When GMs roll bad

[humble minion]

GMs do roll bad, but sometimes it's all for the best. An example:

Climactic battle of our last campaign, a very, very magicked-up 20th level party against a great red wyrm with aspirations to godhood. He's already killed the fighter, the shadowdancer (my PC) was killed by his general after rolling 7 attack rolls 6 or below while trying for a sneak attack on a badly wounded target. The monk is down to 12hp, the wizard is on half hp, has already used 80% of his spells and melted down his artifact crown trying to hurt the dragon. No luck. Then, the wizard casts his last offensive spell - disintegrate. Save DC 22. Dragon's Fort save modifier about +38. Natural 1. Small pile of dust.

This was, literally, the last throw of the dice. The GM rolled the save in front of us - it that hadn't done the job then we definitely would have lost, and failed in the campaign goal. So the moral of this story: trust the dice - the dice know what's best.

I'm still dark about how my shadowdancer died though...

 

[magnas_veritas]

One of our DMs rolls so badly that he's evolved his gaming style around out. He has his favored 'Big Bag of HP' monsters that he sends up against the PCs, so they'll last long enough to do some damage.

Now, I don't play in the game he runs (as I can't game constantly). His die-rolling luck runs over to his playing, too, so one day in our other main game, I lent him four d20s, and he started rolling well. Real well.

He's started using those dice while DMing, too. Now the other players have started talking about doing dreadful things to me.

Brad

 

[LostWorldsMike]

Whenever I GM and I use a critter with a, say, 50% miss chance you'd THINK that'd mean that half the time any successful hit on the beast in question would miss, but, in practice, it really works out to be something like 8% of the time.

In other words, I can't roll for crap as a GM. Actually, I can't roll for crap as a player either (I think I've made all of 5 saving throws in the time 3e has been out).

Hmmm...maybe I need new dice.

 

[Necrobeer]

Of course, I rather roll bad as GM than as a player.