[4e] Unsatisfied Customer

[Crow]

So we had a game last Thursday where we ended up facing off against 2 elite vampires. The details aren't important, but near the beginning of this epic battle, one of our players had his character dominated.

After a slew of terrible saving throw rolls, the poor rogue ended up being dominated for 8 rounds of the 11-round fight, dying in the 9th to an opportunity attack after killing the warlord with a ranged attack (Yay! Two-For-One!).

The player was less than pleased. His character was stabilized and revived after the battle, but he was still really upset, snapping at one of the other players who asked if he was going to divide up some of the loot he had stolen before the fight.

So has anybody else had any improbable rolls or series of rolls ruin a session for anyone yet?

(Everybody else thought it was a great session BTW)

[Tengu_temp]

Yeah, that's pretty unlucky. At least it was 4e, so he didn't lose experience by getting raised.

As for the question - a series of bad rolls pretty much ruined my first 4e game for everyone involved (we were playing KotS) - maybe one encounter power and no daily powers hit in the whole game, ever. We also spent over an hour trying to set up a trap at the kobolds before their cave, only to fail and alarm them, causing them to swarm from the cave (as if the Irontooth encounter wasn't hard enough when you're supposed to fight it inside the tunnel...).

[Shadow_Elf]

We had one session were we rolled, if i remember correctly, 5 natural 1s in one encounter. It was Kobold Hall room 1. We ended up rolling somewhere in the vicinity of 8 or 9 natural 1s by the end of the session.

However, we laughed at our own misfortune more than got upset. We've never had anyone upset about a session, but if we implement a planned rule to not tell our very forgetful healer how much hp we have (as that is metagaming) we may have a dead rogue and some unhappy customers kinda soon. In our last session, we almost got our butts handed to us by some bats. We had like two people at 3 hp taking 5 ongoing fire damage and rolling badly on saving throws at the end of the encounter.

[Saph]

In our last Star Wars Saga session, the soldier with his heavy repeating blaster managed to miss every single attack roll of a 5-round battle, being knocked out in round 6. It wasn't actually all THAT unlucky (he needed about an 11 or so to hit), but for whatever reason the player was on a short fuse. He started swearing at his dice, getting angrier and angrier until he finally threw it as far as he could when he missed for the 5th time. We were playing outside, so as far as I know the dice is still lying out there somewhere.

We still won the battle, and with very little damage (except to the soldier). That didn't seem to satisfy him much, though.

- Saph

[fractic]

After a slew of terrible saving throw rolls, the poor rogue ended up being dominated for 8 rounds of the 11-round fight, dying in the 9th to an opportunity attack after killing the warlord with a ranged attack (Yay! Two-For-One!).


Wow even though it's a -2 on the save that's some serious bad luck. The chance of this (or something worse) happening are about 0.8%. Wasn't there anyone in the party that could help raise that saving throw?

[Edea]

So we had a game last Thursday where we ended up facing off against 2 elite vampires. The details aren't important, but near the beginning of this epic battle, one of our players had his character dominated.

After a slew of terrible saving throw rolls, the poor rogue ended up being dominated for 8 rounds of the 11-round fight, dying in the 9th to an opportunity attack after killing the warlord with a ranged attack (Yay! Two-For-One!).

The player was less than pleased. His character was stabilized and revived after the battle, but he was still really upset, snapping at one of the other players who asked if he was going to divide up some of the loot he had stolen before the fight.

So has anybody else had any improbable rolls or series of rolls ruin a session for anyone yet?

(Everybody else thought it was a great session BTW)

I think the odds on that are literally less than 1%. Also, the saving throw mechanic is easily one of the worst things about 4e at the moment, both in terms of randomness and abusability.

[Vortling]

The first game of 4e I ever played was the KotS module. I was playing a human rogue. The kobolds hit my rogue with the sticky sling bullets and I didn't make my save for the entire combat. For someone who was expecting to be moving all around to get sneak attack it was very underwhelming.

Later on in KotS with a different group playing as a Genasi tactical warlord we had a severe string of bad luck against the blue slime in the room with the puddle and it nearly killed us.

I wouldn't say the sessions were ruined but it took self control not to get extremely grumpy about it.

[Little_Rudo]

I've spent pretty much all of my years playing D&D over PBP. Last year, I went to my college's gaming club to try some actual table-top games. The game was the DM's B game (D&D 3.5), so it was a light-hearted sort of thing with 8 players, and combat that took well over two hours to resolve. For two of the three fights (the third was just a warm-up battle to get us all accustomed to our characters), my Knight spent almost the entire battle either asleep or bound up by a spider's web of some sort.

