Stupid Pcs that roll high

[Kalendraf]

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!

 

[Dagger75]

Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in awhile.

The law of averages will catch up to him eventually.

The laws of Averages has lapped the party I am in. We ALL roll freakishly bad and low. The only luck I have had is with my stats and my hitpoints. Doesn't matter that I can't hit anything, can't make a skill check. None of us can make skill checks.

I would use matched dice but my stupid cat manages to snag one and I lose it.

 

[DethStryke]

Speaking of getting on hot streaks... Old One tends to do that to us in his Fading Glory campaign. He drops his dice in view for combat, and I have seen multiple crits or at least always above 16. :\ The ability for the players to roll fumbles at any save or skill check known to man is legendary. Rowen, tortoise on the board, typically reverses the luck by rolling a crit at the most random time and screwing up Old One's plans.

In my Star Wars game, I watched the entire table of five players drop a 20 for a skill check one after the other.... it was surreal. It went from the far right to the far left, one after the other in sequence.

I broke the flow with a 4.

 

[Chimera]

Also tend to roll in streaks. I know I'm going to pay for Monday night eventually.

First level Rogue with a rapier. Twelve hits and I think only 3 misses, in 2 combats. Rolled a natural 20 FIVE times (and a 19 and an 18), for 7 potential crits out of 15 attacks. Unfortunately, most of our opponents were undead, so only one was an actual crit.

All rolled open table, in plain sight of everyone (I tend to roll into the middle of the table, toward the GM), using one of the old 0-9/0-9 purple dies from the early days. My favorite D20.

 

[demiurge1138]

A while ago, we had a player who never rolled anything below a 15 on her d20s. She was a second generation gamer who inherited her dice from her father, and refused to believe in the possibility that the dice were loaded. Then again, she did refuse to use any other dice...

In the game I'm currently playing, one guy is an absolute luck sponge. He rolls well all of the time, and if he touches somebody else's dice (usually mine, as I have the most), they start rolling badly. He played as a substitute in the game I DM a few days ago, and he was confident that he could turn things around for the (haplessly unlucky) character. So, of course, he rolled nothing above a 10. Karma had finally caught him. But then again, everyone in the entire party started rolling really poorly as well. And the monsters consistently rolled well. It was a TPK, even with plenty of minimum damage, "oh, it missed" fudging. It was sad...

Demiurge out.

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

I had a group with a player like that. Always rolled well no matter what; low rolls were for saves and attacks that were not consequential.

Then, we were level 13, and traipsing throuh "Heart of Nightfang Spire" and at the final battle. And in the first round, he failed a Will save and died. TPK. We could always count on Scott for "hot rolling" in combat and he wasn't there to save us.

 

[the Jester]

When I play (as opposed to dm) I tend to get really hot rolls or really, atrociously bad ones. The two crits in one round with my bow after almost everyone else was dead was perfect. And it was the character's first combat!

 

[Greylock]

Law of Averages, hmmm. Maybe tonight...

Playing a fighter in a campaign that's almost a year old. 6th level, so he's into two attacks now, and he's never been shy about standing alone at the front of battle. Specialises in Bastard Sword, which threatens on a 19.

Once. I have rolled a crit once. In a year. Just one.

 

[Seeten]

I have a 7th level Barbarian/Fighter Half-Orc with a great axe in a campaign currently, and he has NEVER had a critical in over a year of playing. Well, I did crit something for 75 dmg, but it turned out to be undead, so I really only did 25 or whatever. Kinda sad.

 

[Cintra]

One member of my gaming group, Joe, tends to roll pretty badly. To make it worse, when I GM, I tend to roll really well against him. Same dice rolled in front of everyone, and I'll roll really low for attacks on everyone else in the group, then crit against him. And Joe has a habit of sending his character into danger more than most of the others (he plays very impulsive characters who enjoy getting into the middle of battle), so I get plenty of opportunities to roll against him.

I got an extra-large d20 for really dramatic moments, when the d20 roll is likely to determine life or death for a character. We now call it the Joe Die, because it seems like whenever I roll it, Joe dies.

In fact, when we had a couple of new people join our group recently, we were telling them about the Joe Die. I pulled it out and rolled it a couple of times, got some low-to-average numbers. Then I said, "now I'm rolling against Joe," looked straight at Joe, and rolled the die - and it came up 20.