Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Colep715 Jun 07, 2015 14:10:46	I'll preface this post with that I have no reservation about dealing a leathal blow to one of my players and I prefer to play the dice as they land, that being said...   So my group had a session last night in which one of my players rolled terribly the whole game, in one skirmish alone he rolled a 1 six consecutive times. The rest of his rolls through out the night were just as bad, not all critical failures but generally on the very low side of the die. In fact he only landed a few blows by the barest of margines and was mostly ineffective all night. Luckily enough nothing I had them facing was a super threat or hugely life or death so player death was not really in the cards last night. I will give him props for trying to keep excited about the game but I could tell that he was not having very much fun and that he was just going through the motions for the sake of the rest of the players and myself.  I know that when someone fails a roll at a critical moment or does something stupid you should make their failure exciting and spectacular so that it becomes a moment to remember, but when the player hasn't done anything wrong and is trying his best to just pull his own weight and the dice just won't help them it gets frustrating for them. I don't want him to start thinking of his character as an incompetent bumbler (which he's not) or worse a liability for the rest of the party (not that I think he would after only one bad session).   Really my question is here what do you guys recommend or do when a player is having a bad dice night and it is starting to loose interest in the session. How can I keep him enthusiastic about rolling 1's and generally having an ineffective session where he feels like he didn't contribute. At what point should I start feeling bad for a player and maybe alter things to make them feel better, especially if this happens for multiple sessions?   This isn't the first time this has happened to my group and I'm sure it has happened to many groups out there. I know that my my guys will continue to play even if this keeps happening as they love RP'ing and we have been friends for years, so I am not concerned about any in my group leaving. Just want to know how you guys would deal with this.
#2 OrwellianHaggis Jun 07, 2015 14:36:17	I can't give you any advice on this, but I sympathise with your player. Unfortunately I'm the same, when I play.
#3 Jedric0202 Jun 07, 2015 15:27:51	If you don't have too tight a plot to navigate at the moment, it sounds to me like your player has been cursed by a witch/hag/whatever suits your campaign.  Might be a chance to go on a quick side quest or develop some backstory for the character.  Why is he cursed? Is it something he did, or perhaps something done by his family? Who cursed him? Apply disadvantage to all of his rolls to make him realize something is up until they can find whoever has cursed him.  In my experience, players (already a silly, superstitious lot) will appreciate you weaving their lack of luck into the campaign--if they can fix it.
#4 BRJN Jun 07, 2015 15:41:03	Give the player in question a chance to RP - no dice involved - and gain a significant accomplishment for the Party.  Maybe he can small-talk / question a potential informant out of information?   Also, check his dice a bit; I had to replace a d20 because it consistently rolled low.  I later found out it was mis-manufactured with an air bubble inside.
#5 Greenstone.Walker Jun 07, 2015 17:03:55	I would reduce the combat for that session and focus more on the other two pillars of the game.   End combats early once it is obvious what the outcome is. If the characters have taken out five hobgoblins and there are only three left then just say "To save some time rolling dice, you handily take down the remaining foes."
(Reply to #4) Nevvur	BRJN wrote:
#7 pudd Jun 07, 2015 18:41:06	Because his weapon rolled so many critical fails in a row it should now be cursed and the players should have to go on a quest to remove the curse or something. Also it's now a sentient weapon that calls itself Starscream. I suppose it doesn't really make the players less ineffective, but it could be an interesting story thing.
#8 Rhenny Jun 07, 2015 19:09:56	You could ask the player to come up with an in-game reason why his PC is not doing so hot.  Then give him inspiration.  Heck, use inspiration like candy for every sucky thing he does as long as he comes up with an interesting narrative twist.     In a game I played in a few weeks ago, my PC was poisoned and coincidentally, he started rolling horribly even after he got cured.  I just chalked it up to lingering effects and I started to play my PC as paranoid that someone would poison him again.     In a game I DMd, the monk in the party played to his flaw and got drunk when he found a bottle of booze.  After that, when he rolled badly he played up the tippling drunk. He had a blast, and I awarded him inspiration.
#9 CCS Jun 07, 2015 20:33:00	I wouldn't change anything your doing DM wise. . Your player on the other hand.... Needs to learn to recognize the ebb & flow of probability and adjust their play accordingly. Some nights you'll just roll crap. At first you won't likely realize that it's going to be "one of those sessions". But after awhile it becomes clear.... So adjust playstyle as quickly as possible. Do things that DON'T rely upon a dice roll for success/effect (yes, even if your main function is stabbing things). Always be in position to flank, prep very useful but non-dice reliant spells, voice good ideas that OTHER people can then roll for etc. And remain as entertaining a player as you'd be any other session.
#10 Xeviat-DM Jun 07, 2015 20:35:44	In Mutants and Masterminds, you get hero points whenever you crit fail, but you can't use them to negate the failure. Giving out inspiration in this method could make someone feel better about that.   I have a pair of calipers for my jewelry making, and I once was curious and measured a player's die. He had a propencity of rolling 2, 3, 18, and 19. Those numbers were on opposite sides. As it turned out, he was frequently rolling an entire equater of the die, as the die was football shaped so that it greatly tended to roll a certain way. That's why I personally use a random number generator.
