What do you do when your players refuse to succeed?

[mmu1]

I'm at the end of my rope, here. I've been running a campaign for a while, and it had been going pretty well, until four sessions ago, when all luck seems to have abandoned the characters (and the players).

In order, it went something like this:

1. The party nearly suffered a TPK because of a combination of bad tactics and bad rolls.

2. The party was re-formed and the surviving characters set out to rescue a PC that had gotten captured during the near-TPK. During what should have been a standard encounter with some orc dire-wolf riders (I was hoping to give them a fight against relatively tough enemies they could beat handily to help them shake off the recent loss) the dwarven barbarian got tripped to death because he failed something like 11 out of 12 opposed strength checks - his die rolls would not break 10. (despite the fact I started to fudge my rolls in their favor towards the end of it)

3. They replaced the dead PC, and headed back into the dungeon. They were more careful this time, but when they attacked the area where their friend was held prisoner, everything damn near fell apart again. They failed lterally 90% of the saving throws they had to make. They couldn't hit the broad side of the barn. When they did hit, they rolled so badly for damage that one of the characters was unsuccessful in delivering a coup de grace with a freakin' greatsword!

Then, for the encore, the same player cast area Dispel Magic three or four times in a row trying to remove the Slow and Web spell effects which were plaguing the party, and failed all of the resulting 15-20 caster level checks despite the fact he was higher level than the enemy caster.

It was a miracle that they managed to scrape on by in the end.

4. It's the next session, and I'm praying for a fresh start. I throw at them a combat vs. a trio of mining constructs designed to be easy to hit but able to last a while, (a little DR, a little SR, some elemental resistances, but only mediocre AC and average HP) and which really don't dish out a lot of damage vs. a 7th level party. They nearly cause a TPK again. One of the players rolls (unadjusted) a total of 11 on 4 attack rolls. The guy running a halfling caster with 18 Dex can't hit a ranged touch attack to save his life. The rest of them have trouble rolling over 10. In the end, they win, but one of the characters is at -8 when he's stabilized...

I've tried making the encounters easier, adjusting the enemies so that they do less damage as well as a bit of creative fudging - all to no avail. The one thing I can't affect is what my players roll, and I have never seen a bad streak this long. Probability says it's extremely unlikely to continue, but that's what I was telling myself after two sessions of this... I draw the line at sacrificing chickens to the dice gods, even thought the idea is starting to get tempting - right now, it seems like it's only a matter of time until they all die unless I fall back on having them fight CR 1 or 2 monsters that don't have any nasty abilities.... (like the Ghoul with its fearsome DC 13 paralysis - that's almost guaranteed to take out a couple of my players' PCs if I tried it)

 

[haakon1]

Maybe they are rolling a d12 instead of a d20? We had a player who couldn't roll above a 12 to save his life, until someone finally noticed why . . .

 

[Brother MacLaren]

Don't tone down the difficulty and don't fudge anything.
There's no such thing as luck and their d20s are just as likely to come up high the next time they roll.

A d20 is simply a piece of molded plastic. It has no memory, no soul, and no malice.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

There are several options.

First, they should get dice cups. They may be subconsciously influencing their own die rolls, which the use of a die cup will make a lot harder. If needed, a paper cup shouldn't be too loud.

Second, new dice. While there may not be such a thing as luck (a proposition I disagree with, but that's neither here nor there), fresh dice are less likely to have long memories. Even changing die users may have an effect; when I gave some excess dice to a friend who was having a horrible streak, he actually hit average.

Third, relax. Maybe have a social adventure, or another one where you don't do much die rolling. Also, continuing with the plot might not be good, because it reinforces memories of failure in their minds.

Brad

 

[billd91]

Given their run of luck, play it up as a humor campaign?

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

It has no memory, no soul, and no malice.

Shows what you know. My dice are full of malice.

I would fudge the rolls a bit. Maybe have everyone take a short break, take a breather and come back in five minutes when everyone’s head has cleared.

 

[jdrakeh]

Sadly, that's one of the issues with linear probabilities. Try using the UA method of rolling 3d6 instead -- this should give you some larger degree of randomness centered around an average die roll result of 11-13. Or, alternately, roll 2d10 (add them together) with results of 2 being treated a results of 1 in standard d20.

 

[Arkhandus]

Introduce action points of some sort, from whatever source you like. Unearthed Arcana, Eberron Campaign Setting, d20 Modern, etc.

One guy I've gamed with has this little houserule of his - at the start of each session, each player gets one action die, a d6. They get another one for each point of Charisma bonus their character has. They can spend those action dice during the session to increase rolls by the amount rolled on the d6. He even allows multiple action dice to be spent on a single roll, all adding to the result. But once an action die's spent, he takes it back and its gone for the session.

 

[jdrakeh]

One guy I've gamed with has this little houserule of his. . .

Action Dice come from Spycraft

 

[SlagMortar]

and failed all of the resulting 15-20 caster level checks despite the fact he was higher level than the enemy caster.

With fair dice, failing 20 straight dispel checks against an equal level caster is literally a 1 out of a million run. Seriously, it might be time to check the dice. A friend of mine has a d20 that only has the ones digit of the numbers with white 1-9 representing 1-9, white 0 representing 10, black 1-9 representing 11-19 and black 0 representing 20. Unfortunately, the die is old and the paint is worn off on some of the numbers. It has caused some streaks of bad 'luck' until a 0 is rolled and the player wonders what the heck that means.