D&D 5E The Unlucky Guy

[Fauchard1520]

Just remembered why I wrote that comic in the first place. Courtesy of TV Tropes:

Born Unlucky: Wil's dice rolls are legendarily terrible, to memetic degrees. It's at a point where Wil has legitimate reason to fear his bad luck rubbing off on those in his immediate vicinity; to quote the man during one of his guest appearances on Critical Role:

Wil: I would like to apologize in advance to Liam for having to share a table with me. I am sorry for what's going to happen to your dice on account of how close we are to each other tonight.​

 

[Warpiglet]

I have seen some curious runs.

In 1st ed AD&D I had a huge fat barbarian. For hit points he rolled a '12' six consecutive times! It was witnessed. There were yells of triumph, hooting (and jeering from my friend jokingly jealous--Jesus! he would exclaim).

But the barbarian became known as 'the tree.' this mountain of hit points rarely hit to the point that he was named 'the tree' by the group. he would get hit over and over and the bad guys would try and chop him down. in the meantime the others consisting of two halfling thieves and a fighter assassin would eventually wear down the opposition.

I understand cognitive bias. However, those weird streaks were pretty incredible. And the hit point rolls had witnesses to include the DM. Wrote down each roll too. Level seven netted a '6' on he d12. All streaks eventually are broken!

 

[Guest 6801328]

The title of the thread gave me an idea: a class with special abilities that function when you flub rolls: you miss an attack, you fail a saving throw, you roll low damage, etc.

Thus, the perverse incentive when designing your character would be to make sure you fail a lot.

Could be a lot of fun.

 

[Fauchard1520]

The title of the thread gave me an idea: a class with special abilities that function when you flub rolls: you miss an attack, you fail a saving throw, you roll low damage, etc.

Thus, the perverse incentive when designing your character would be to make sure you fail a lot.

Could be a lot of fun.

A sort of slapstick themed character perhaps? You could even invent an "expanded botch" feat!

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

My brother was that unlucky guy for the longest time. Spent a whole fight with a dragon paralyzed, unable to make his save. I eventually got him new dice as a gift and his luck finally changed. We salt-tested his d20 later, and sure enough that die was off.

As a DM, when a player has a nasty run of bad luck, I try to make the failures more entertaining, a little zanier. Sometimes failure can be more entertaining than success, if perhaps not as satisfying.

 

[Fauchard1520]

There's a player in our Exalted 2e group who is epicly unlucky. It's a d10 system, so it's all dice pools all day. He actually wound up saving the day for once, casting the deciding spell in difficult encounter. When he went to high five one of the warrior types, the ST (being an especially black-hearted sort) made him roll for the high five. On 5d10, he rolled four 1s. Nothing over a 6.

Dude knocked himself out on a high five.

 

[Landon Guss]

A dwarf paladin I ran for a while couldn't cross a bridge to save his life. Didn't matter how big, small, stable, or treacherous it was, he would find a way to fail his acrobatics check and tumble down into the water... Now that I think about it, my party came across a LOT more bridges then I would consider average after I failed my first few crossings.

 

[TwoSix]

In 3.5, our resident unlucky guy fireballed 8 spectres. The DM remembered that spectres had a 50% miss chance due to being incorporeal, so he had the guy roll for each spectre. He proceeded to fail 8 consecutive 50% chance rolls.

 

[Henry]

The Glass Cannon Pathfinder Podcast has one of those — he is so noticeably unlucky that a fan even wrote him a theme song that they play on the show!

For our home group, it would probably be me. My previous character was an oracle who failed will saves so often that the group inquisitor had a dispel magic prepared at all times specifically for me.

 

[Bitbrain]

The Tiefling war cleric in my old group.
He became recognized as our resident "unlucky" guy after he multiclassed into fighter.

anyway, we were all in this one combat encounter and my sorcerer puts haste on the war cleric.
he charges into melee where he has advantage on the attack rolls, thanks to the Eldritch Knight having knocked the baddie prone . . . And proceeds to roll (due to advantage) a grand total of 6 natural 1s in a row.

He was purple with rage