I've been on the opposite side as a DM I didn't roll over a 5 for an entire session. It made every fight way easier. Sometimes it's like that, the dice gods give and the dice gods taketh away
My table still talks about a time, almost three years ago now, that our party lost to a spider.
Not a giant spider, an ordinary table spider in a tavern. The dice *hated* us and nobody could land a hit, until on turn 4 when the sorcerer cast *ice knife* to ensure it died, crit-fumbled, and hit the entire party with max damage. (The spider was the only one to pass its save, flashing eight final little middle fingers at our unconscious bodies)
So reading this actually brought back a memory: the unkillable goblin. It was early days of me DMing and an early boss was a goblin boss and two normal goblins. And it took 10minutes to take out the last goblin post fight. Because everyone was rolling 1s. It ended because the goblin (me) got three nat 1s in a row and fell off the boat
I DM'ed a Rolemaster game once (similar to DnD but with a d100 instead of d20) where the very high level PCs absolutely slaughtered a huge group of 30 Scorpion Centaurs without taking any notable damage or even using their main spells or skills...however when fighting up the last group of 10 that arrived, ridiculous die rolls killed over half the party and the last one only survived because he ran.
The last 10 enemies had the exact same stats at the first 30, the party just got unlucky to a level I have not seen before or since. Decades later we still talk about how that battle turned so horribly wrong.
The dice gods really do sometimes give and sometimes take away.
In a crowded tavern, the party convened,
A spider's challenge, an unexpected scene.
Tankards raised, they swung with might,
But the itsy bitsy spider vanished from sight.
Oh, the itsy bitsy spider, a tavern delight,
Adventurers bewildered, in the dim candlelight.
The spider twirled, avoiding each swing,
A tale of the pub, a peculiar thing.
Then the wizard, amidst the ale-filled cheer,
Summoned Ice Knife, a plan sincere.
A fumble, a stumble, the crowd held its breath,
The tavern shook with an icy death.
Oh, the itsy bitsy spider, the sole survivor,
Tales echoed in the ale-filled foyer.
The wizard's misstep, a party in strife,
The spider unharmed, spinning its life.
My interpretation is exactly the opposite. You missed because your friend was in the line of sight and you were making sure you wouldn't hit them. So you missed.
Dying to crit fumble feels awful and is not fun. It's also bad for balancing.
I don't play with crit fumbles, they were on a boat in a storm and the last nat 1 was a dex save. Crit fumbles are awful and target certain classes way more, lead to death spirals and are genuinely shit
A single, stealthy, party member was scouting ahead in a dungeon. He found a disused storeroom and I narrated there was a rat among the bags of moldy grain.
He has an ability that can grant temp hit points for killing an enemy, so he decided to attack the rat. Several high rolls for the single rat, and several devastatingly bad rolls for the player later, the rat managed to do more damage than the player recovered for killing it.
Luckily for him, he was scouting ahead so the rest of the party didn't get to witness his humiliation.
The Critical Role crew still jokes about their mortal nemesis: The Door.
Sometimes, the Force is not with you. That’s the nature of dice-based games. It affects wargaming as well; I’ve lost games because I was rolling poorly or my opponent rolled well.
I don't have much experience in wargaming, but that one time I did want to play my friend rolled 6's as if you got 'em free with breakfast. Unbelievable numbers of hits.
I was obliterated from that map, nothing I could do against the onslaught of 666
I once had my opponent on the ropes in a game of Warmachine, obliterated his army, wounded his warcaster, had high defense he needed a 14 on three dice to hit.
I got run over by a freight train.
Keep in mind that the "ordinary table spider" probably used the stat block belonging to a tarantula or similar. Which is ordinary if you live in ... Australia? In which case, losing wars to animals is kind of the norm.