#11 Noon Jun 07, 2015 23:26:40	CCS wrote:
#12 Rya.Reisender Jun 08, 2015 4:23:27	I sometimes work with inspiration in situations like these as Rhenny has explained.   I also like the idea of making it some sub-plot, if it fits and the player actually wants that at all (because y'know, he might not want his bad luck to be the focus).   If he keeps on rolling 1s, ask him to make a Halfling, lol.
#13 iserith Jun 08, 2015 5:42:54	Colep715 wrote:
#14 DemoMonkey Jun 08, 2015 12:10:29	Offer the player the choice: for the rest of that session, they can keep reading their dice normally, or they can treat their rolls as 21 minus the number showing on the dice.   I did that for one player and damned if their consistently sucky die rolls that night didn't continue, but were turned into awesomeness by the inversion.   Statistically it makes no difference, of course. Biut it makes the player feel like they are doing something to solve the problem.
#15 BRJN Jun 08, 2015 16:37:47	Nevvur wrote:
#16 Colep715 Jun 08, 2015 18:43:49	Lots of good suggestions, Thanks guys I will definately use this stuff when it happens again.   On another note you guys got me paranoid about my dice, so I took all my d20's to work this morning and measured them with a micrometer across each parallel surface. I'll be damned, not a single one of them was symetrical at all. The best one had a varience of only 0.010", but the worst was out 0.046". That more than a millimeter to you metric folk, talk about a loaded die. I also noted a few air bubbles in some of the see through dice... I tell you quality control is out the windows these days, these were not cheap or reject dice.
#17 transcendantviewer Jun 08, 2015 20:24:34	If you've got the freedom to get creative with the rules, you could have some of his 1s do some silly things that actually result in helpful outcomes. For instance... The Ranger knocks an arrow, ready to fire. He takes aim and... His bow launches out of his hands, hurtling upwards before dropping down and incidentally landing on the kobold he'd been taking aim at, knocking the poor, scaley being unconscious. His arrow, on the other hand, is launched into the dirt, pinning a cultist's foot to the ground by his shoe. The Cultist breathes a mild sigh of relief as he realizes that the arrow miraculously missed his toes.
#18 QwertyAzerty Jun 09, 2015 7:08:55	In home game I like to allow my player to add their same failling dice together if they miss twice in a row.   So for example, in combat a player swing his sword 5 times.   for time he roll 3 on his attack roll +4 strenght =7 and miss 2nd time he roll5 on his attack roll, +4(strenght) for a total of 9 he miss 3rd roll he roll 10. Since he miss the last 2 attacks he can add them together, for a total of 10+3+5+4(strenght) = 21 and he hit 4th roll he roll 6 on his attack roll +4 (strenght) = 10 and he miss 5th roll he roll a 4 on his attack roll and miss. He then use his bonus action to hide roll 6 on his hide roll (cannot add the 6+4 since those were attack roll , not stealth roll)   So this increase there chance to hit at least once every 3 rounds so it reduce the propability of very bad luck. Most of the time this is wasted (roll low on the first roll but rolled high on the second roll so the first roll cannot be used anymore) The roll cannot be kept nor transfert. if you roll advantage or lucky, you just take the highest value to add to your 3rd roll etc...   This is a HOUSE RULE and it work great with MY group. This is not AL legal, and it might not work with your group. you can tweak it if you want but I don't know how it will work since I'm using this system without problem for the last 10 years. My player understand it's a house rule and if they try to abuse it I will modify/remove it since it's there to help the really bad luck streak, not to be abused in some way.   If I had recommendation to modify it I would say it cannot be used with weapon that you are not proficient with. If adding the number together you obtain 20 you do not crit etc...   On the other hand I will forge my monster roll if they happen to have a really bad luck streak or an extrem good lucky streak (I find it boring to kill my player because my bugbear got 4 crit in a 5 round fight. I don't mind killing player when they do stupid thing, big mistake or refuse to listen to the hint present in the module, but killing because I rolled 4 crit in a row is sad. I also find it boring (and sometime even ruin the story)when the vampire that is suppose to scare the player then run away so the player can face him again later, roll under 5 all fight long and fail in both scaring the player and runing away)
#19 intently Jun 09, 2015 12:02:37	Some dice definitely do not roll fairly, and I performed an experiment to prove it.   No matter what dice you use, you'll get more random results if you roll them in a hard container with walls, like a pyrex baking dish, instead of on a table. Both the hard surface and the impact against a wall are important factors that improve randomness for imperfect dice. (Compare craps tables in Vegas.)
#20 Ralif_Redhammer Jun 09, 2015 13:43:45	This happened to my brother years ago. I bought him a set of Gamescience Precision dice as a present.   One thing we did do is invert the dice roll values, so that a rolled 1 was a 20, a 2 a 19, and so on. I swear the dice wised up and started rolling high to thwart that.   That being said, sometimes the dice are just off on a night. People can't roll high all the time, and if they do, well there's probably something fishy going on.
#21 Castillo_de_Santiago Jun 09, 2015 17:14:41	Keep a hammer in your game bag and hand it to him next time he rolls low.
#22 OGRE1984 Jun 09, 2015 20:08:43	Colep715 wrote:
#23 Saeviomagy Jun 09, 2015 23:15:07	Yeah, take a look at some of game science's videos for why most role-playing dice end up with a significant bias.