Between that and the DM royally nerfing my Knight's Challenge (apparently, it only works in circumstances where the opponent would attack my Knight anyways), I wasn't too sad that my schedule next semester didn't allow me to come. Recently, we crossed paths, and she spent most of the conversation ranting and raving about how 4E has ruined D&D. Suffice to say I'm quite happy to be back to playing exclusively by PBP. :D

[Tengu_temp]

The first game of 4e I ever played was the KotS module. I was playing a human rogue. The kobolds hit my rogue with the sticky sling bullets and I didn't make my save for the entire combat. For someone who was expecting to be moving all around to get sneak attack it was very underwhelming.


Note - it's the same game I mentioned. Thanks for reminding me about that glue jug, it was surely the most annoying element of the party's general bad luck.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

I lost a char last week to mix of failed saves and abnormally high damage rolls(needed above a 4 to save v. each of the 8 Lightning Bolts, failed half of them, would have still survived except the DM kept rolling really high damage. I knew going into the situation(charging 12 spellcasters with wands alone) that I was screwed, but I would have preferred to get a hit or 2 in. For an idea of my luck, I rolled an 8 for init and had a +5 mod, the DM rolled 4 nat-20s and 4 others beat me.

This week, the gods of the dice decided a massively OP encounter wasn't bad enough(CR 11, 9th level party, but the CR was borked, I'll post the stats below), but the thing nat-20'd init, rolled about 5 crits during the encounter, and would have been a TPK if the DM hadn't fiat'd it away. I'm not happy right now. Skeletal Gargantuan Ancient Red Dragon with a name(module)
255HP(34HD)
+19 to all saves(highest possible DC at our level is ~24)
+44 to-hit for primary attack, +39 to all others(AC 35 is the best in the party after buffs)
deals an average of 30 damage with 3 of the attacks, 16 with the other 3(6-attack full-attack)(The meatshield who died last week had D12 HD and 20 Con and only 114HP)
20 reach for AoOs and one attack, 15 for other 5 attacks
DC 34 Frightful Presence(Even a min-maxed Druid only has a +17)
12 AC(because that's what matters)
Oh, and it's undead with all the immunities that implies, has DR, is immune to both Fire and Cold, gets a surprise round, and there's a penalty to all our spells. We were a bit perturbed.

[Zocelot]

At the end of Kobold Hall, the white dragon critted the cleric with it's breath attack. Luckily, that was at the start of the battle, so he had both uses of Healing Word.

Another time, a human berserker got a crit (with it's greataxe) for 1d12+16 damage against the level 2 rogue. It ended up doing 26 damage, and dropping the rogue from nearly full health to the negatives, where he succeeded on his saving throws against death.

[Kurald Galain]

It strikes me as ironic that D&D is pretty much the only major RPG that doesn't offer a mechanic for increasing dice rolls when you really need them, like Willpower or Possibility points.

[Zocelot]

It strikes me as ironic that D&D is pretty much the only major RPG that doesn't offer a mechanic for increasing dice rolls when you really need them, like Willpower or Possibility points.

I like the increased element of chance. It increases the enjoyability of the game for me.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

I like the increased element of chance. It increases the enjoyability of the game for me.Normally I'd agree, realism before all else, but I'm the bad-luck magnet of our group. Any given roll is much more likely to be horrid if it will impact me in some way, especially if it's a life-or death situation, or if the roll could conceivably turn it into one. I'd love a way to make some of those rolls not bite me in the bum, thank you.

[The Glyphstone]

Institute Action Points as presented in Unearthed Arcana.

Action Points: They're not just for Ebberon!

[Zocelot]

Normally I'd agree, realism before all else, but I'm the bad-luck magnet of our group.


Realism has nothing to do with it. I just think that it's more fun (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1293)


When it comes to rolling dice, there are two types of players: One likes to avoid risk, and takes comfort in the cold, hard reality as defined by the shape of the bell curve and their advantageous position on it. The other kind wants to defy death and live against the odds at every possible moment.

These two types almost always end up in a game together. Sooner or later the death-defier rolls badly and dies spectacularly. Odds are that the more reserved, practical members of the team will follow suit moments later.

I find this to be hilarious.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

When it comes to rolling dice, there are two types of players: One likes to avoid risk, and takes comfort in the cold, hard reality as defined by the shape of the bell curve and their advantageous position on it. The other kind wants to defy death and live against the odds at every possible moment.

These two types almost always end up in a game together. Sooner or later the death-defier rolls badly and dies spectacularly. Odds are that the more reserved, practical members of the team will follow suit moments later.

I find this to be hilarious.I try my hardest to avoid risk and use the bell curve to make sure I know beforehand how well or badly I do. I use my various stat classes to do this. My dice, however, seem to have never taken a stat class, and have about as much respect for the rules of probability as Road Runner does for gravity. I optimize for survival, though, so when I do bite it, it usually means the rest of the party is booped, too.

