Dealing with poor rolls as the DM

[Proven_Paradox]

So, the game last night. It was kind of a flop in many ways, but it was the second game and I'm still feeling this group out. That it didn't go terribly well tells me a lot more about this group than it going well would have, and I have a good idea of what I need to do to make future games better.

That's not what this thread is about, though.

See, the game ended with what was supposed to be a climactic fight with a modified Earth Elemental--made fast instead of strong, and wielding a scythe instead of slams. 3.5 game, party consists of: Sorceress currently focusing in battlefield control and save or sucks, rogue archer, barbarian, favored soul focusing on buffs, and a shadow hand/diamond mind swordsage, all level 4. The swordsage has a good 25 AC--seriously hard to hit at this point--but has low HP. I designed this elemental with the idea that he would have a high attack bonus--+14--but low damage. If the thing had to focus on the barbarian, he'd basically automatically hit, but would take a while to do enough damage to threaten him. If he focused on the swordsage, he'd have a hard time hitting, but the character would only be able to take 2 or 3 hits. Natrually, crits change everything. I made it very clear that this thing was wielding a scythe--x4 multiplier and all--and grined a bit as they all made they connection at the same time.

The battle starts, and the swordsage quickly gets the thing's attention, figuring that his high AC would protect him. I was getting ready to disappoint him... Then rolled a 3. Next round, a 4. 3, 6, 7, 2, 5, and so on. The one twenty I roll is a reflex save that the elemental can easily make anyway. The fight dragged on with the big elemental missing over and over again, and the swordsage getting terribly cocky. This entire thing was meant in part to knock him down a peg--he'd had a similar experience the previous session. The entire fight ended with me having rolled above 10 once, after about 10 rounds. The swordsage player is cockier than ever now, and I'm left pondering what should have happened.

So, what do you, as a DM, do when you're rolling poorly on a fight? So poorly that a fight that should be climactic and dangerous ends up just looking silly?

[Flickerdart]

Fudge the roll. This is why you need a DM screen.

[Xenogears]

Just go with it. If it turns out silly then just laugh about it, make some jokes, and try to make a climactic fight next session. Sometimes the enemy screwing up or even the PC's screwing up can be awesome. In a Warhammer RPG game I am playing the DM is also a PC and he NEVER hits. Literally. We have been in about six fights (some of which involved 5 or more enemies) and he only hit once or twice in all the fights combined. In almost every fight he gets taken down to zero HP in about two rounds and has to run away and come back after the rest of the party finishes the fight. We just laugh about it and poke fun at him.

[Raum]

So, what do you, as a DM, do when you're rolling poorly on a fight?

Remember all the times the rolls went the other and grin silently at the player. Change tactics if you can. But never be disappointed with rolls, they'll even out in the long run. Perhaps even more importantly, never show disappointment. Just grin and let them wonder.

So poorly that a fight that should be climactic and dangerous ends up just looking silly?

Eh, don't rely on rolls to make a fight 'climactic' or 'dangerous'. A truly dangerous fight will have the players worried before you roll. Climactic battles are a culmination of all that has come before. Neither needs rolls.

Also remember that you will have another NPC coming up in the next adventure arc...

[FMArthur]

You could just increase the number of rolls, making it more likely to succeed at something. You can do this by putting in more enemies (obviously), or making use of abilities like Pounce (full attack on a charge), free/swift/immediate action abilities (mostly for spells and maneuvres), using monsters with bigger HP/AC/Saves (longer lifespan = more turns to act), and maybe even Celerity cheese w/ daze immunity (nothing scares players more than a monster that gets to act out of order. It makes strategies against it more unreliable).

[holywhippet]

Clearly that d20 is faulty. Replace it.

Also, as some else mentioned, numbers can be more dangerous than one big, strong enemy. Even small enemies like goblins can be a threat as you increase the odds of a getting a critical hit.

[Chronos]

The whole reason we use dice, is that sometimes they don't do what we expect. If every fight always went exactly according to plan, the game would be a lot more boring. Just roll with it.

[Pink]

I'm slowly learning that sometimes, as a DM, the dice roll is just there for the effect. The swordsage is getting too cocky? Roll the dice, look down, give a smile and say that the elemental finally figured out an opening in his defense and slices at him.

