Dealing with players rolling terribly in combat?
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Don’t know if you caught it in the OP, but this is already a digital platform. I will look into the idea of a “trinket of luck” or something (non-attuned, because punishing them for their bad luck seems like a bad move).
Computers can’t do random. They usually approximate random by truncating seconds since epoc and throwing them into an algorithm the hashes them up into something that’s sort of random. Problem is that time is not really random. You ever notice that your random music shuffle seems to play the same shit all the time? Unless of course somebody else is there to listen, then it plays crazy shit you’ve never heard before. It probably has less to do with luck and more to do with you having regular listening habits, and the times that it plays crazy shit is those times that you are listening outside of your normal habits. And then there’s the algorithm that they use. There’s been a number of digital games that I have stopped playing because the “randomizer” was so shit that I could begin to “predict” future rolls.
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Everyone has bad dice days. Everyone has that one time you get a Nat 1 at a critical moment.
But guys, my party is in trouble.
They’re consistently rolling terribly in combat across multiple sessions, classes, and dice types. And I mean terribly. Over time, you’d think their d20 rolls would average out to about unmodified 10, right? Plus or minus a bit. Hah. No. They’re averaging about 7. Other rolls (damage, healing, etc) also often suffer from this. It’s turning combat into a slog; anything with an AC of above 12-14 or so is proving awful to fight, and when attacks do hit they often do little damage.
We’re all experienced players, and it’s a digital platform - so I can both know they’re not missing modifications to the raw d20 roll, and know it’s not “bad dice”. Unfortunately, they’re also experienced enough to figure out ACs from misses/hits, so it’s not like I can even give them “free passes” on attacks as anti-frustration measures.
It’s at the point where I’m thinking the honest only way to “fix” this is to artificially nerf NPCs or vastly reduce the CR I’m used to them being able to handle. Is that really it, folks?
You could borrow hero points from Pathfinder. Basically, each player gets one or two hero points at the beginning of the session and can spend it to reroll a d20 at any point in the night. You take the rerolled result. Note that these expire at the end of the session and cannot be stacked up for next time.
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Everyone has bad dice days. Everyone has that one time you get a Nat 1 at a critical moment.
But guys, my party is in trouble.
They’re consistently rolling terribly in combat across multiple sessions, classes, and dice types. And I mean terribly. Over time, you’d think their d20 rolls would average out to about unmodified 10, right? Plus or minus a bit. Hah. No. They’re averaging about 7. Other rolls (damage, healing, etc) also often suffer from this. It’s turning combat into a slog; anything with an AC of above 12-14 or so is proving awful to fight, and when attacks do hit they often do little damage.
We’re all experienced players, and it’s a digital platform - so I can both know they’re not missing modifications to the raw d20 roll, and know it’s not “bad dice”. Unfortunately, they’re also experienced enough to figure out ACs from misses/hits, so it’s not like I can even give them “free passes” on attacks as anti-frustration measures.
It’s at the point where I’m thinking the honest only way to “fix” this is to artificially nerf NPCs or vastly reduce the CR I’m used to them being able to handle. Is that really it, folks?
Tell them to roll real dice for attacks and trust them to not lie.
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Everyone has bad dice days. Everyone has that one time you get a Nat 1 at a critical moment.
But guys, my party is in trouble.
They’re consistently rolling terribly in combat across multiple sessions, classes, and dice types. And I mean terribly. Over time, you’d think their d20 rolls would average out to about unmodified 10, right? Plus or minus a bit. Hah. No. They’re averaging about 7. Other rolls (damage, healing, etc) also often suffer from this. It’s turning combat into a slog; anything with an AC of above 12-14 or so is proving awful to fight, and when attacks do hit they often do little damage.
We’re all experienced players, and it’s a digital platform - so I can both know they’re not missing modifications to the raw d20 roll, and know it’s not “bad dice”. Unfortunately, they’re also experienced enough to figure out ACs from misses/hits, so it’s not like I can even give them “free passes” on attacks as anti-frustration measures.
It’s at the point where I’m thinking the honest only way to “fix” this is to artificially nerf NPCs or vastly reduce the CR I’m used to them being able to handle. Is that really it, folks?
You really can’t fix it by artificially nerffing because assuming that the platform has random enough dice (which is most likely does for any real needs) the fact that they have thrown poorly before doesn’t mean that they will do so after your changes.
I don’t know how you are keeping track of the rolls but if you aren’t, I would first try that to truly see if it really is the case that the rolls are lower than average. Our memories of things going poorly aren’t objective and tend to enlarge amount of bad outcomes.
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Everyone has bad dice days. Everyone has that one time you get a Nat 1 at a critical moment.