[Gorbash Kazdar]

Are we talking 4e only? Because my story is actually from Star Wars d20 Revised (basically 3.x IN SPACE).

We had a session where we were down to 2 players, so we did a sidequest where we broke into an Imperial facility to steal some files. The two characters were both fairly sneaky, and one was a ship mechanic and the other a slicer, so we figured we could avoid battle for the most part.

This worked for most of the session, until we screwed up on the way out and ran into a Stormtrooper patrol. I should note here that we had 8 rolls occur just before this - Hide, Move Silently, Spot, and Listen for each of the PCs. None of these was higher than 6 naturally, and none over 10 with modifiers. Either of us making a Spot or Listen would probably have avoided the encounter entirely, a single successful Hide would have given one of us a surprise round, and if we'd both made Move Silently both of us would have gotten a surprise round.

So, we basically trip over the stormtroopers. The combat that followed was a comedy of errors like I've never seen. We went with an alternate rule that said that a natural 1 with a blaster meant the pack was empty (this meant we didn't have to keep track of ammo). Now, we were about 4th or 5th level at this point, 2 PCs versus 4 stormtroopers. It should have been a quick fight, since basic stormtroopers are definitely mooks. Instead, the battle lasted about 15-16 rounds. Between the two PCs and the four NPCs, no fewer than 12 natural 1s were rolled. No one was able to get a hit in the first four rounds at all. The first hit came up minimum damage. It wasn't until the 8th round that we got enough hits in to drop one of the stormtroopers. The other PC went down in the 13th or 14th. I ran out of power packs for my blaster in the final round and actually had to pistol whip the last stormtrooper down.

We were pretty sure afterwords that, from the time we decided it was time to leave the facility until the end of the session, no one rolled over 14. The GM also related that even before that his rolls had been abysmal, which is why we had been so successful sneaking in.

That was the worst rolling I've ever seen in such a condensed period of time.

[Grynning]

Institute Action Points as presented in Unearthed Arcana.

Action Points: They're not just for Ebberon!

For 3rd ed. this works, but 4th already has action points, and their uses are pretty specific. At higher levels, there are a lot of ways to re-roll and add more bonuses to bad rolls due to PP's and class powers, but at low levels, when you really need them, the game lacks a lot of recourse for players who have angered Dicethulu, elder god of the d20.

I was once considered so unlucky that people refused to sit on my side of the table for fear I would affect their die rolls. 4th edition seems to have fixed this for me, I generally roll pretty well, and have really enjoyed playing my warlord; instead, the bad dice karma has moved to our cleric, who rolls terribly every time he makes an attack.

[Asbestos]

I was once considered so unlucky that people refused to sit on my side of the table for fear I would affect their die rolls. 4th edition seems to have fixed this for me, I generally roll pretty well, and have really enjoyed playing my warlord; instead, the bad dice karma has moved to our cleric, who rolls terribly every time he makes an attack.

Ha! I know what you mean here. I once started a chain of 1s focused on myself. I rolled a 1, the guy to my right rolled a 1, the guy to my left rolled a 1, rest of party rolls um.. not-1s. It gets back to me... the 1s continue! I think we saw a total of 6 that combat. I don't see how this is 4e exclusive though... I mean, its not like the new logo art cursed the dice.

[Doomsy]

For a while I was not allowed to GM 3.5 because I tended to roll crits and natural twenties only when trying to impede or kill PCs. My dice lust for PC blood usually, but this was getting bad. We are talking about me rolling two to three natural twenties a session. These would be timed well enough to usually wreck the party or throw their plans to hell - combat, noncombat, it was pretty brutal.


In an edition of Vampire set in the Dark Ages one of my vampire NPCs with a high celerity rolled six tens in a row using a mace. The player countered by rolling 1s on his soak roll. I felt really, really, really bad for him. You don't get see a Malkavian get gibbed in bullet time often, though. The rest of the party pretty much ran away from that plot-line screaming after that.

[Naleh]

I had one ranger who was exceptionally lucky. He hardly ever got wounded, and he could one-hit pretty much every mook, and he rolled natural 20s for initiative in something like half the combats.

... Except when he fought any form of wolf (which happened fairly often). Then he was lucky to roll anything above a 4. :smalleek:


For 3rd ed. this works, but 4th already has action points, and their uses are pretty specific. At higher levels, there are a lot of ways to re-roll and add more bonuses to bad rolls due to PP's and class powers, but at low levels, when you really need them, the game lacks a lot of recourse for players who have angered Dicethulu, elder god of the d20.

You could still institute something like UA action points, just call them "Destiny Points" or somesuch.

