend to be the best go to.

An alternative option if you're tired of spellcasters and want a warrior type is paladin. Focus on tanking & support options and you'll still be contributing to the party's success even when you can't hit the broad side of a barn. Aura of Protection will help with saving throws, and the Bless Spell - which is a consistently decent opening action for paladins from level 2 when they get it all the way to the end of their career - further shores up your saving throw rolls and helps you get past bad luck on your attack rolls. Divine Smite is a nice damage boost that only activates after you've already hit, so you never have to worry about wasting it with a miss, and on the rare occasion that you do hit you can at least try to make it hurt, though if your luck is really that bad then it's entirely possible for even high level smites to return disappointing results.

Ask if your DM will allow the damage die rerolls from the great weapon combat style to apply to smite damage. By official ruling it does not, but if your DM is familiar with your terrible luck they may be willing to throw you a bone. Otherwise just take defense or protection style.


For subclass, you have some options. Consider oath of ancients to double down on support with a very nice and completely passive protective aura at level 7, no rolling needed. Alternatively, Conquest focuses on debuffs & control, particularly frightening effects, which puts you back into the realm of forcing your enemies to roll against your save DCs instead of you having to roll to hit them. Alternatively, oaths of devotion and vengeance both have per-short-rest channel divinities that increase the accuracy of your attacks in important fights. You can use these to either further overcome your bad luck on hit rolls or you can use them to offset the penalty from Great Weapon Master, so that when you do hit you can be sure it will sting no matter how badly you roll for smite damage.

Devotion paladin also makes you and nearby allies flat immune to charm effects, and at level 10 all paladins get a similar aura for frighten effects. More flat immunities mean more saves you don't have to worry about flubbing in spite of your various extra bonuses.

Apart from maybe great weapon master, consider a feat to further shore up concentration saves so that you can hold onto your buff spells better. Resilient Constitution or War Caster are the usual options. War Caster in particular is what you want if you go for a sword & board build and take the ever popular Hexblade dip. Alternatively, Lucky can help with both concentration saves and other important d20 rolls over the course of the day.

If you go for either the hexblade dip or the less common light-or-medium armored dex-primary paladin build, either rapier & shield or dual wielding short swords, then consider either half elf (for the hexblade version) or Eladrin (for the dexy version), starting with a post-racial 17 in your chosen pimary stat, and rounding it out to 18 with Elven Accuracy. When you're able to get advantage (you can manufacture it yourself if you go oath of vengeance), then the extra d20 on attack rolls will further help overcome your bad luck.

Finally, you might consider Inspiring Leader, a very solid support feat that improves the party's total daily HP reserves without requiring any rolls from you.

Otherwise, try not to spend too many ASIs on feats. As a paladin you need to keep up both a weapon attack stat and charisma. Even hex-dipping paladins who, can do both at the same time, don't really have free ASIs until very late in their progression.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Alternatively, maybe you should ditch your bad dice?

Yeah. If this is a fair recording of 450 random dice rolls (and not say a collection of rolls that were recorded because they were bad) with a 41% chance of a natural 1 out of 20, than that's the easiest explanation, that die is super weighed. Maybe an air pocket from casting underneath the 1 or something. In fact this luck is so bad that can't even possibly be the whole story, it's a bad die ánd ****ty luck on top of it.

In fact, check if your die isn't a misprint with like 4 ones on it. (I have a small collection of d6's with all sorts of defects, got them from a bin of cheap dice. There's double numbers, air pockets (that open up to the outside, which is how I know they're there), misplaced numbers, all sorts of stuff. So it definitely exists.)

[opaopajr]

I probably have more insane luck than you. :smallsmile: I could probably be employed in Las Vegas casinos as a legit cooler... :smallwink: except it tends to fire off weirdness elsewhere. Nothing in reality is really safe in my presence. :smallsmile:

Cleric, Bane, Dodge. Later Spirit Guardians. Healer feat would not be redundant (turns each Healing Kit use, ten uses per kit, into a Lay on Hands for 1 HP from Unconsciousness for 5 sp). Also use your One Free Environment Interact religiously. Did I mention Dodge yet? :smalltongue:

Technically One Free Interact gear usage & Dodge works with most Classes, shifting strat & tactics ever so slightly by class features. Basically you play logistics, which supports strat & tactic, which makes you a nastier threat as you seal away enemy options while supporting your allies.

[Warlush]

In my experience you cannot have too many dice. Also solid metal dice seem to give me more consistently spread out rolls. Other than that yeah I love playing Halflings.

[Talionis]

Hexblade/Devotion Paladin max Charisma and you get twice Charisma to hit.

[HPisBS]

Whatever you do, don't let your bad dice contaminate new dice! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b47zsPzTLI)

But if every die you touch is cursed, then Divination Wiz and Lucky both let your nat 1s work to your... advantage. Meanwhile, Lore Bard (being a full-caster who's focused on support) rarely ever uses attack rolls. Even those cases that rely on checks benefit from the Bard being such a skill-monkey.

[Biggstick]

Halfling Clerics are quite powerful, and can be built to never require an attack roll on your part as a Player.

Toll the Dead, Sacred Flame, Guidance, Bless, and Spiritual Weapons are all quite useful even with a 14 Wisdom, and will be valued combat contributions to any party from level 1 through level 20.

Slap on a few other spells like Healing Word, Lesser Restoration, Revivify, Greater Restoration, etc, and you're going to be contributing effectively without regard for how high you roll.

Consider picking up feats like Lucky, Bountiful Luck, Resilient Constitution, Alert, and Warcaster. All of these feats will help improve some aspect of your character in which ability checks or saving throws might be low.

[tKUUNK]

congrats! you now have a set of dice to use any time your character is possessed or dominated! keep those dice handy!

Also, go get a new set of dice. Go to a game store and ask each set "will you roll well for me, in a way that makes my gaming experience fun?" wait for the answer.

some people are probly like "that's OUT THERE dude".

others: "yeah Ive been doin that since the 80's".

start rolling like a beast.

[MagneticKitty]

Barbarian gets easy advantage, rogue has reliable tallent. If you want to melee this could be fun.
Barbarian 2 / rogue x
Gives you advantage on your attack rolls, and good damage if you use a finesse weapon with strength

Otherwise bard could be fun. More to inspire yourself to add to rolls.

Plus lucky and halfling to either.

Otherwise arcane archer. Archers can have one of the best to-hits in the game, with bracers of archery, archery fighting style, a plus 3 bow and plus 3 ammo.
Arcane archer let's you redirect a miss to try against another enemy nearby.

Also did your float those dice yet?

[Belac93]

41% chance to get a 1 isn't bad luck, your dice are badly balanced. Get a new set.