D&D General Dealing with bad luck (From behind the DM screen).

[Smackpixi]

Make failure a new more interesting challenge. Just like winning should lead to something new and more interesting, so should failure. We’re all coming back and playing this game again next week is my base philosophy, and each week should be more fun than the last. So, if this week, we’re going to rescue the princess in the castle and we spend an hour figuring out how to open the drawbridge but stupidly all stand below where it lands and get flattened, next week two wake up in heaven and two in hell and both sides need to figure out how to get back to reality to cross the open drawbridge or gett back skipping a head. Too many times losing results in more tedious crap, or the end, bad game design for TTRPG, it needs to be instead a new fun challenge.

There does need to be penalties for failure, but they should be new fun, not new tedium. If that’s established, and the players know, bad rolls aren’t harbingers of dread, but harbingers of interesting side quests.

 

[Horwath]

if you want more "stable" roll outcome, replace d20 with 3d6, same average, will force rolls close to average amount.
or what I prefer is replacing d20 with d12+4. also same average, extremes are trimmed out, keeps once dice mechanic so advantage/disadvantage works similar, and attacks get more crit. and everyone likes more crits.