Not saying to completely ignore the dice. But sometimes you have to think, okay, need to remind them that this is combat. Need to take down their resources a little. Need to have a bit of a challenge. So maybe make one out of four or five of those misses a hit.

That being said I also think this should go both ways, especially if it's an encounter not designed to be climatic or something like that, but just a random fight that shouldn't have mass casualties. I had one situation, the party was level two and one of the players had just rolled up a new character, but it was a +1 la race so he had lower hit points. The next battle, I roll damage that would've completely killed his wounded character. I ignored the roll and gave him enough to just put him in the mid negatives.

Remember though, overall fun is that goal. If everyone is having fun with what the dice are rolling, so be it. If things are just getting boring "Oh, the enemy missed again, can we just end the combat now and say we killed it?" well, make them not boring.

of course, all this advice requires a screen.

[Xenogears]

Well if you are just going to ignore the dice roll and hit him anyway then why should he have bothered to make a character with high AC. He made a character and designed him to have high AC and he should be allowed to reap the benefits of it.

[BobVosh]

Not to mention 25 isn't exactly spectacular, it is a good solid ac for the level. Remember the way around low hp high ac is always evocation school. Not the best for pcs, but still great for NPCs. And I mean evocation in any of the ways it is possible, small dragons with breaths etc.

[Oracle_Hunter]

One thing I've learned over the years of DMing is that you shouldn't design encounters that must go a certain way to "work." Fudging the dice is something that should be done rarely, if at all, and never to screw over a PC. It's bad enough if you have to hijack the game mechanics to keep your story going (it becomes awkward railroading at that point) but to hijack the mechanics just to take a player down a peg? That's needlessly antagonistic for D&D.

If you really want to take the PC down a notch, then put him in a situation where his vaunted powers won't solve everything. Maybe it's a social encounter, or being forced to run from an obviously overwhelming force, but it shouldn't be a situation where combat is the answer.

That said, I highly advise against using in-game means to deal with an out-of-game problem (player swagger). If it just annoys you personally, then you really, really shouldn't use in-game stuff to get back at him - that's just passive-aggressive behavior which doesn't help anything. Now, if he's bothering the other players, or disrupting the game, then take him aside and talk to him privately. Remember that D&D is a cooperative venture between DMs and Players: if everyone is having fun, there's nothing to fix.

[Yakk]

Don't rely on rolls to make a capstone encounter count.

Especially not a single attack roll per round.

Burrowing, earth quake powers, minions. Ideally a form change (everyone loves form changes!) Toss tropes at the players.

Then, if the monster keeps missing, you can simply narrate the kick-assed-ness of the PCs.

[Proven_Paradox]

I'm not worried as much about taking the player down a peg--I was hoping to show that even his strongest feature isn't beyond failure. This was a poor choice, and next time, there will be an encounter or two that targets his weak point--fort saves. His HP is low for a reason after all. The final encounter in the next game is going to involve a high level druid I think.

There was no screen for this game, and the game environment isn't well suited to having one anyway. We sit around on a bunch of couches; I don't have a table in front of me. Dice rolling occurs on a small in-table next to me, and it's too small to do much more than roll the dice on it. This is occuring in the sorceress and swordsage's apartment, and asking them to rearrange their place strikes me as a bit much.


Anyway, as for flubbing, I'll admit that I do it. However, I'm philosophically opposed to ever flubbing in such a way that it harms the player. When I flub, it's usually to keep a character from being killed simply because of the dice. Critical hits, for example, sometimes do just enough damage to put them from full down to -8 HP. More an issue at low levels--I don't flub beyond level 5. At that point there is something that could have been done to keep the character alive.

In addition to taking this player down a peg, I had hoped to drive the point home to the player AND the character--who is getting arrogant in character, perfectly naturally--that this world is dangerous and he needs to be cautious. Like I said, I obviously had taken the wrong approach to this, and the next fight will be far more dangerous for him. If he's still alive after the next one, and if the point isn't driven home yet, I will take the player aside and discuss some things with him then. Still, the encounter brought the topic to my mind.

Xenogears: The thing is, I'm wanting a more serious fight. If we sit back and laugh at it, that's fine, but it's definitely second best.