I've never played with any sort of points, but I've always liked the idea... if only for the opposite situation, epic scenes where all the healers are dead and you're on your last HP and the meteor is falling and in a desperate last bid you consume all of your points in combination with five natural 20s to destroy the BBEG and save the world.


I don't see how this is 4e exclusive though... I mean, its not like the new logo art cursed the dice.

That's what they want you to think...

[Mando Knight]

Now, we were about 4th or 5th level at this point, 2 PCs versus 4 stormtroopers. It should have been a quick fight, since basic stormtroopers are definitely mooks. Instead, the battle lasted about 15-16 rounds. Between the two PCs and the four NPCs, no fewer than 12 natural 1s were rolled. No one was able to get a hit in the first four rounds at all. The first hit came up minimum damage. It wasn't until the 8th round that we got enough hits in to drop one of the stormtroopers. The other PC went down in the 13th or 14th. I ran out of power packs for my blaster in the final round and actually had to pistol whip the last stormtrooper down.

Your PCs must've graduated from the good ol' Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy).:smallsig h:

[skywalker]

Realism has nothing to do with it. I just think that it's more fun (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1293)

I'm Legolas in that comic :smallbiggrin:

Saving throws seem to be failed fairly often in my weekly group. I think it's just part of 4e.

Since we're talking about how the dice work, here's why I'm Legolas in that comic. First, whenever I'm a player(playing a warlord), about once every four session when I pour my dice out of the box, the d20 comes up 20. I announce to the table that bonuses are not going to be a problem for them tonight. I will be dealing out plenty.

When I DM, I've actually rolled two nat-20s for initiative, and then three straight crits in the first round of combat. This is, of course, counteracted by the three straight 1s I roll in the later rounds. This, of course, assumes the players make it to the later rounds.

[Kletian999]

Did anyone try using the Heal skill or Aid another to get extra saving throws or receive throw bonuses?

The title of this thread is really misleading, so I'll just say be glad this was 4e; if it was 3 you'd have died from failing so many saves :)

[SadisticFishing]

The title of this thread is really misleading, so I'll just say be glad this was 4e; if it was 3 you'd have died from failing so many saves :)

By "so many" do you mean "the first one"? Teehee.

Yeah, that sucks, but hey, far worse has happened. Tell him to suck it up and listen to music while watching or something (that's what I do when I'm out for a long time).

[Crow]

Did anyone try using the Heal skill or Aid another to get extra saving throws or receive throw bonuses?

The title of this thread is really misleading, so I'll just say be glad this was 4e; if it was 3 you'd have died from failing so many saves :)

How does the heal skill or aid another give him bonuses on saving throws versus domination?

[ashmanonar]

Your PCs must've graduated from the good ol' Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy).:smallsig h:

Yea, the fact that it's stormtroopers just makes that situation all the sweeter.

[Arbitrarity]

How does the heal skill or aid another give him bonuses on saving throws versus domination?


Grant a Saving Throw: Make a DC 15 Heal check.
If you succeed, an adjacent ally can immediately
make a saving throw, or the ally gets a +2 bonus to a
saving throw at the end of his or her next turn.

Umm... you slap them a couple of times to wake up? Snap out of it? Insightful pep talk?

[Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick]

My character in my weekly 4e game is Megara, a Fartouched Warlock.

Whenever someone has a particularly bad string of rolls, they have 'Megara dice', ever since the time I not only missed with my daily and my lone encounter power, but with every instance of my at-will I then threw at the gentleman in question.

Good times, I don't think.

[Crow]

Umm... you slap them a couple of times to wake up? Snap out of it? Insightful pep talk?

Ummm...Ok. That's a little weird when talking about a character who is dominated. Does it provoke an attack of opportunity?

[huttj509]

Snap out of it! Can't you see we're your friends? Resist the compulsion!

Paraphrased from any TV show where one of the characters gets mind controlled, and theothers find out. Often allowing them to shake it off at least for some time.

[MartinHarper]

Snap out of it! Can't you see we're your friends? Resist the compulsion!

"I love you".
(+2 circumstance bonus)


My dice, however, seem to have never taken a stat class, and have about as much respect for the rules of probability as Road Runner does for gravity.

It's possible that your dice are special, or that Lady Luck is making a special exception for you. It's perhaps more likely that you aren't as intuitively good at stats and probability as you think you are. The dice are reality. If your predictions about the dice are routinely incorrect, fix your predictions.

[Dhavaer]

Running a playtest game on my own, I had a string of incredibly bad d20 rolls. A good 1/3 of them came up 2s. The swordmage and warlord and the goblins fighting them were particularly badly affected: the swordmage missed with her encounter, an at will she used an action point to get and the attack the warlord granted her with Commander's Strike consecutively. The only characters with decent luck were the rogue and wizard, and the wizard can mostly be put down to rolling heaps of attacks with AoOs.

