Are Any Of Your Players Really Unlucky?

[beverson]

We had one player in my 4e game that was consistently rolling like crap - but in the other 2 games (1 as a player and 1 as a GM) he rolled just fine. We decided that something was messing up the Feng Shui at the gaming table, so he and another player switched places - and now the bad rolling has gone away!

Another thing we discovered were GameScience dice. We had heard about them for many years, and always joked about precision dice with sharp edges, using them to hurl at people during a game and actually hurt them, stuff like that. But then we watched the videos on the site, and my entire group has drunk the GameScience Kool-Aid. If you've never heard of these or haven't seen the videos, go do so. It might change your view of dice like it did for my group. We had one player who bought a new set of dice at Gen Con in '08, and his d20 consistently rolled either a 1 or a 20, with a small mix of other single digit rolls as well. After seeing the GameScience video, it became clear to us that that d20 had been skewed by the smoothing/polishing process. Since that player bought his precision dice this year at Gen Con, his rolls are now truly "random", and he doesn't groan with horrible runs of 1's anymore.
*disclaimer - I am not affiliated in any way with GameScienc. This is my opinion and the opinion of the guys I play with*

So, if you have a player who consistently rolls crappy with one particular set of dice, have them try some precision dice and see if it makes a difference. Maybe they aren't unlucky after all, and their dice are just wonky!

 

[Jack99]

We have a Paladin in our 4e game that nobody, but nobody will let touch their dice for fear he will "taint" them like his obviously are.

I used to have this stigma attached to me - so when we started a new 4e campaign, I wisely picked a Holy Avenger as my character, and chose a Craghammer as my weapon. (I would have picked an Execution Axe, but didn't see it first).

I'm not reminded much about those "bad ole days" with double-rolls for attack, and not having to accept 1's or 2's for damage.

I think the Avenger was just -made- for me and people like me.

Yep, or you could as my player go the divine oracle route, lets you roll twice when your power target will. Then it's just a matter of picking the right powers.

 

[GlassJaw]

Absolutely.

We actually coined the phrase "Joe roll" because of it (which is a play off of Rick Roll).

Basically it means to roll a 1 in the most inopportune time. It happened so many times that we needed a slogan to commemorate it.

 

[Davachido]

We have some poor rollers in our group, although one player sticks out in my mind. About 3 sessions into the campaign we actually started putting a natural one counter on the whiteboard for him. By the end of each session it was something like 8-10 rolls of a 1 (and usually no crits in the session).

The deciding factor for this is when he used 'Split the tree' on two enemies. He rolled snake eyes on the two dice, he proceeded to reroll one of them due to elven accuracy and then he rolled another 1.

He seems to have passed on his luck to another player this year though, the other player is now playing a holy avenger and managed to get only one of his rolls above an 8 all through-out the session (which still missed the creature).

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Yap,

me and a friend, we both regularly botch our best rolls.

His barbarian, who can only fumble on a 1 and 2 on a D% threw away his great sword in 3 of 4 encounters.

I needed to get out with teleport to a very familiar place (99 and 00 too low)
Guess what i rolled...

And in shadow run i fumbled with triple 1 on 3d6... twice in a row.

The only time i can remember beeing very lucky was hitting the elven bladesinger with shield and expertise on with my troll (could only hit at a natural 20) double 20 and rend, all of them with nearly max damage, bringing her down from 40 hp or so to 3. Didn´t hit her again the whole fight.

edit: nothing better than 8 on a d20 is nothing compared to nothing higher than 20 on a d% :/

 

[CubeKnight]

I'm on record as the player with the worst luck. One of my favorites is a BESM game (d6-based system, for those that don't know) where all I rolled were 1's, minus a single 5 I rolled for my Companion Character.

I ended up making a spreadsheet for my rolls, to see if it wasn't just selective memory. My average so far, with over 3 hundred rolls accounted for, is 7.6~. Other interesting details are that I have 26 natural 1's (more nat 1s than any other roll, actually), 15 natural 20's, 146 rolls over 10, 192 rolls 10 or under, and a standard deviation of 5.8.

Also, I pretty much only play online, so I can't exactly blame the cursed dice. Then again, the same thing used to happen when I played IRL, my dice getting the "Torture Set" nickname, because they kept making me fail at everything I tried to do, but I'd always roll 15+ on life-or-death situations. Meaning, my PCs never died, but they didn't contribute to the party either.

 

[Oryan77]

I always considered myself an unlucky player, until I met one of our current players a couple years ago. Wow, I've never seen anyone roll so many ones. I usually roll low and cause myself to fail at everything, but this guy actually rolls ones on a regular basis. And if it's not a 1, it's at least under a 4.

 

[Infernal Teddy]

I actually have to cheat quite often or my players accuse me of cheating to keep their characters alive... *sigh*

 

[DarkLord Of DForce]

He seems to have passed on his luck to another player this year though, the other player is now playing a holy avenger and managed to get only one of his rolls above an 8 all through-out the session (which still missed the creature).

Dang!

Just out of curiosity - does he roll the Die one at a time against his OOE target? This is gonna sound strange, but if I roll them one at a time, I'll consistently roll 2 lower scores, whereas if I roll both Die at the same time, I consistently hit.

Odd, eh?

 

[Oni]

I know I've mentioned this before, but I started playing D&D as a freshman in college at the tail end of 2e. My first character ever was an elf thief named Aegis of Ravenshadow, and that character was so completely unlucky that I almost gave up on table top rpg's. He missed all the bloody time, constantly failed saving throws, blew his thief skill checks consistantly. About the only time he would ever get a successful roll was if it would prevent this poor pitiful character from dying and releasing me from the misery of it all. But he never died and so I just kept playing him and hoping it would get better. He had more magic items than anyone else because the DM kept trying to counteract my terrible rolls with bonuses, not that it ever worked. I remember getting to high enough level that I had managed to get a 95% in both hide in shadows and move silently, and then failing both checks the next time they came up. If there was one situation that summed up Aegis it was this. We were fighting a stone giant, and I said I wanted to backstab him. The DM says he's too tall for that, which seemed reasonable to so I decided that Aegis would try to climb up to a high place and jump down on him. Pass all the checks to climb and get into place unnoticed and then finally making the attack I rolled a natural 1, fumble to face plant behind the giant. I still somtimes wonder why I kept playing.

Well eventually we decided we'd start a new campaign, by this time my bad luck was legendary within our circle. I decided I'd try a wizard, since it seemed to me one would have to roll less dice that way. Our first game I got plenty of good natured ribbing about my luck as we got underway. We ended up fighting some bandits that as luck would have it were in a dead magic zone so it seemed like I was off to a good start. We used a death's door rule so you could go into the negatives a bit before being dead, and it came down to the entire rest of the party being knocked out and only my frail little old wizard and his staff left against 1 remaining burly bandit. Everyone agreed we were pretty much screwed since only my character was left and with my luck that meant it was game over. Defeat had been accepted and then I rolled a crit! I have yet to this day seen as much jubilation around a table as I did then, and that was end of my terrible luck.

Boy that's rambling, but there you have it.