Raum: Part of my problem with that situation is that I have a terrible poker face. I'm not difficult to read. The swordsage and sorceress players both know when I'm BSing them.

Arthur: The battle happened in extreme close quarters; charges didn't happen. Minions were involved, but with their piddling +7 attack rolls, they had little chance of hitting this guy's AC even on a good roll. Going for critical hits isn't going to do much; they still have to make the confirmation roll after all. Too many weaklings just bogs combat down.

Whippit: I've played in games where large numbers of mooks are the threat. There are few things more boring than a combat that primarily involves me watching the DM roll misses. If given the choice between a fight against a bunch of weaklings and one or two threatening enemies, I will always go with the latter.

BobVosh: Anything that involves touch attacks or reflex saves is going to completely fail against this particular character. It's a halfling with dex focus. He doesn't have evasion yet, but he's going to eat those reflex saves except on extremely low rolls. Like I said, his weakness is fortitude.

Yakk: Earthquake powers are definately going to be involved in larger versions of these creatures, but this happened in the middle of a crowded city... Causing earthquakes would have destroyed buildings. That was not my intention with this event. The big one was a fusion of four smaller ones that the group had already defeated, so there's your form change.

[Tempest Fennac]

Yo be honest, I agree with Xenogears about fudging rolls (my stance is that the DM should be completely honest about their rolls at all times). What is the Swordsage's Con? I'm curious due to how I would have thought that would be an important stat for Swordsages.

[Oracle_Hunter]

In addition to taking this player down a peg, I had hoped to drive the point home to the player AND the character--who is getting arrogant in character, perfectly naturally--that this world is dangerous and he needs to be cautious. Like I said, I obviously had taken the wrong approach to this, and the next fight will be far more dangerous for him. If he's still alive after the next one, and if the point isn't driven home yet, I will take the player aside and discuss some things with him then. Still, the encounter brought the topic to my mind.

Hmm... if you just want to make the campaign world seem more dangerous, then there's nothing like atmosphere & innocent sacrifice to establish the mood.

Aside from all the other suggestions (very good ones!), I've found it easiest to establish "lethality" by things which don't affect the character directly. Atmospherics (spooky descriptions, distinctly unnatural traits in NPCs, etc.) can put the player on edge nicely without trying to fight mechanics. Additionally, introducing NPCs that the PCs can get attached to, and then killing them off, can help too.

Now, I'm not talking about Stuffed in a Fridge kind of stuff, but more like "caught in the blast of a fireball" sort of things. Non-adventurers are very fragile, and many 3e characters just aren't very good at protecting others from collateral damage. Having the characters realize that the stuff they can knock over (relatively) easily is still lethal enough to cause "real" damage may do just the trick.

A quick and easy example is the PCs are ambushed in the Inn where they are staying by callous killers. Perhaps you have a Drow Ranger Assassin riding around on a Gorgon that busts through the front door while the PCs are enjoying a night regaling wenches with tales of their adventures. The Gorgon lets out a paralyzing gas blast that the PCs probably will save against, but the barmaids, innkeeper, and so on aren't going to do as well. If the PCs have tons of healing, have a couple of those statutes get trampled by a charge attack by the Gorgon, making them "dead forever."

Trust me, your swordsage is going to take adventuring a lot more seriously after he tries to pick up the pieces of Zola the Barmaid, who he'd been flirting with for a couple of days, even if he dispatched the Drow & Gorgon in 3 rounds.

[Proven_Paradox]

What is the Swordsage's Con? I'm curious due to how I would have thought that would be an important stat for Swordsages.

As I recall, 10 or 12. Con is indeed a very important stat for swordsages, but dex and wisdom are both more important, so he has prioritized those. He also wants good skill points, and has a high int for that. Between that and getting his strength high enough after the halfling penalty to not have a penalty, he was lacking in points for con.

Hmm... if you just want to make the campaign world seem more dangerous, then there's nothing like atmosphere & innocent sacrifice to establish the mood.

Dangerous, not dark. You can have a dangerous place without having a dark atmosphere. Innocent sacrifices will happen later, though; that's already planned.

Aside from all the other suggestions (very good ones!), I've found it easiest to establish "lethality" by things which don't affect the character directly. Atmospherics (spooky descriptions, distinctly unnatural traits in NPCs, etc.) can put the player on edge nicely without trying to fight mechanics. Additionally, introducing NPCs that the PCs can get attached to, and then killing them off, can help too.