But guys, my party is in trouble.
They’re consistently rolling terribly in combat across multiple sessions, classes, and dice types. And I mean terribly. Over time, you’d think their d20 rolls would average out to about unmodified 10, right? Plus or minus a bit. Hah. No. They’re averaging about 7. Other rolls (damage, healing, etc) also often suffer from this. It’s turning combat into a slog; anything with an AC of above 12-14 or so is proving awful to fight, and when attacks do hit they often do little damage.
We’re all experienced players, and it’s a digital platform - so I can both know they’re not missing modifications to the raw d20 roll, and know it’s not “bad dice”. Unfortunately, they’re also experienced enough to figure out ACs from misses/hits, so it’s not like I can even give them “free passes” on attacks as anti-frustration measures.
It’s at the point where I’m thinking the honest only way to “fix” this is to artificially nerf NPCs or vastly reduce the CR I’m used to them being able to handle. Is that really it, folks?
Probability is just probability. What separates D&D from a video game is the flexibility of the players and the DM. Lateral thinking wins the day!
My advice? Review your players’ backstories and add in an unexpected ally who shows up just in time to deliver the solution, but at the cost of needing their help with something conveniently related to the main quest. Alternatively, encounter an NPC who, likewise, conveniently assists them out of a sticky spot in exchange for pursuing the main quest.
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Altering the CR is my answer.
Not figuring out CR is why I was not a good DM, among other things. That you mention it at all tells me you probably have some semblance of a handle on it.
Personally, I view CR like the pirate code; they’re more like guidelines than rules.
I look for how much damage a monster can deal in one round. I try to simulate a planned combat encounter well before I throw it at my players to make sure it’s survivable if they’re smart.
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You really can’t fix it by artificially nerffing because assuming that the platform has random enough dice (which is most likely does for any real needs) the fact that they have thrown poorly before doesn’t mean that they will do so after your changes.
I don’t know how you are keeping track of the rolls but if you aren’t, I would first try that to truly see if it really is the case that the rolls are lower than average. Our memories of things going poorly aren’t objective and tend to enlarge amount of bad outcomes.
After I noticed this, to confirm it wasn’t just imagination I just started logging the roll results (d20s, at least) into an Excel sheet as we played. And yeah, they’re actually rolling that badly.
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Why would a fix be required? It seems like you expect the bad rolls to continue.
Well, I’d like to fix the frustration (for both me and my players). Whether that means fixing the rolls or fixing the encounters to account for bad rolls, something needs to be altered.
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Combat is always situational. Make their bad rolls have environmental consequences.
From a narrative standpoint, a bad roll doesn’t have to be a miss. They can hit a barrel of oil, or fish, and cause it to break open. Now everyone who isn’t a fishmonger within the spill area has disadvantage on all attack and save rolls.
Also, as dm, you never have to make your roles public.
Oh, my rolls as DM are private (and of course I’m fudging them as needed). But their rolls are public still!
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Give them custom weapons or spells that are most effective when you roll low.
Out of all the ideas here, this is one that interest me the most. I’ve seen a lot of things, but not something that does better when you’re low…
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The luck system might be something to look into. It can help mitigate consecutive failures while maintaining balance.
Thanks for that link! I’ll toss that at my group and see what they think.
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You might consider adding a puzzle element to encounters that can lower the effective difficulty with clever maneuvers or strategies.
As an example, fighting in a room with a big chandelier overhead. A player can cut the chandelier at the opportune moment to pin a major adversary, allowing them to coup de grace or simply flaunt their victory to the villain’s face.
Or perhaps fighting in a room full of mirrors that allow a clever player to reflect a gaze attack. Or doing Battleship style combat, where you have to pick the square of a hidden enemy, but you guarantee a hit if you guess correctly.
In general, try introducing non-dice resolutions to the scene - guessing a magic word that disables a key piece of enemy tech, baiting enemies into an area or formation before springing a trap, completing a ritual that can summon a powerful ally by solving a rubric cube.
If all else fails, you can drop some nice loot them. Awand of fireballs or Staff of the Sun or similar high powered magic item, for instance. Doesn’t matter how you roll with these, you’re going to have some fun.
Tactical gameplay is already something I very much encourage. One nice thing about playing with the same group for a long time is that I know they’ll respond when I put things on the map - opportunities to flank, drop or collapse things, and so on.
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After I noticed this, to confirm it wasn’t just imagination I just started logging the roll results (d20s, at least) into an Excel sheet as we played. And yeah, they’re actually rolling that badly.
Can you share your data? Because anyway unless the roll engine is faulty the past won’t tell you about the future rolls.
