Kalendraf
Explorer
I mostly DM, but I've seen hot or cold streaks in dice rolling hit both sides of the DM screen. The battles can get lopsided when the party is rolling hot but the DM is rolling cold, but at least that's pretty safe. If the party is hot and the monsters roll well, or the party is ice cold and monsters are too, that's not a big deal either.
The problem is when the monsters start rolling awesome and the party rolls take a nosedive. Monsters start rolling crits and backing them up, and meanwhile, the casters can't seem to make their concentration checks and the fighters are missing the broad side of a barn. That's the time when a TPK is a real possibility.
So what do I do? Well, that's what DM fudges are for. I almost never fudge to improve a monster's attack, but I will sure as heck fudge the opposite way if it will avoid some colossal badness from happening which the party didn't really deserve.
FYI, the worst luck I've seen was back in our Freeport campaign when they fought an Allip. Each time I rolled for the 50% incorporeal miss, it wound up being a miss. That happened about 20 straight times. I was rolling the dice right in front of the players that night (didn't have my screen) and it was downright maddening for them. I let the player call high/low for the hit/miss, and each time it was going against them. It was nearing a danger point where there were only a couple characters left who could help as the Allip had drained wisdom of some while others were hypnotized by the babbling. Finally, the dice rolls started landing in their favor and they defeated it. It wound up being an extremely memorably fight. In one of the next sessions, the I handed out a ghost-touch weapon to hopefully avoid a repeat of that from ever happening again!
The problem is when the monsters start rolling awesome and the party rolls take a nosedive. Monsters start rolling crits and backing them up, and meanwhile, the casters can't seem to make their concentration checks and the fighters are missing the broad side of a barn. That's the time when a TPK is a real possibility.
So what do I do? Well, that's what DM fudges are for. I almost never fudge to improve a monster's attack, but I will sure as heck fudge the opposite way if it will avoid some colossal badness from happening which the party didn't really deserve.
FYI, the worst luck I've seen was back in our Freeport campaign when they fought an Allip. Each time I rolled for the 50% incorporeal miss, it wound up being a miss. That happened about 20 straight times. I was rolling the dice right in front of the players that night (didn't have my screen) and it was downright maddening for them. I let the player call high/low for the hit/miss, and each time it was going against them. It was nearing a danger point where there were only a couple characters left who could help as the Allip had drained wisdom of some while others were hypnotized by the babbling. Finally, the dice rolls started landing in their favor and they defeated it. It wound up being an extremely memorably fight. In one of the next sessions, the I handed out a ghost-touch weapon to hopefully avoid a repeat of that from ever happening again!