Now, I'm not talking about Stuffed in a Fridge kind of stuff, but more like "caught in the blast of a fireball" sort of things. Non-adventurers are very fragile, and many 3e characters just aren't very good at protecting others from collateral damage. Having the characters realize that the stuff they can knock over (relatively) easily is still lethal enough to cause "real" damage may do just the trick.

A quick and easy example is the PCs are ambushed in the Inn where they are staying by callous killers. Perhaps you have a Drow Ranger Assassin riding around on a Gorgon that busts through the front door while the PCs are enjoying a night regaling wenches with tales of their adventures. The Gorgon lets out a paralyzing gas blast that the PCs probably will save against, but the barmaids, innkeeper, and so on aren't going to do as well. If the PCs have tons of healing, have a couple of those statutes get trampled by a charge attack by the Gorgon, making them "dead forever."

Trust me, your swordsage is going to take adventuring a lot more seriously after he tries to pick up the pieces of Zola the Barmaid, who he'd been flirting with for a couple of days, even if he dispatched the Drow & Gorgon in 3 rounds.

See, the problem is that in my setting, the PCs at level 4 are not yet at a point where they're above and beyond everyone else. Your average commoner is between level 2 and 4. Your common soldier will have at least 3 levels of fighter, and veterans can expect to reach level 7 or higher. Powerful figures in the world are level 10 or higher in their respective classes. The figures of legend, both living and otherwise, are/were level 18 or higher. I would place them as "sorta above average adventurers" on the power scale. The barmaid, maybe. The soldier on patrol? Anything that can crumple him in one strike is going to do the same to the PCs at this point.

[Oracle_Hunter]

See, the problem is that in my setting, the PCs at level 4 are not yet at a point where they're above and beyond everyone else. Your average commoner is between level 2 and 4. Your common soldier will have at least 3 levels of fighter, and veterans can expect to reach level 7 or higher. Powerful figures in the world are level 10 or higher in their respective classes. The figures of legend, both living and otherwise, are/were level 18 or higher. I would place them as "sorta above average adventurers" on the power scale. The barmaid, maybe. The soldier on patrol? Anything that can crumple him in one strike is going to do the same to the PCs at this point.

and these guys stomped on an Earth Elemental?

I think, maybe, your PCs are not on the same power scale as you're thinking for the world. The Swordsage, at the very least, is punching well above his weight if his AC is nigh-untouchable. Is this perhaps a question of character optimization?

I guess you'll just have to fight fire-with-fire. As has been said, you'll just need to pick monsters/spells that focus on the Swordsage's weak points or nullify his advantages. Mindblanks for Scry-and-Dies, and all that.

Another fun thought is the introduction of a villain who is able to humiliate the PCs and then walk away. Perhaps he uses political powers to deprive the PCs of something they worked hard for, or maybe he's just much more physically powerful than the PCs, but has only a passing interest in them - perhaps a swordmaster who, noting the Swordsage's abilities, decides to test himself against the Swordsage and then be disgusted with how easily he wins.

That's a good way to knock players down a peg while providing them a nice reoccurring villain. In my current campaign, a disarm-monkey half-fiend partially disarmed our party of our first batch of nice magic weapons (he needed them for a ritual) and escaped after a real slugfest. That was enough to cause my character to swear eternal vengeance on the punk.

[Tempest Fennac]

Thanks for explaining. In regards to making it more dangerous, you could have the town guard hire the PCs to capture some sort of unknown random murderer (this would probably make it dark more then anything, but if the killer is able to get some quick attacks off at the PCs before escaping without any sort of trace, it could work well). If you tried this, a race with faster movement (eg: Catfolk) would work well with Rogue, or possibly Ninja, levels. Alternatively, a Psionic Rogue could be even better: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20040723b .

Were the party able to get their weapons back, Oracle Hunter?

[Yakk]

I was thinking "The monster roars, and punches the ground. The earth ... ripples. The Earth isn't supposed to do that." All opponents within 10' of the monster must make a DC 15 Fortitude save to stand against the shockwave. On failure, take 1d6 damage, be pushed back 5', and be knocked prone. All terrain within 10' of the elemental is now considered difficult terrain to everyone except an earth elemental.

