When the Dice go Bad

[Nightcloak]

With all the great threads detailing classic “stupid moments” in games, I was reminded of moments were the dice turned on my players. When I mean turn, I mean turn spectacularly bad in a “What are the odds?” kind of moment. Something you talk about years later and end up reading in Knights of the Dinner Table.

For me, back in 1E, I was running a long campaign for several years (real time) with two players and everything came down to the last fight with the BBEG. It was the culmination of the whole campaign.

The two players sneak into the villain’s castle to confront him alone to make it a fair fight. The BBEG was in the armory equipping himself, and at that point unarmored. He didn’t have good odds but I wasn’t going to fudge things, I thought the players deserved to get the upper hand due to the time and care they took in planning their tactics and successfully getting that far (without a fight!). The characters were really on top of their game and I was ready to congratulate them on a well-played game (and campaign) after combat. Until…

The first round of combat, the characters close in on the unarmored BBEG who grabs and fires a crossbow at them, then retrieves his sword for the final battle. The bolt had a simple sleep poison on it, the kind of low level sleep poison that high level characters usually laugh at. The player rolls a 1 and goes down for several minutes.

The next character closes with the villain and proceeds to roll a 1 three times in a row. Also, during those same rounds, I roll a 20 each time and in front of the players.

Two years in the making and after 5 rounds the epic final encounter is over with the heroes down and an unarmored villain not even scratched.

I took pity on them for such terrible rolls and had the bad guy capture them for execution instead of just killing them on the spot (ala James Bond syndrome), thus giving them a chance to escape and hopefully a second chance at the BBEG.

Two good things did result from the whole affair:

1. The players did escape and the final battle later was even sweeter due to the additional story developed from their capture.
2. After the three 1’s in a row, the player chucked the offending 20-sider. It became my cat’s favorite toy for 14 years. I’d wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of him playing with it and just had to laugh at the whole thing.


So, what are your stories of the dice going bad?

 

[Zethnar]

I dont have a particular story, I just cant roll high on dice, period. Its a rare occasion that I get a 13 or a 15 or anything higher or indeed anything good enough to actually hit anything.

I have come to the conclusion that my dice hate me and that buying new dice doesnt work as the old dice take the new dice under their wing and show them the ropes (ie, how to roll a one 50% of the time).

On the odd occasion that I do score a hit, or in fact am lucky enough to actually land a critical, you can be guaranteed that the damage dice are going to come up ones and twos.

 

[Crothian]

I had a player that in the first combat rolled 7 nat 1's on his only rolls. After the seventh one. He stood up, extremely frustrated and walked away and didn't play that session.

 

[Spud]

In my current campaign we have one of the PC's continually rolls high for initiative but cant hit for toffee. He has in fact been bought two lots of dice to try and change his luck..
In fact the whole party are having pretty bad luck on their rolls, and I (the DM) seem to be rolling lots of natural 20's.. That and the fact that we are doing Temple of Elemental Evil means ive had 8 PC deaths and we havnt reached the Temple yet!