how many times do you roll "1"'s?

[demon_jr]

i hope this is the correct forum to pose this question.

on a d20, how often have you rolled up 1?

for myself, i usually roll up a 1 around 4 to 6 times in one game session. as a result, although i am glad to have fairly high scores in relevant skills, abilities, saves, and so on, the chance of rolling is still a great fear for me.

there have been many times that all i needed was a 2 or higher to succeed at a particular save, but end up rolling a 1. or when i desperately need to hit an enemy just once to bring it down, but once again, end up rolling a 1. more often than not, i roll a 1 in critical and important situations.

i am a firm believer in disbelieving that a particular die is better or worse than another. even then, i have used different dies to see if i get any better results rolling 1. more often than not, i usually roll the same amount of 1's during a night.

strangely enough, i hardly roll any 20's. i average around 1 to 3 20's in a game session.

does anyone ever feel that it doesn't really matter how high a particular score is, because there is always the possibility of roling a 1?

 

[Leopold]

it's a 5% chance that sometimes comes in great abundance and somedays never comes. Me being a DM i get it allot more simply because of the MASSIVE amount of rolls I have to make.

 

[Dingleberry]

The odds of rolling a "1" are directly proportional to the ease of the task. If you would only miss on a "1", you are virtually guaranteed to roll it.

Also, the odds of rolling a "1" dramatically increase when you announce that what you're attempting to do "will be really cool." We refer to this as the "slow motion rule": any time a character is doing something that would warrant dramatic slow motion in a movie, they will fail dramatically.

 

[Airwolf]

I have to agree with Dingleberry.

When ever its important that you roll anything but a one, you can bet large sums of money that a one is coming.

It seems like it shows up far more often than 5%. One of these games I should keep track and find out.

 

[Alchemist]

If you feel you're getting too many ones, you should test the suspicious die. It may not be as random as it should be.

A simple test would be to roll it 100 times, recording the values you get. Take the simple average and you should have a value pretty close to 10.5 (for a d20). If you're more than a full point away from that value (9.5-11.5), there might be something fishy with that die. If you want better representation of the randomness, do 200 rolls. Or 1000 rolls. If you have the patience.

There are more rigorous analyses available, but this one is probably the least stressful for the average person. So if it seems like you're getting the shaft too often, give it a look. You might have bad dice.

Edit: I Am Not A Mathematician, so don't eat my brain if you are and are offended. Just correct me.

 

[Bagpuss]

There is an recognised hex that is banned at our gaming table, no one is ever allowed to say.

"You need anything but a 1."

 

[Drawmack]

I don't tell my players what they need on any particular roll. They simply don't know. Granted if it's a battle and they hit with a 15 they are pretty sure then can hit with a 15 or better, but they don't know that they could hit with a 5 or better.

 

[Malhavoc]

For some reason my stats are always pretty good (maybe an 18 with a couple sixteens) but damn if I ever roll good during any campaign.


I guess to really answer your question "how many 1's do you roll" I'd have to say "too much"

 

[Stalker0]

The thing is in the course of a night, your rolling a lot, and the 1s are always memorable so it may be that you simply think your rolling more 1s.

For a couple fo gaming sessions keep track of what your actually rolling, sometimes you'll really be surprised.

 

[CRGreathouse]

Really, I tend to roll the expected 5% of expected natural 1s on d20s.

I guess to really answer your question "how many 1's do you roll" I'd have to say "too much"

Aaugh! It hurts, it burns, it freezes! (OT/grammar)