How Superstitious Are You About Dice?

[Eegal-Ayed]

I only have two superstitions, but I think that's less a factor of my predisposition for superstitions and more a result of how little DnD I have played.

-Dice must always have their minimum value face up when not in use, to "bleed" the bad luck out of them.

-Dice must stick to their lanes. For example, I only use my red dice for combat where my party is the aggressor.

[Anti-Eagle]

I don't like people touching my dice... that probably has more to do with my phobias though.

[Anonymouswizard]

I also notice this has carried over to my dice. They become either "lucky" or "perpetually exhausted" depending on the viewer. Can't roll twenty on demand but i can choose to roll high or low (which defeats the purpose of rolling).

Starting here because I do not want to get into the earlier parts of your post beyond the following: confirmation bias is a thing, and I used to avoid Terminators in 40k because I was convinced their 2+ saves failed more than a standard Marine's 3+ save.

This... honestly this is all true but is due to how rolling works. Rolling dice isn't that good of a random number generator, not only are most dice biased in one way or another but the way you roll them influences the result. It's why you get some people insisting that storing low is better and others that storing high is better, because due to the way they roll that's what tends to get them the high numbers, and you can change the number you roll by changing your hand movements.

Many roleplayers' resistance to move to electronic die rollers is more a case of tradition than anything, electronic rollers are generally closer to true random than dice are and identical for everybody who uses them. Sure you can hack an electronic roller, but why bother when you can just bake dice to make them roll higher.

[Tanarii]

- if at all possible use different dice from the last ones you rolled of the same type
- always shake well
- if you can't shake well, especially for a single die, give it a little spin when you roll it

#substitions

[Knaight]

Many roleplayers' resistance to move to electronic die rollers is more a case of tradition than anything, electronic rollers are generally closer to true random than dice are and identical for everybody who uses them. Sure you can hack an electronic roller, but why bother when you can just bake dice to make them roll higher.

There are counterpoints to the increased randomness. Most notably there's the tactile side where just shaking dice around in your hand and tossing them on the table is sort of fun on its own, and there's how anything the electronic dice rollers are on has real potential as a distraction far beyond the dice do.

[Lacco]

If it did not roll, it is not considered a roll.

If someone rolls a die that comes as failure multiple times in a row, check it (roll again). If it's a failure again, get another die and reroll.

Do not ever hand your dice to Milan (one of my RL players). Dice touched by him always fail spectacularly on important rolls.

Seriously. The guy fails 95% of combat rolls, but if he rolls for something unimportant (e.g. baking a cake), he can not fail.

[Anonymouswizard]

There are counterpoints to the increased randomness. Most notably there's the tactile side where just shaking dice around in your hand and tossing them on the table is sort of fun on its own, and there's how anything the electronic dice rollers are on has real potential as a distraction far beyond the dice do.

Oh sure, dice are fun to roll and phones are a distraction, but I'm competing with phones anyway because I'm not going to force my players to turn them off, and when the party inevitably splits playing with your phone is fine by me as long as you still notice when we switch back to you.

The ideal would be some sort of gizmo that is basically just a couple of chips, a screen or pair of seven segment displays, and a bunch of buttons (one for each kind of dice you want to use, plus some kind of numeric keypad). But a) it doesn't go click clack and b) every group I've played with hasn't cared about how random their dice are, the arguments we've had were all about legibility versus prettiness.

[noob]

I have the following superstition: gms due to rolling more dice than any individual player due to them using frequently more than one monster are bound to have more critical strikes or natural twenties than any other individual player and so if they use monsters with epic effect on crits they are bound to kill one player more times one player will kill with a critical strike a monster thus making effects like vorpal be in favour of the gm and an overall poor modifier for a player (in relative to the player killing benefits the gm gets from granting vorpal to all the monsters).
In truth everyone knows many dms cheats to remove twenties they roll thanks to the gm screen.

[Knaight]

Oh sure, dice are fun to roll and phones are a distraction, but I'm competing with phones anyway because I'm not going to force my players to turn them off, and when the party inevitably splits playing with your phone is fine by me as long as you still notice when we switch back to you.

There are degrees of competing with phones though - if they're all just in a pocket, whatever. If they're pulled out anyways they have a lot more distraction power.

[Raijinken]

Not really. To me, its just dice (regardless whoever owns it). I just throw them if I have to, hope for the best, and go with whatever the numbers will be.

The person who started this thread is a prime example of a person this applies to.

Thanks a lot!

[Wizard_Lizard]

I ain’t superstitious about my math rocks at all. I just need all of tha shinies ones Oo so pretties!

Also I have a player who has cursed dice. Rolled several Nat 1s in a single session, roughly three per combat.