[Kletian999]

Running a playtest game on my own, I had a string of incredibly bad d20 rolls. A good 1/3 of them came up 2s. The swordmage and warlord and the goblins fighting them were particularly badly affected: the swordmage missed with her encounter, an at will she used an action point to get and the attack the warlord granted her with Commander's Strike consecutively. The only characters with decent luck were the rogue and wizard, and the wizard can mostly be put down to rolling heaps of attacks with AoOs.

Wizard and AoOs? Opportunity attacks are melee only, caused by people leaving a square adjacent to the attacker without shifting or using a ranged/area power when adjacent. Unless the wizard's been flanked, it's always possible to shift in a direction and attack without being OAed and it's more than likely a wizard will never make one himself.

[Arbitrarity]

Heal doesn't appear to provoke OA's, but it's a standard action. A better use of action is a cleric using Sacred Flame, which is an at-will attack which also grants one ally temporary HP or a saving throw. Last fight, that was very useful against kobold gluepots and ongoing damage, as the save means you can actually negate the effect before it begins to do anything.

[Zocelot]

If you're trained in Heal, it's easier to hit a DC 15, then it is to hit a Kobold's Ref. At higher levels, it gets even easier.

[Starbuck_II]

"I love you".
(+2 circumstance bonus)


It worked when Xander tried to save Willow from destroying the world.

[Matthew]

Watch this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR2fxoNHIuU ), then this one (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxmkWrDbn34).

[Arbitrarity]

If you're trained in Heal, it's easier to hit a DC 15, then it is to hit a Kobold's Ref. At higher levels, it gets even easier.

True. Isn't there a bonus on the save though?
Also, the effect is a nice addition to an attack, rather than the other way around. I suppose using the skill is good if the damage is so miniscule as to not be worth it.

[Zocelot]

True. Isn't there a bonus on the save though?
Also, the effect is a nice addition to an attack, rather than the other way around. I suppose using the skill is good if the damage is so miniscule as to not be worth it.

That's what I get for not having the book in front of me. I thought it was a part of the effect on a hit only.

[Arbitrarity]

That's what I get for not having the book in front of me. I thought it was a part of the effect on a hit only.

No, sorry. I used the "effect" keyword, when it's a hit result. Curse you language!

On the other hand, the +cha is a nice save bonus.

[THAC0]

It strikes me as ironic that D&D is pretty much the only major RPG that doesn't offer a mechanic for increasing dice rolls when you really need them, like Willpower or Possibility points.

That's what makes human + action surge so often.

Or the cleric/paladin powers that grant an ally an extra save.

[skywalker]

Ummm...Ok. That's a little weird when talking about a character who is dominated. Does it provoke an attack of opportunity?

4e was designed with the burden of proof resting on the "disallowing party." In other words, as a DM, you should not be saying "prove to me why you can use a heal check here." You should be trying(not too hard) to prove why they can't.

4e wants you to allow this, because the alternative is a player who's upset about not being able to participate.

[Crow]

4e was designed with the burden of proof resting on the "disallowing party." In other words, as a DM, you should not be saying "prove to me why you can use a heal check here." You should be trying(not too hard) to prove why they can't.

4e wants you to allow this, because the alternative is a player who's upset about not being able to participate.

I'm not sure how that's relevant to this (other than to say we're playing D&D "wrong"), but since nobody thought of it at the time it's pretty much a moot point.

The rules are the rules, whether they're stupid at times or not. Personally, I don't think of talking down your buddy (diplomacy, bluff, intimidate, maybe???) or slapping your buddy and telling him to snap out of it, really gels with the heal skill and what a heal check should be.

[skywalker]

I'm not sure how that's relevant to this (other than to say we're playing D&D "wrong"), but since nobody thought of it at the time it's pretty much a moot point.

The rules are the rules, whether they're stupid at times or not. Personally, I don't think of talking down your buddy (diplomacy, bluff, intimidate, maybe???) or slapping your buddy and telling him to snap out of it, really gels with the heal skill and what a heal check should be.

You could just as easily make it a diplomacy check with the same DC.

And from where I'm sitting, here's how I see the situation playing out your way:
Player: I'm going to make a heal check to grant him a saving throw.
Me: Actually, I think that would be better covered by a diplomacy(etc.) check.
Player: *checks character sheet, compares +10 heal mod vs. +1 diplomacy mod.* Why are you always trying to screw us by changing the rules?! The rules say I can make a heal check!

As opposed to mine:
Player: I'm going to make a heal check to grant him a saving throw.
Me: I can't really see how the hell a heal check is going to help him against being dominated, but why not?
Player: Yeah, that's kinda dumb, but whatever. Our gain!