And have it drop into the ground. For a turn, the earth heaves and bulges (DC 20 balance check, two targets up to 15' apart from each other). Then the Elemental bursts out of the ground (DC 13 Reflex, 2d6 damage, save for half, 20' radius, blunt damage from the debris) and attacks someone (as a charge).

Note -- area attacks generate LOTS of d20 rolls. More rolls, the less your 1 in 1000 chance of "10 misses with a 50-50 chance to hit" in a row event matters. With 2 attacks per round over 10 rounds, there is a ~1 in a million chance that you'll have all misses.

[Shazzbaa]

If you can improv, I'd say that's the best suggestion I've seen -- make something up in-game if you can't fudge rolls. Suddenly, just when he seemed defeated, layers of earth peel from the ground and cover the earth elemental, making him larger and stronger than before! (or, you know, whatever you feel is appropriate) If the battle seemed like a total disappointment, make the players say, "I thought that battle seemed too easy!" as you pull a transformation or sudden surprise out of your back-pocket.

If you can't pull something out of thin air and you don't want to fudge, then the best thing you can do is take the rest of the advice and just roll with it. You wanted this to be a serious fight, but, let's face it, it wasn't a serious fight and that wasn't your fault. Just as often, the players want to be cool but the dice conspire against them -- if you run with the failure and play it up rather than stewing in frustration (both players and DMs) the encounter will be an exciting memory rather than an awkward or monotonous one, even if it's not the sort of exciting memory you wanted. You can make up for that later, which it sounds like you're already planning to do.

In defence of the "taking him down a peg" comment, however; what happens to the characters in-game is going to affect how they look at the world. If they're told that being raised from death is rare, but they can always manage to find resurrection when they need it, the players and sometimes even their characters will come to the conclusion that death is cheap, and understandably so. If players face a creature that nearly kills them, they're going to worry when they see it again, but if the players never face anything that threatens to hurt them, then they're going to feel more powerful than most things-- again, understandably so.
In this case it seems like it's less of a "Taking frustration with the player out on the character" thing and more like the OP would like to present the world in a more appropriate light -- the characters are low-level and they should feel as though they can die, not like they're unstoppable heroes. The only way to enforce that is to have the world show it.

[TheOOB]

The trick is to just understand that with a random factor as large as D&D's, encounters are not going to go as planned. Some encounters that where supposed to be epic will flop, and some encounters that where supposed to be merely challenging will become deadly, the trick is to just roll with it.

As mentioned above, however, multiple opponents greatly serve to reduce the sheer randomness of things, a single opponent is often way too random. Bad rolls with make them suck, and good rolls will make them too deadly.

[Oracle_Hunter]

In this case it seems like it's less of a "Taking frustration with the player out on the character" thing and more like the OP would like to present the world in a more appropriate light -- the characters are low-level and they should feel as though they can die, not like they're unstoppable heroes. The only way to enforce that is to have the world show it.

That's quite right, but I think the problem is that the characters are not designed to mirror the sort of world he'd like to run. If you have a 4th level character who can easily take down Earth Elementals (weird, extra-planar beings) then the world is very high powered if they are supposed to be "normal." In such a world, the heroes can't feel "low powered" - they can easily take down things which normally should seem weird and dangerous.

Danger comes from both sides, I guess. If you make a gritty world, but the characters are super-powered, then they'll see the world as super-heroes, not as gritty heroes. You have to either adjust the characters or the world - and if it's the world you're going to adjust, then this thread already has a bunch of good ways for doing it.

I still like my Drow Assassin riding a Gorgon though.

[Tempest Fennac]

I guess it would depend on how big the elemental in question was (some of the smaller ones wouldn't be that much of a problem). Looking of the Psionic Rogue list, if you tried my idea and they were a level 6 character, I'd recommend Bolt, Create Sound, Psionic Grease, Distract (or Conceal Thoughts) and Cloud Mind (or Psionic Knock) while keeping stealth and movement skills, as well as Search, Disable Device, Bluff and Disguise, maxed out.

[Proven_Paradox]

and these guys stomped on an Earth Elemental?