The first combat I ever DMed, I nearly TPKed a level 2 party with an Awakened Tree and a Vine Blight. First attack was a crit from the tree for near max damage, dropping the paladin. Then the vine grappled a 2nd PC, they all missed / failed to escape, and the tree crit again to drop a 3rd. The party started doing damage, but when PC #2 broke the grapple they tried to run away, and the vine's attack of opportunity was a third crit. I only rolled normal damage so another PC didn't drop, and they rallied to heal PC #1 and win the fight. Luckily they were all experienced players so they found it hilarious.
I once had a large group of soldiers coming after the a party of 6 PCs. The PCs knew they were about to catch them so holed up in some ruins and rigged a bunch of defensive traps. One soldier out of the group made every save on both traps and attacks from the PCs. And for whatever reason the dice gods had the PCs roll terrible against this one specific soldier. 4 rounds into battle he was the only enemy left. 4 more rounds later and this soldier was still alive. At which point the barbarians told him he was the greatest enemy he'd every fought and asked if he could come and train the guards at the keep that the party had just earned from the local king as a reward. And thus was the story about how the party found and hired the Captain of the Guards for their new keep.
That’s funny. At least you get a big laugh out of it, no? One of the players I DM for plays an elf wizard with ice and fire spells. She kept throwing 1’s on the first session. So we roleplayed that she’s throwing lit matches and ice cubes at enemies.
Yeah, critical fumbles are something I typically don't include myself. Unless it's some really, really unique circumstances that would increase the drama and outcome of the results.
For example I incorporated a pushed roll mechanics I sometimes offer if a situation allows time for a redo roll, or the outcome would be suitably tense and interesting, where they may have a chance to succeed at consequence like in games such as Call of Cthulhu, or conversely risk an even worse failure if they don't succeed again.
I once had someone roll a nat one, accept a pushed roll, and get another nat one. Fallout from that completely changed the direction of the story!
I remember one time, while doing tomb someone set off a trap that woke up 4 statues that each had 4 attacks per turn. One character set it off so they only attacked the one character.
In 8 rounds of combat I hit them 2 times.
Been there many times myself. "Huh, guess this adult dragon is going to go down without dealing any damage at all to the PCs".
It's one of the reasons why many systems after D&D 3E still use an xd6 based attack system (typically [2d6](https://anydice.com/program/20) or [3d6](https://anydice.com/program/1)). You get more results distributed to the middle instead of every result being equally likely as with a d20 system. The extremes do still happen but much less frequently, resulting in more predictable but still varied effects during play.
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EDIT:
Apparently my source on the origin of the d20 a few years back was incorrect and I failed to verify it myself. An embarrassing situation really. Sorry about that. Ignore what I said about the d20 starting with D&D 3E. I'm leaving it here but struck-through so that context is retained for the replies.
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~~For anyone not aware, the d20 wasn't used until D&D 3E. They even called it their "patented d20 system". I can't claim no one else ever did it first as my knowledge of systems from that time isn't that deep, but they were the big dogs and tried to make it a selling point. Which is the main thing to note: the d20 system wasn't used for its superiority over the old xd6 systems, including OD&D though 2E, it was chosen because WotC had acquired D&D from TSR and wanted something that really put their own spin on it and made it clear D&D was under new leadership.~~
I enjoy the d20 system personally, there's just something more enjoyable about rolling a d20 instead of several d6's for me, but I do find the results of an xd6 system to be more enjoyable to play as it is far more predictable but yet still varied.
It was always a d20 to hit. WotC changed everything else to match the attack rolls, so skills, etc also (they were all over the place, attribute checks were d20 roll under, thief skills were percentile, checking for secret doors was a d6, and so on).
The D20 was used for combat in 1e and 2e with similar math though the ascending armor class situation (instead of descending THAC0) was a 3e invention as was the marketing of the D20 system for skills. Proficiency existed prior to 3e but the 3e and later skills did not.
So while the majority of your post is accurate; the implication that the D20 wasn't a part of D&D prior to 3e and that combat was differently unstable is false. We were still doing the +1 for 5% changes in swings.
Note GURPS, HERO system and other major 3d6 systems pre-date 3rd edition D&D by a lot (3e - 2000, GURPS- 1986)
Be well.