[Sebastrd]

So has anybody else had any improbable rolls or series of rolls ruin a session for anyone yet?

Oh god, yes. My second 4E game, and the players' first, one guy literally rolled in the low single digits for 85% of the session. It didn't help that he was playing two of the four PCs. It was one of the worst sessions I've ever DMed.

[Tyrmatt]

A set of dice rolls in a game of ours resulted in this course.
After a sucessful opening sneak attack that instantly decapitated one of the enemies, my friend swings his scythe on a natural 1. So our rogue gets a scythe in the side (fighting in a narrow tunnel caused the mishap) by accident cutting his sharply limited health.
Undeterred, we fight on and I burn one of my more powerful heal spells to heal a mighty next to nothing on the rogue. The enemy, while low on health then puts a dagger into our warrior and tumbles away after I miss on 3 sword swings. So I decide to use the most powerful blasting spell I have to pop her before she can run to get reinforcements...
Not only did I miss, it caused a cave in and we were forced to naviagate a labyrinthe of tunnels to get out of the mountain, while almost freezing the rogue to death in a mountain spring as we hid from a patrol that blasted their way in with explosives.

[Klose_the_Sith]

Watch this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR2fxoNHIuU ), then this one (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxmkWrDbn34).

It's a conspiracy man, a conspiracy.

[JaxGaret]

Watch this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR2fxoNHIuU ), then this one (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxmkWrDbn34).

Very interesting to watch, and made completely moot by those of us who use computerized dice rollers :smallsmile:

[RebelRogue]

Very interesting to watch, and made completely moot by those of us who use computerized dice rollers :smallsmile:
In general, computerized random number generators are horrible! It's actually very hard to come up with algorithms that produce sequences of pseudorandom numbers that are "random enough"!

[potatocubed]

It's possible that your dice are special, or that Lady Luck is making a special exception for you. It's perhaps more likely that you aren't as intuitively good at stats and probability as you think you are. The dice are reality. If your predictions about the dice are routinely incorrect, fix your predictions.

One of these days I would really, really like to see a proper scientific study on gamers and probability. Just to clear the air on this issue once and for all.

[Blackfang108]

So has anybody else had any improbable rolls or series of rolls ruin a session for anyone yet?

Not in 4e, yet. (Although I've yet to hit with my daily, it still gives everyone a +1 to hit. which was JUST enough for three following people to hit the target. [they kept forgetting about it.])

in 3.x, I nearly died because one of my teammates kept critFumbling and his Oversized flail kept flying into me.

Me = Noble(Dragonlance Campaign)/Bard
Him = Half-orc fighter.

[Kletian999]

Ummm...Ok. That's a little weird when talking about a character who is dominated. Does it provoke an attack of opportunity?

Dominated Characters are Dazed. Dazed Creatures cannot preform OAs.
PHB list of conditions.

[Colmarr]

Personally, I don't think of talking down your buddy (diplomacy, bluff, intimidate, maybe???) or slapping your buddy and telling him to snap out of it, really gels with the heal skill and what a heal check should be.

You're right to an extent, but there is a certain amount of sense to the proposition that someone with medical knowledge is more likely to be able to quickly overcome a mind-effecting condition. Whether you fluff that as a slap, a whiff of smelling salts, key words known to trigger mental defences, or something else is up to you and your players.

[skywalker]

Watch this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR2fxoNHIuU ), then this one (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxmkWrDbn34).

That is very interesting.

It would be a lot more interesting/easy to watch if Lou's style wasn't so damned adversarial.

As well, it kinda smashed some of my ideas that dice are "lucky" or "unlucky." Which is both good, in that truth has come out from behind the veil of superstition, and bad, in that I'm less likely to believe in one more thing. Now I wonder if that guy we class as "unlucky" in fact simply has dice that are poorly shaped. Who knows?

[Friv]

Two stories, one with me as a player, one with me as a GM.

Player Story:

In one of my early games of D&D 3.0, we had worked our way through character generation, and I was the Fighter (we were working entirely off the corebook, so that seemed like a non-sucky class at the time.) Pretty typical starting build - AC of 18, 11 HP at level 1, good attack bonus.

We are going to investigate a tower. We have a brief chatting sequence, head down. The five of us run into four orcs. Our first combat starts. One orc rolls 19 for his Initiative, and goes first. He attacks me.

Natural 20. He rolls for critical confirmation. 19. He rolls for damage on his longsword: two 8s, for a total of 22 pts of damage. I am dropped to -12 HP and die instantly.

Bah.


Second Story:

In a Demon: The Fallen game, I decided to have a pair of hitmen take some potshots at people in order to drive home to the players that they've pissed off the wrong people. Essentially, there are a pair of gunmen with body armor and pistols, and there are a pair of demons on the other side. Seems like an easy fight.