You'll note that a large earth elemental is only CR 5. As there are five characters of level 4, all of whom are reasonably optimized, it really shouldn't be that surprising, especially considering, y'know, the topic at hand.

I think, maybe, your PCs are not on the same power scale as you're thinking for the world. The Swordsage, at the very least, is punching well above his weight if his AC is nigh-untouchable. Is this perhaps a question of character optimization?

Swordsages--especially halfling ones, with size modifier and the dex increase--are GOING to have very high AC. They get light armor, wis to AC, and a lot of incentive to max out their dex.

Now that I think about it, an additional part of the problem here was that the party kind of threw me for a loop at loot distribution for the previous game. Among the loot was an amulet of natural armor and a ring of protection. I had thought at least one of those would go to the barbarian. Instead, the swordsage claimed both, and no one complained. He also got a +1 short sword. I had forgotten about it before, to be honest. The end result is that about 40% of the party's total wealth was focused on him.

Another fun thought is the introduction of a villain who is able to humiliate the PCs and then walk away. Perhaps he uses political powers to deprive the PCs of something they worked hard for, or maybe he's just much more physically powerful than the PCs, but has only a passing interest in them - perhaps a swordmaster who, noting the Swordsage's abilities, decides to test himself against the Swordsage and then be disgusted with how easily he wins.

I've been on the player end of such encounters before. That's a difficult thing to do without leaving an impression of "Here is my DMPC. Revel in his awesomeness." I don't want to be arbitrary about this, and that would take finesse that I'm not certain I possess to do properly.

That's a good way to knock players down a peg while providing them a nice reoccurring villain. In my current campaign, a disarm-monkey half-fiend partially disarmed our party of our first batch of nice magic weapons (he needed them for a ritual) and escaped after a real slugfest. That was enough to cause my character to swear eternal vengeance on the punk.

Mmm, this would be taken badly by the entire group I think. Plus, I have other things in mind for recurring villains.

Thanks for explaining. In regards to making it more dangerous, you could have the town guard hire the PCs to capture some sort of unknown random murderer (this would probably make it dark more then anything, but if the killer is able to get some quick attacks off at the PCs before escaping without any sort of trace, it could work well). If you tried this, a race with faster movement (eg: Catfolk) would work well with Rogue, or possibly Ninja, levels. Alternatively, a Psionic Rogue could be even better: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20040723b.

A possibility for future games, but other goals have presented themselves that would take precedence over the town guards' requests most likely.

I was thinking "The monster roars, and punches the ground. The earth ... ripples. The Earth isn't supposed to do that." All opponents within 10' of the monster must make a DC 15 Fortitude save to stand against the shockwave. On failure, take 1d6 damage, be pushed back 5', and be knocked prone. All terrain within 10' of the elemental is now considered difficult terrain to everyone except an earth elemental.

And have it drop into the ground. For a turn, the earth heaves and bulges (DC 20 balance check, two targets up to 15' apart from each other). Then the Elemental bursts out of the ground (DC 13 Reflex, 2d6 damage, save for half, 20' radius, blunt damage from the debris) and attacks someone (as a charge).

Note -- area attacks generate LOTS of d20 rolls. More rolls, the less your 1 in 1000 chance of "10 misses with a 50-50 chance to hit" in a row event matters. With 2 attacks per round over 10 rounds, there is a ~1 in a million chance that you'll have all misses.

I hesitate to simply improv attacks like that. I've tacked such things onto a fight in the middle before, thinking they would put the difficulty up about where I wanted them, and ended up nearly wiping out the party. For example, I've yet to see how they will deal with a tripper or melee controller (something I plan to fix next game) and so seeing how they deal with being prone needs more planning than that.

If you can improv, I'd say that's the best suggestion I've seen -- make something up in-game if you can't fudge rolls. Suddenly, just when he seemed defeated, layers of earth peel from the ground and cover the earth elemental, making him larger and stronger than before! (or, you know, whatever you feel is appropriate) If the battle seemed like a total disappointment, make the players say, "I thought that battle seemed too easy!" as you pull a transformation or sudden surprise out of your back-pocket.

If this weren't already the second part of this fight, and if I'd had access to a Monster Manual at the time, I would have done just that. However, I work with printouts from the SRD or homebrewed monsters, and so just pulling something stronger out of nowhere would have been tricky.

