What do you do when your players refuse to succeed?

[thompgc]

You sure that some of the d20 were replaced by the kind that are 1-10 twice (or is it 0-9 twice). Had someone make that mistake once.

 

[Stormcrowe]

I wouldnt turn the whole thing into a comedy but I would continue on like you have but start slowly turning the current story a little "Dreamish" if you can. Strange things appear, someone from their past walks up says something cryptic and then vanishes into the bushes, maybe throw a few plot threads out for future adventures. Then have them wake up in some strange place and let them react to all of it.

Ok, so im on a strange LOST kick for game insperation.

 

[roguerouge]

The God of Ill Luck and Misfortune becomes the party's antagonist?

 

[mmu1]

I've seen these dice in play in various games over the last couple of years, and they've been fine until now. In fact, in a different game we play in, that I'm a player in, they work just fine.

I won't swear to it that the actually failed every one of 20 Dispel Magic checks - it's how I remember it, but I could be off - failure is always more memorable. Mind you, even if I am off, we're still talking about something like at most 2 or 3 successful rolls out of 20.

Anyway... Hmm... The action point idea could work - still, they're just as capable of rolling a 1 on a 1d6 as on a 1d20, but it's something.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

I never humor players' superstitions, but if you wanted to, here's what you might do: let them roll the enemies' attacks and saves.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Try new dice. If the dice were molded badly they may be weighted to low numbers. Or maybe if they're old they've been chipped and now favour certain numbers. Swap dice with the players.

ACtion points work well for those times when the heoes really need to succeed eg: Stopping the Master Villain from throwing the switch on his doomsday machine. But you may end up giving out so many of them that they become devalued. By all means use them but if the players' die really are weighted badly it's not going to help that much.

 

[Piratecat]

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 . . .

This was me when I first started playing AD&D, back in '81.

 

[Arkhandus]

Oh, here's another idea: Have the players find one or two Wands of True Strike. Maybe then they'll start to use the darn things to at least enhance the party wizard's or sorcerer's attack rolls, and maybe the rogue's/bard's or whatever if they've poured ranks into Use Magic Device. In the latter case, though, to be on the safe side they should take Skill Focus (UMD) as soon as possible, and get a Cloak of Charisma if they don't already have high Charisma.

 

[Warren Okuma]

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)

Questions:
1) Are you using any houserules?
2) What CR is the opponents and what level is the party?
3) Do the characters have level appropriate treasure?

 

[Lanefan]

I once had a party like this.

Preamble: my rule at the time was new characters come in a level below the party average.

They start out on Night's Dark Terror with a 4th-ish level party (the module expects them to be 2nd) of 5 characters. About 4 sessions in, they lose 2 characters due to some outright stupidity (and bad rolling); so they go back to town and do some recruiting.

Back in the field, a party of 7 this time comes within a whisker of a TPK vs. a single 3rd-level Goblin Cleric who they'd let esacpe during a battle earlier that day. (it Hold-Person-ed the lone man on watch during the night, then started slitting sleeping characters' throats...by sheer luck one of 'em woke up but only after 2 others were dead...) Next day, while licking their wounds, their #1 fighter gets killed by a critical hit from a giant ferret! So, back to town again...

And so it went. No character that started that adventure survived it, and the 4th-level party that started was a 2nd-level party by the time they "finished", and by finished I mean gave up as they never did complete the module. (that said, partly due to this experience NDT is #1 on my list of all-time worst adventure modules)

I was strongly reminded of these guys when I read the original post here.

Lanefan