One demon goes. He decides to use his magic to teleport behind the guys and catch them off-guard. He rolls it. Critical fail, his power fizzles. The gunmen go, firing two shots at him. Both shots roll absurdly well. Both hit hard. Both damage rolls go absurdly well for them. He falls to one knee, bleeding severely.

The second demon decides to go for healing instead of counterattacking, worried that if she kills one gunman, the other could kill her buddy. She charges over to him, activates healing magic. Critical fail, her power fizzles. Demon #1 goes again, draws his gun, lines up at a gunman. Misses. The gunmen open fire, dropping him and injuring his companion.

By this point everyone at the table is watching the rolls in horrified awe. I decide to fudge things, and have a police car that was nearby attracted by the gunfire. I figure the cops and gunmen will trade shots for a few turns while Demon #2 gets her pal back to his feet. She rolls for healing - another critical fail.

Meanwhile, the gunmen take shots at the cops. They roll absurdly well. The cops each die from one hit (and in the World of Darkness, that takes work with a pistol.) Demon #2 tries a third healing attempt, and manages a bare-bones success that just barely gets her pal back on his feet. He tries another teleport... and critical fails.

This was the point where I threw my hands up in the air and said, "Screw it. You succeed. Teleport to safety." So they did, leaving the hitmen behind.

It was the only time I've ever openly cheated in a game, and I don't regret doing it.

[_Zoot_]

I played 4e for the first time to day and i got some really bad roles, not that it made it any less fun as it was a great session.

Oh, and my dice were kind in the end right when it mattered, when i Eldrich Blasted the halfling child:smallamused: (nat 20 FTW)

[BadJuJu]

Yeah, that's pretty unlucky. At least it was 4e, so he didn't lose experience by getting raised.

As for the question - a series of bad rolls pretty much ruined my first 4e game for everyone involved (we were playing KotS) - maybe one encounter power and no daily powers hit in the whole game, ever. We also spent over an hour trying to set up a trap at the kobolds before their cave, only to fail and alarm them, causing them to swarm from the cave (as if the Irontooth encounter wasn't hard enough when you're supposed to fight it inside the tunnel...).

Yeah, I like to roll me some 1's when I bloww my daily.

[LotharBot]

In one 4e session my wife ran, the group had something like 15 attack rolls of "3" and about 5 rolls of "4". We rolled good for initiative, rolled pretty good on saves, but only 1 or 2 of the 7 players landed a hit in any given round. It didn't so much ruin the session as lead to an awful lot of laughing and rude gestures directed at our dice.

The next session, my cleric picked up "bless", and in a single fight, the +1 bonus made the difference on 8 attack rolls out of the 40-ish total that were made. This made up for the previous session's horrible dice karma. (That session, I also rolled a natural 20 on a melee basic attack with my entirely wis-focused healer cleric, leading to my only melee hit of the game... unfortunately, it was an attack against the wizard, as I'd been hit by some sort of insanity effect.)

In a 3.5 session with the same group, we had a session where the 50% incorporeal miss chance actually made us miss about 85% of the time, and twice, somebody rolled good on their miss chance and rolled a natural 1 on their d20. And then the casters busted out "no attack roll needed, no miss chance" spells and cleaned the baddies' clocks.

[Asbestos]

You're right to an extent, but there is a certain amount of sense to the proposition that someone with medical knowledge is more likely to be able to quickly overcome a mind-effecting condition. Whether you fluff that as a slap, a whiff of smelling salts, key words known to trigger mental defences, or something else is up to you and your players.

And lets not get into using Heal checks to boost saves vs ongoing fire damage.
Character A: "Ahh! I'm on fire!!!"
Character B: "Don't worry... I'm a doctor."
Character A: "I'm engulfed in continual flames!"
Character B: "... Good thing I took Conflagrant Bodies 512 in medical school."

[Colmarr]

And lets not get into using Heal checks to boost saves vs ongoing fire damage.
Character A: "Ahh! I'm on fire!!!"
Character B: "Don't worry... I'm a doctor."
Character A: "I'm engulfed in continual flames!"
Character B: "... Good thing I took Conflagrant Bodies 512 in medical school."

/shrug.

Part of the "doctor's" training was that the best way to extinguish flames is to smother them with a cloak or blanket.

While the heal-untrained character slaps at them with his hands, the heal-trained character rips off his cloak and uses it to smother the flames.

[Naleh]

While the heal-untrained character slaps at them with his hands, ...

P1: "Aaaah! I'm on fire! Aaaah!"
P2: *slap*
P1: "Ow, my face hurts... but at least the fire's gone out." :smallconfused:

[NPCMook]

Just remember to check for that Reliable Keyword on those Dailies.