If you can't pull something out of thin air and you don't want to fudge, then the best thing you can do is take the rest of the advice and just roll with it. You wanted this to be a serious fight, but, let's face it, it wasn't a serious fight and that wasn't your fault. Just as often, the players want to be cool but the dice conspire against them -- if you run with the failure and play it up rather than stewing in frustration (both players and DMs) the encounter will be an exciting memory rather than an awkward or monotonous one, even if it's not the sort of exciting memory you wanted. You can make up for that later, which it sounds like you're already planning to do.

I know how the dice conspiring against the player goes--I seem to roll poorly far more often than I roll well (or even average, though that may just be me being negative). Taking a more positive spin on things is difficult for me though; as I've said already, I don't have much of a poker face, and my frustration was rather obvious at the game (something the swordsage's player relished in more than was merited).

In defence of the "taking him down a peg" comment, however; what happens to the characters in-game is going to affect how they look at the world. If they're told that being raised from death is rare, but they can always manage to find resurrection when they need it, the players and sometimes even their characters will come to the conclusion that death is cheap, and understandably so. If players face a creature that nearly kills them, they're going to worry when they see it again, but if the players never face anything that threatens to hurt them, then they're going to feel more powerful than most things-- again, understandably so.
In this case it seems like it's less of a "Taking frustration with the player out on the character" thing and more like the OP would like to present the world in a more appropriate light -- the characters are low-level and they should feel as though they can die, not like they're unstoppable heroes. The only way to enforce that is to have the world show it.

This is exactly the situation, and you've worded it rather well. Thanks for clearing that up.

As mentioned above, however, multiple opponents greatly serve to reduce the sheer randomness of things, a single opponent is often way too random. Bad rolls with make them suck, and good rolls will make them too deadly.

I think I've already mentioned this, but I don't like throwing large groups of enemies at players because it bogs down combat. One round may take as long as an hour on bad days on a small encounter; I don't want to think of how long it would take if they were fighting, say, ten goblins. I can only expedite things so much.

That's quite right, but I think the problem is that the characters are not designed to mirror the sort of world he'd like to run. If you have a 4th level character who can easily take down Earth Elementals (weird, extra-planar beings) then the world is very high powered if they are supposed to be "normal." In such a world, the heroes can't feel "low powered" - they can easily take down things which normally should seem weird and dangerous.

I find it odd that you appear to be thinking of an earth elemental as a major indication of overpoweredness. It's of approximately the right CR for the group. Besides, this is a highly magical world, and elementals should not be that foreign to any adventurers in it.

[Kurald Galain]

Never let a dice roll get in the way of a good story.

[nagora]

Nothing went wrong except that you designed an encounter with an outcome in mind and it didn't work out. That's your problem; DMs who do that are often surprised and that's a good thing in the long run. Fudging to make a combat fit your ideas is a gateway to the RPG darkside: railroading.

Meanwhile, you've actually set the cocky player up for a real fall the day the dice come to life and he finds out how lucky he's been up to then.

Never let a predefined story get in the way of a dice roll.

[Yakk]

I hesitate to simply improv attacks like that. I've tacked such things onto a fight in the middle before, thinking they would put the difficulty up about where I wanted them, and ended up nearly wiping out the party. For example, I've yet to see how they will deal with a tripper or melee controller (something I plan to fix next game) and so seeing how they deal with being prone needs more planning than that.

Oh no, I wasn't suggesting you improv new abilities onto a 3e monster in the middle of a fight. :-)

I was suggesting a way to deal with the "this fight consists of X players beating on 1 monster, where that 1 monster spends each turn attacking 1 player, with at most a 50% chance of even connecting each turn" before the fight.

An earth elemental that is a bag of AC, HP, and a single attack ... even if that attack does connect lots and does lots of damage, isn't an ideal "boss" fight.

(As an aside, notice that the players only go prone outside of the attack radius of the elemental (I was assuming a medium elemental -- for a large elemental, have a 10' knockback), and I was presuming full-round actions for that shock-wave ability. The point wasn't to make the monster deadly -- it was to make the monster have a memorable earth-elemental feel. Similarly, the burrowing power knocks players about in the round the elemental isn't attacking... the players will be standing by the time the elemental attacks, if they aren't fools.)