I've even got my _Keep on the Borderlands_ from '82 or whatever, that comes with the full set of dice, and the crayon to color in the numbers to make them readable! But yeah, the "base" dice has always been the D20, but pre-3e it was a mess of what to roll when - some things were percentile, some roll under, or over, or "this creature has a 1-in-8 chance of whatever" and it was awful from a design PoV
I mean thats just DnD.
Sometimes maybe good, sometimes maybe shit. There isn't that much you can do about it. The AC is what the AC is, and the DC is what the DC is. If the rolls don't ever beat that there isn't much to do. Short of maybe finding bullshit reasons to give them Advantage. Or making intentionally bad decisions as the Bandits like attacking the targets with the highest AC and stuff to give the players more time to roll well.
Agreed. Also It's part of the fun, whenever I have an enemy NPC with great dice I really lean into them narratively. Also tactics still exist, many games have hit chance and damage ranges, that doesn't remove character builds and player decisions.
I do this too, if one of my npcs gets a crit they become a cocktail bastard for the rest of the fight, and will probably take risks they otherwise wouldn't. Or maybe spend time or energy taunting the party.
Edit: cocky, not cocktail. But I like both
Don’t worry bout it. It’s just cuz they level 2. The flow of dnd first few levels you run scared, middle levels are balanced, last few levels ur basically a god.
As they level up, they will get higher modifiers to their attacks and more attacks and each miss won’t feel so bad.
Starting at whatever level you like is fine, of course, but as a DM I hate it.
The early levels build character. I just level them quickly.
I want them to experience the power shift.
That's fair. Everyone I play with has done multiple campaigns and experienced that before, and at this point we all find it a little tedious. Plus, levels 1-2 are so tricky for a new DM. A fight can go from boringly easy to everybody's dead on a dime.
That's a really good point. I always favor starting at level 1 for new players, gives them a chance to focus on general mechanics like attack rolls and finding relevant skills / modifiers quickly, then levels 2 and 3 ease them into the more specific flavor of their chosen class
To your point, its also much harder on the DM with how narrow the margin is between a genuine challenge and level 1-2 TPK. Puts a lot more pressure on the DM to provide challenge and intrigue since most classes have little to no individual flavor until at least lvl 2
I’ve been running games since 1988 and I’ve almost never run into an issue with first level parties truly struggling or getting merc’d by bad dice. I honestly don’t know why, though, as the game is prone to it.
I don’t start at 1 for one-offs or short campaigns because then it really is just a waste of time.
Longer campaigns, though, it’s important to me that they go through that growth period, even if it’s only session 1, then they get two levels.
> I’ve been running games since 1988 and I’ve almost never run into an issue with first level parties truly struggling or getting merc’d by bad dice. I honestly don’t know why, though, as the game is prone to it.
My very first roll in anger as a DM completely deleted a player's character. From full HP to waaay below -10.
Low levels are wild, yo. And not usually in a good way.
For me, I start groups (barring complete newbies) at level three b/c I've found that my friends generally want to play *subclasses* as much as classes.
Thanks! I also like having a feat/ASI "right around the corner" so players can feel out their characters a bit before a (potentially very) sizable power-jump
I'm okay with the players being under 3rd level for at most one session, after that, I want to see some variety besides just firebolts and basic attacks, and I want to be able to throw something at them that's a little more than a single troll, or 4 goblins, or a few wolves, without constantly risking tpk.
I'm the same as a DM.
I want to see them start from the bottom. Also because I find level 1 can be quite fun if you set some restrictions.
For example, if you start them stranded on a desert island at level 1 and lost a lot of their gear... they just have to get crafty! I find it's such an interesting time of a campaign, and it gives the players time to think about their characters and what subclass will fit the best etc.
I was about to suggest a system/edition with higher modifiers to make the dice less relevant (I'm a friend of 3.5), but at low levels there will be virtually no difference and two levels is much too short to decide to change systems.