[Colmarr]

P1: "Aaaah! I'm on fire! Aaaah!"
P2: *slap*
P1: "Ow, my face hurts... but at least the fire's gone out." :smallconfused:

Not sure whether you were being humorous or specifically questioning the logic of my fluff (or both!), but for the purposes of clarification, when I said "them" I was referring to the flames, not the PC that was on fire :smallsmile:

[ashmanonar]

"I love you".
(+2 circumstance bonus)



It's possible that your dice are special, or that Lady Luck is making a special exception for you. It's perhaps more likely that you aren't as intuitively good at stats and probability as you think you are. The dice are reality. If your predictions about the dice are routinely incorrect, fix your predictions.

Unfortunately, the dice in any given d20 game do NOT follow the laws of probability. Whether a combination of bad rolling practice (not consistently rolling in a similar method or obstacles on the rolling field), flawed dice, or having angered the gods of the dice, d4-20's will consistently roll oddly, and usually not conforming to probability.

[Tadanori Oyama]

I always player Leader roll and I always get as many tricks and powers to grant saves as I can.

As a DM I try to only assign ongoing effects that don't have totally limiting effects. No Stun or Dominate unless I really mean business. LOTS of ongoing damage, though.

My current record is a Tiefling Warlord who was taking ongoing cold, ongoing acid, blinded, and within a Chillborn Aura for another set of cold at the start of his turn. Dude was an unstoppable machine, he managed to crit the Childborn, took the death explosion damage, used his action point, and charged the second Chillborn, while still blind, half frozen, and melting. He was mad at me but we all had to agree it was pretty awesome.

[late for dinner]

Well, dice rolls havent really screwed my party over yet, but my dm got a good taste of bad rolls when my wizard Dorgan put a giant ooze boss to sleep and used his orb to subtract 2 from his saving throws. Well when he just kept rolling natural 1's through 5's, his epic boss battle turned into us hitting a sleeping, helpless monster until its 200 hp was down to about 54 when It finaly woke up. It was great fun for me because my wizard completly did something awesome and controled the flow of the battle with ease...and bad dm dice rolls. it's actually a good thing that happened because our party consists of a Wizard Controller, Warlock Sniper, and Battle Cleric...we need a defender so bad. Our healer is our front line haha.

[skywalker]

]My current record is a Tiefling Warlord who was taking ongoing cold, ongoing acid, blinded, and within a Chillborn Aura for another set of cold at the start of his turn. Dude was an unstoppable machine, he managed to crit the Childborn, took the death explosion damage, used his action point, and charged the second Chillborn, while still blind, half frozen, and melting. He was mad at me but we all had to agree it was pretty awesome.

That is bad-ass.

I find that, when the characters would be mad at [insert deity of choice here], then the fact that players get mad at you implies a good level of emotional involvement with the story and the characters. At least with my players, when they get pissed off is when they seem to have the most fun playing D&D.

[Blackfang108]

Our healer is our front line haha.

I was front for a while, myself.

As a Warlord in Scale mail.

Not. Fun.

I've been brought down to negatives three times, twice in one encounter. (rolled a 20 on the first saving throw. while my corpse was directly between the enemies.)

[DM Raven]

I was front for a while, myself.

As a Warlord in Scale mail.

Not. Fun.

I've been brought down to negatives three times, twice in one encounter. (rolled a 20 on the first saving throw. while my corpse was directly between the enemies.)

I've found leaders to be very good replacement tanks when no defender is present. Strikers and controllers don't do so well. =(

As for the bad rolling thing, DMs should do a little fudging at lower levels to try and prevent this. Just dont make a habbit and dont do it to save people who continue to make bad tactical decisions every time they play.

[LotharBot]

4e is slightly more prone to "bad rolls all session" than 3.5e for one reason: everybody rolls, and everybody has a decent failure chance.

In 3.5, casters could go a whole session without rolling anything but initiative and (maybe) damage. Spells with no attack roll and no save just... work. Even if your characters can't roll above a 3 all session, the wizard and cleric are probably succeeding just fine with their touch attack rolls of 3, because touch AC didn't scale well with level. Or they're succeeding with their spell penetration rolls of 3 because they have so many buffs to spell penetration. Or they're succeeding with their initiative rolls of 3 because they're invisible, flying, and way over there. In 3.5, you could build casters to basically not need dice, while melee types always needed to roll, and usually needed to roll above a 10 to succeed.

In 4e, everyone is fundamentally using the same mechanic (unless you play a warlord and focus VERY heavily on "hit him for me" attacks, in which case you still need your ally to roll well.) Everyone is attacking defenses that scale the same way, which means if you go a whole session without a decent roll, you're going to do lots of half damage. Personally, I think that's a good thing -- not "going a whole session without rolling good", but the fact that it effects everyone equally.