The following column originally appeared on Ludus Ludorum (link), but after watching a near-TPK from the sidelines the other night, I thought I'd repost it here. (It's mine, so I have permission. :-) ) I realize there are plenty of DMs out there who think the game isn't bloody enough and that it's a great session if the players themselves (not just their PCs!) are carried out on stretchers with sucking chest wounds. (I hyperbolize. A little.) This column probably isn't for them. But for those who start to cringe when the dice are clearly conspiring to TPK the party and ruin the night just one hour into a session (the heroes are fumbling; the lowliest of orcs rolls saves like he's Loki), then some of these ideas might be helpful. I'd be interested in hearing if anyone else has good tricks out there!
----------------------------------------------------
House Rules for Evil Dice
by Graham Robert ScottSome nights the players at the table just can’t roll to save their lives (or rather, their characters’ lives). Sure, the luck of the die is part of the fun. Some risk is good; sometimes dice will kill a PC, and that’s part of the game. But a group slog through the Valley of Bad Dice is miserable and demoralizing for all involved. It also sucks being the one person at the table who always seems to roll poorly.
What follows are some ways to take some of the sting out of bad die rolls without having to fudge the dice behind the DM screen.
1. Inspirational Fumbling: The player has rolled a 1 on a d20, and in your group, this is a fumble. Fair enough. Give the player a chance to interpret his or her own fumble in an attempt to glean an Inspiration point out of it. As with regular Inspiration rules, the goals are to be fun and to be true to the character and situation. A player who voluntarily interprets a fumble in a way detrimental to the PC and his or her goals deserves an Inspiration point. And for our part, we think one who cracks up the entire table with a funny interpretation earns one, too. But don’t encourage humor unless you’re pretty sure your players can be funny, or else every game will be like the day that Spongebob ripped his pants.
2. The Hammer Clock: In a combat, each time someone on either side fails to draw blood, add 1 damage counter to the clock. At any point, a character on either side can take counters off the clock to add to damage after successfully hitting a foe. Note that this option works best if the probabilities of hitting are about the same on both sides. If one has a severe AC advantage, then this option just accelerates that side’s victory. An alternative is to give each side its own clock, but that then gives you more to track.
3. Assume 5: In past editions, D&D has had rules for Take 10 and Take 20, which each assumed the PC spent 10 or 20 minutes making attempts until getting either a 10 or 20 result. A character who “took 10″ or “took 20″ could use a 10 or 20 for the die roll without actually rolling dice, and that option helped reduce the odds of silly fumbles for checks if the character could take her time. But it didn’t help in combat or other action sequences. One could, however, permit characters toassume a die roll of 5 for immediate tasks. If their attack bonus is high enough to hit a foe with even a 5, why not just let them assume it instead of having the character drop a mace on his own head? If they could succeed at that jump with a roll of 5, why not just let them assume they made it? Some will respond, “for realism.” However, we’re not convinced that 5% of the time people will drop maces on their own heads or fondle an orc.
4. Fumble Confirmation: After the fumble is rolled, roll 1d20 again. If the second check would have succeeded, then it’s just a regular miss. This means characters who are proficient in what they are doing and who have high associated abilities are less likely to have catastrophic errors than people with limited potential and no training—which kind of makes sense, we think.
5. The Desk Job Interpretation: If a PC is meant to be bookish and competent in non-combat situations, but not much of a combatant, you might just let the bad rolls in combat be bad rolls. But for each 1 that character rolls, give him an automatic die result of 10 he can spend for a non-combat check later, without taking extra time to use it. An automatic 10 to pick a lock or an automatic 10 to smooth talk a guard will tend to ease the sting a bit, while keeping combat scary—after all, the character might not survive to spend the benefit!
6. The Escape Seed: Instead of looking on hopelessly or intervening cheesily when dice conspire toward a Total Party Kill, a DM could simply anticipate that such moments are inevitable and plan for them. The result of such planning is what I call an “escape seed” — you plant it early and use it when the situation is dire. Here’s how it works: You ensure the party finds or has bestowed on them some sort of mysterious magical device. Lore and divination reveal that it is designed to do something when all hope is lost, but no amount of probing will reveal what it does and any attempt to trigger it when you, the DM, don’t think the situation is that desperate will fail. However, when the PCs are dropping into dying states left and right and you don’t see a way to avoid a “TPK” without some kind of intervention, have that object start glowing or humming or become hot to the touch or something appropriate. Even a dying character holding the item might stir to temporary or partial consciousness as a magical side effect of this “awakening,” suddenly aware through the fog of pain and blurry vision that something has changed. If they then activate the device (if it’s a horn, they might blow it; if it’s a book or a chest, they might finally be able to open it; if it’s a scroll, they might suddenly be able to read or decipher it), something big happens. Effects again will vary depending on the situation.
- Perhaps it teleports the party to some sort of refuge (from which they may have to later find their way back).
- Perhaps, like the horn from Orlando Furioso, it scares away all of the bad guys.
- Maybe it banishes or dispels all evil outsiders in the area.
- Maybe it summons an angel or elemental or, like the Horn of Valhalla of earlier editions, summons a small squad of Veterans (see the NPC stat blocks in the Monster Manual).
- Maybe it casts lesser restoration on the activator and all allies within 60 feet.
Whatever the effect is, it should seem just about perfect for the situation. The cool thing about the escape seed is that the players don’t have to know that you made up the effect on-the-fly as a rescue. As far as they know, you’d planned the whole thing — it’s just of the story for them. Another cool thing is that you can plant another escape seed soon after, and as long as it looks different and has a different effect the next time, the players rarely recognize it’s the same DM-get-out-of-doghouse-free card each time.
7. Combinations of the Above: You might let combatant classes (fighters, monks, etc.) use the Assume 5 option in combat while deciding that wizards and druids use the Desk Job Interpretation when it comes to physical combat. Or let the players pick which of the two approaches will be used for that character. We would recommend, however, phasing in each option one at a time to try them out and see how well they work on their own for your group and its style of play. Tweak as necessary.†