Consoling a bad-luck player

[XO]

Stay Away

Bad luck rubs off...

Sacrifice him to Tymora...

Douse him in oil and use him as a torch.

Send him to get soda at the convenience store, BUT he must roll a "natural 20" to come back. He only gets one roll per half hour...

Beat him senseless for being such a numbskull, and send him to buy new dice.

Feed him to the sharks at a craps table.

 

[Corbert]

Buy one of those sets with loaded dice -- the kind that has two identical d20s, one loaded, one not. Slip the loaded one, let him get the feeling his luck is turning around, then swap it out for the unloaded one. His mindset will have been broken and a couple of low rolls won't get him down.

Caveat: Make sure the loaded die is loaded to give high numbers.

That wouldn't work for a friend of mine. I witnessed him roll 3 ones on 3d6 loaded to roll 6's

 

[VirgilCaine]

Even worse, he consistently puts his character in the most danger(always plays a tank, even though he never plays a tanking class), then accuses me of trying to kill him all of the time(he's a proponent of the DM vs. players school of thought).

He cycles dice, he tries to min-max(though he's bad with numbers and tends to end up with sub-par combatants), and does all kinds of luck tricks. To no avail.

Is there anything that I as a DM can do to help this situation?

Get him to stop tempting fate and get someone to help him with his characters.

 

[Victim]

Tell him that of course there are no such thing as curses or luck. Go into a lengthy discourse on probability and standard deviations. Ask him to write down every die roll he gets, regardless of context (attack roll, initiative, saves, Diplomacy checks) and, after 1000 rolls, give you a stastistical analysis of the distribution.

Every time he brings it up his luck after that point, ask "So how's that spreadsheet coming along?"

Of course, context is pretty critical in my opinion.

Let's say that the GM has a critical miss house rule that requires confirmation. Rolling a 20 followed by 1 means that you hit, but don't get a critical - the result is good, but not as good as it could be. On the other hand, rolling a 1 and then a 20 would mean that the possible critical miss was not confirmed. The exact same rolls (which also average out), but one situation is clearly more desireable than the other. Hence luck.

 

[MonkeyDragon]

The dice lice are real!

One player cannot roll d6s to save his life. The phrase "arm lopping damage" was coined after he rolled 6d6 for damage for someone's arm being cut off...and rolled 7.

Another player is cursed to the point I don't let him touch my dice.

Then there's me.

Normally my rolls aren't that bad. I have my ups and downs like anybody else. Of course, my ups tend to run towards really high checks in skills I have a big bonus in anyway and my lows go for initiative (it's rare for me to roll double digits for initiaive).

Then for the past two weeks, I've been rolling low all over the place. Critical misses, really low rolls on saves, the works. My group consoled me by groaning and laughing when I failed yet again.

My replacement character debuts tomorrow. His name shall be Fumbles McGee

 

[Herobizkit]

Let him play a Wild Mage and/or give him a Rod of Wonder.

I guarantee his luck will change.