Dealing with players rolling terribly in combat?
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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?
Can you have everyone roll a 50d100?
I’m curious if there’s a technical issue at play that’s influencing the random number generator. Such as a script blocker or privacy tool. There should be no discernible pattern between the players.
There’s also the phenomenon that true random doesn’t feel random. Such as when a music player feels like it’s shuffling between the same 20 songs instead of the whole list.
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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?
so a very important question to ask is… do your players want you to thumb the scales, or do they rather want to see where the shitty rolls go? Sometimes, the best solution is to let it play out. Sometimes, the chance of failure makes it more fun, more dramatic. Sometimes, they’re emotionally invested in the characters. Maybe instead of goosing the dice rolls or something, give them options for when the dice rolls fail- maybe they become prisoners and can then escape and find some way of poisoning enough people to complete the objective. maybe they can talk their way out of it; or they can fix up some sort of trap or set up some kind of envirmomental thingamdoo.
this is where you need to know what kind of things your players look for, and what you can sneak into the campaign for them to find.
ways to help out a bit might include tossing some healing potions or useful elixirs into the world, either as loot to be found or as drops. that’s a bit more subtle. or weapon oils for their weapons. Spell scrolls for the mages, too.
alternatively you could toss them advantage occasionally. They’ll know you’re doing it, of course, but then, nobody really calls that out. alternatively you can bring in a DMPC that buffs them, and sets them right so they don’t have to blow so many spell slots while still letting them guide the action.
as a side note, if you’re using a digital dice generator, there may be an issue with it’s script. Older rngs or modern ones that focus on speed or ‘efficient’ coding generally aren’t entirely random that sometimes leads to faulty spreads. If you can, have it give you an absurdly large number of rolls and report the counts of each number. GPt-4 gave this result for a 500d20:
Face count 1 26 2 24 3 30 4 25 5 29 6 28 7 30 8 26 9 27 10 28 11 24 12 25 13 30 14 29 15 29 16 27 17 27 18 25 19 27 20 29 As you can see they’re all fairly even, but not perfectly so. (it averages out to 10.5, but that’s actually somewhat meaningless since true random is going to be… well. random.) in a large pile of rolls, you shouldn’t see them be all perfect.
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I like this a lot, let them try to break the curse too.
this only works if you can fix the digital dice to be better, heh.
Side note… anybody else here hate karmic dice in bg3?
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some of us have terrible rng… I roll poorly like 70-80% of the time. Out of 20 attack rolls the other day, 14 were misses, like 5 nat 1’s. This is normal for me, every damn session.
This is across multiple systems, and 8+ years of ttrpgs. My rng is dogshit and has been the entire time, I expect the bad rolls to continue.
check your dice. Bet they’re loaded. if you’re just using acrylic and they’re not from the 90’s… they’re probably fine. a salt water test is going to give you gross errors caused by a bad CG. (loaded dice.) otherwise you’re going to be doing some type of statistical analysis.
(I did this to the murderhobo in my party once. it was… hilarious)
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check your dice. Bet they’re loaded. if you’re just using acrylic and they’re not from the 90’s… they’re probably fine. a salt water test is going to give you gross errors caused by a bad CG. (loaded dice.) otherwise you’re going to be doing some type of statistical analysis.
(I did this to the murderhobo in my party once. it was… hilarious)
8 years = a lot of platforms. 10 different sets of physical dice at least, roll20, maptool, dndbeyond, brockjonesdiceroller, drawsteeltool, orcpub, dozens of different digital platforms.
All abysmal rolls all the time.
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Don’t you have several sets of dice, and don’t you ‘dog walk’ your d20s at the beginning of a session to see which one(s) are the lucky ones for the night? Asking for a friend…
I’ve used dozens of sets, including a dozen different online dice rollers. Its all abysmal luck on every platform.
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I really think you were one of the few people who actually read that bit of the original post… thank you!
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Use digital dice?
Narrative solution would be to reveal the party has been cursed somehow this entire time. You can then give them a trinket/spell that mitigates low rolls. They get the best of 2 rolls once per combat or something like that.
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).
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They need to roll the d20 and not the d12.
But seriously, the party can figure out AC, but not hit points. If something is dragging on, just have things die on the next hit. I know some people would complain about it, but it is the group’s game, if something isn’t fun, change it. You have the power.
Also, some things fight to the death, but it is also ok to have some things surrender or run away. Fighting a group of bandits? When one goes down, have someone scream “Bear! No!” and run away crying. Killed half the goblins? The rest turn tail and run.
There are many levers to pull, and don’t be afraid to use them.
Oh, trust me. I’m already working in that kind of thing.
Actually it was a sign of how incredibly frustrated my group is with this situation that they - who normally will pull out every stop to ensure not a single foe escapes - looked at the fleeing NPCs and said “Nah, forget that. We’re not dealing with more of that.”
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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.