A fight in which the monster throws players around etc can be memorable even if the monster isn't missing on all of his slice attacks! :-) If you want a monster to be memorable, don't rely on it being a bad-ass, because the dice can and will betray you.

[Shademan]

i say use the black knight. a guy in black armour who never says a single word but refuses anyone to pass his bridge unless they best him in combat. he might not even be alive.... (hint hint!!)
a little overpowering and he'll bring that swordsages feets back to the ground.
rememba' young grasshoppa'! there is always someone stronga' than yoo...

[Saph]

I was suggesting a way to deal with the "this fight consists of X players beating on 1 monster, where that 1 monster spends each turn attacking 1 player, with at most a 50% chance of even connecting each turn" before the fight.

An earth elemental that is a bag of AC, HP, and a single attack ... even if that attack does connect lots and does lots of damage, isn't an ideal "boss" fight.

Come on, Yakk, you're missing the Earth Elemental's most fun ability. :) Earth Glide. Here's the link. Use that right, and a fight with an Earth Elemental can be a hell of a lot of fun.

One of my favourite 'one-off' scenarios to throw against players is an over-CRed Earth Elemental at the top of a stone tower guarding something the PCs need to retrieve. The PCs can grab the widget fairly easily if they're smart, but they then have to survive the chase down the tower, the PCs running around the spiral staircase while the Earth Elemental moves straight down through the rock walls to try and cut them off. Very cool as long as you judge the CR just right.

Proven_Paradox: I've had this happen before plenty of times as a DM. I find the best approach is just to be honest about it. Just tell them OOC: "I can't believe how lucky you guys were in that fight. I never rolled above an 8 all the way through. Yeah, yeah, I know he seemed easy, don't get cocky."

It has the advantage of being true, and players generally like that you're being open with them. And when, a couple of sessions later, they complain about the monster that's scoring a critical hit every other round, you can point them back to this fight as a reminder. :)

- Saph

[Tsotha-lanti]

If you need good rolls to make a fight climactic or dramatic, you haven't designed a very good fight, frankly. You can not literally rely on chance to do that for you.

Which is exactly what you're doing when you're expecting a scythe to make the encounter dangerous. Each 20 is a 50% chance to critical the swordsage - since you need to hit on the confirmation roll - so each attack is a 2.5% chance to crit the swordsage. If the fight goes on for 20 rounds and the elemental attacks 20 times, that's a 60% chance it never crits the swordsage. In 10 rounds and 10 attacks, it's a 78% chance to not crit even once. (This is why it's important for D&D DMs to understand odds and numbers, at least a little.)

Design a better encounter next time. PCs will routinely demolish, for a variety of reasons, encounters you meant to be tough and challenging. What you do is, you learn and do better. (And if the thing couldn't hit the swordsage on a 7, it wasn't all that dangerous, was it? He was right - his high AC had a good 50% chance of protecting him.) Don't rely on chance. Use a powerful opponent (remember, if the party is fighting a single powerful opponent, it should have a CR of X+4, where X is the average party level), interesting terrain, external pressures ("That magic doowickey is going to blow in 6 rounds!"), and so on.

Do not ever fudge dice rolls in order to hurt the PCs. That's just cheap. You're the DM, you can inflict damage on them at any time anyway - what's the point of arbitrarily doing it?


Edit: Funnily enough, 4E fixes many problems inherent in this scenario, like the one Yakk points out: in 3.5, single monsters make crap encounters. I've had a sixth-level party of four demolish a bulette in a single round. But in 4E, solo monsters are specifically designed to be capable of withstanding concentrated attack and of hurting most of the party on each action. Similarly, 4E really encourages good encounter design, not just plopping monsters in an area - the encounter, independent of the specific monsters, should be interesting or dramatic or challenging.

Edit2: For pity's sake don't start trying to "teach a lesson" to the swordsage. You're the DM, you're supposed to be above that. It's a great way to lose the trust and respect of your players, which are the most integral parts of your ability to be a DM. Be an adult and realize you're all there to have fun. Don't punish someone for building a good character. (Feel free to punish yourself if the high AC is the result of, say, ridiculously high point-buy or too many AC-improving magic items too early on. If it's the result of mage armor and shield piled on the character, kudos to your players for tactics.)