Worst Dice Luck Ever

[Filcher]

I don't know if this would be any consolation, but the probability of rolling 8 20s (or any other 8 rolls in order) would be exacly the same as rolling 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2 in this order. So every time you roll 8 20-sided dice, a very improbable event occures, regardless of results.

If all (any) dice were actually random, would it be fair to say that thanks to the OP's sacrifice, the rest of us are unlikely to roll 6 consecutive 1s for the next 64 million series?

Somewhere in the bowels of my memory of a high school math class, I think my logic is wrong, but can you explain why?

 

[CubeKnight]

I've always had bad luck with dice. So, I started tracking up my rolls in an Excel sheet. Currently, I'm at 6.6 average, standard deviation 3.2. What does that mean? That roughly 75% of my rolls have been below 10!

Oh, and let's not forget that BESM (d6s, for those who don't play it) game where every roll I made for my char was a 1. Of course, the single roll I made for another PC was a 6.

/me sighs.

 

[CharlesRyan]

Ah, dice. It's such a part of what makes gaming fun.

I've played my share of diceless and card-based games over the years, and I like the idea in principal. But all of my favourite gaming moments have involved dice and their inscrutable results. . . .

 

[JDJblatherings]

I calculated the probability of rolling 6 consecutive 1s on a d20 to be 1/64 million! This is so low, that I am wondering if all of us at the table having hallucinations of me rolling 6 consecutive 1s is not more probable.

Each roll of d20 still only has a 1 in 20 chance of occurring. While the chance of that time being when you roll 10 1's in a row is 1 in 64 million the chance of that happening to you depends more on how many d20 you've rolled in your RPG playing life. If you've rolled but 2000 d20's in your life the odds of witnessing 10 20's in a row is:
1-(63999999/64000000)^2000 or 0.00003125, a modest 3 in 100,000 chance.

 

[MadLordOfMilk]

My friend seriously seems to roll a one for every third roll. Last night, he even rolled his d20, and in its roll stopped and came BACK the other way to land on a one. No, it didn't even hit anything. I'm not totally sure how that happened, but I couldn't stop laughing for a good five minutes straight.

 

[mach1.9pants]

Our last session the normal rubbish roller (Wizard, 4E so he is underpowered as it is) was beaten by the ranger. Last big Fight on module H-2, He lined up the BBEG with his best daily (5th) and managed to roll ... a 1 and then another 1 for the secondary attack.

Ouch, very depressing!

It was so bad that we almost didn't laugh our pants off!

 

[doctorhook]

One of my players has been using a cheapo set of ruby gem dice for a while now, and for the past couple months, we've been pretty certain that his d20 is warped. Why do I say this? The die regularly rolls a half-dozen 1s every three-hour session, often twice or three times in a row, even when it's being rolled by someone else. I think the most we've got in a session is five 1s in a row from that die, but as I said, it's not uncommon for that die to roll two or three ones in a row in a single session. Hell, it doesn't even sit flat on the table with the 20 side up.

But there's no astronomical probability at work here, I believe; rather, I'm certain that the die is simply hooped/skewed. Needless to say, this player avoids using this die at this point, but it still gets loaned to other players on occasion. We've also sent out for some Gamescience dice, which are apparently of a higher quality -- although this terrible die rolled much more consistently when we got it a couple of years ago too.

 

[dnddays]

Someone has to be the 1 of 64,000,000

I sympathize. This past Saturday the guy playing the wizard in our game rolled three consecutive 1s on his save and it almost killed his character. These were seasoned players playing 4e for the first time, fighting the kobolds of the first encounter of Keep on the Shadowfell, which they thought would be a cakewalk. It's weird how dice seem to play their role almost perfectly. I can't tell you how many times someone has rolled that 20 just when they needed it, or how strange bouts of bad luck have made adventures more exciting. To this day I still remember, fondly I might add, how a bard had his arm broken and almost severed by a troll's bite back in the Character Option days, or our thief's crazy combat somersault with a called shot to the heart rolling a natural 20 followed by rolling maximum damage.

Crazy dice results is part of the game, my friend. Just relax and roll with it. (Pun intended.)

 

[PaulofCthulhu]

A player in our group (Neil) has legendary bad luck with dice. None of the other players let him touch theirs.

Bad dice karma! It's true I tell you, we have records of it.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

But think about this as well. If there are 1 Million D&D players (not unreasonable) each playing 1/week, then this result will show up once every 1.23 years for the D&D community as a whole.