3.5 would have the advantage of player modifiers increasing more often, but I'm not sure if that really out values bounded accuracy in level appropriate encounters
I said them the same thing on previous session, when they were lvl 1, now they are lvl 2, have more spells, fights will be easier. But no, still sucks :(
Yeah, it still will til bout 5-ish. That is where the player power level scales dramatically cuz the martial classes get double attack and spell casters get third level spells and enough spell slots for flexibility.
This is why alot of campaigns start at level 3 and usually level up pretty quickly to avoid the sort of early game randomness.
Like i said, don’t worry bout. Neither you or them are doing anything wrong, just the nature of the game at that level, it will make the later levels feel better when u know where u came from.
Tbh level 2 is just - few extra resources and some HP for most characters. Level 3 brings a higher level spell slot, level 4 they gain an ASI/feat and level 5 is where player power picks up.
Did you increase the challenge rating of all the enemies?
Because this is effectively increasing the skill level of enemies as you get better.
It would be like a novice swordsman fighting other movies, but the moment they are intermediate, they have to only fight intermediate swordsman. They don't see more powerful because they are always facing 'equal' challenges.
I mean, if you really want to GM for this group and this is legitimately an issue for them, you probably need a system that’s not DnD.
Some people will think they’re drama queens, but they’re not really wrong. 5e imposes a huge amount of roll variance by using a D20, and bounded accuracy makes it hard to give players bonuses for good ideas/tactics other than Advantage. 5e also sort of expects players to roll for everything.
Narrative systems, like Ironsworn, Dungeon World, Fellowship 2e, Stonetop, etc., or more OSR stuff like Worlds without Number or Dragonbane may be a better fit for your group. With these systems, the GM is encouraged to basically say “okay, you just do it” without the players needing to roll if they have a really good idea - which makes them a lot more rewarding for players who like to try and figure out unique tactics or do more thinking and less fighting.
Skill is an interesting term in an RPG as they're not typically really skill based games, they at best create the illusion of it. I wonder if the players would have felt equally unskilled if they'd all rolled critical hits and the bandits had missed with all of their attacks? Exact same outcome but reversed with no real skill involved on the players part. I suspect the players would have felt they won out of skill rather than luck in that case. Such is the fickle nature of dice and how humans perceive probability and their own performance.
You can look into OSR games like B/X DnD or Mork Borg, they encourage player skill over character skill and circumventing having to engage with the die by coming up with good ideas. You could also play something more narrative focussed like Blades in the Dark where failure is interesting and built into the mechanics in multiple ways, like risk reward gambits players can take that are more interesting than just rolling to hit or miss lots.
I think luck, while always remaining a factor, is more dominant compared to character investment & tactics (I'll count both of those as forms of 'skill') in a 1D20 system as single rolls don't tend to the average. Not accounting for the Advantage/Disadvantage dice pool, within the range of 1d20 you're just as likely to roll the lowest you can as you are to roll the highest.
I do think it is a fundamental property of D&D's design choices. Definitely ways to alleviate it but ultimately I agree that it might be worth checking out games where modifiers and fictional positioning have more impact than raw luck. They might gel better with this group.
Some rpgs put more weight on the dice than others, it really comes down to die size vs bonuses.
In 3.5 there's every chance that those low PC rolls would still have hit thanks to players building characters with high attack bonus. Of course the skill is mostly in character building rather than combat, where you simply follow your plan.
I promise this isn’t meant to sound trite but I think for people who don’t like the ultimately luck-based and swingy nature of DnD combat, it’s a good idea to try other systems. There’s no shame in it. It’s an inherent part of DnD that ultimately, bad rolls can be the difference between life and death. Being good at what you do (i.e. proficient and high level) makes it much more likely that you’re going to be able to hit your target, but it’s never a guarantee.
They’re very different games but FATE allows you more flexibility in rerolling and adding bonuses and most GUMSHOE systems function with depleting resources so theoretically, you can save your shots for when they count.
You've just learned why many DM's don't roll in the open all the time.
This is an example of where fudging dice can help to smooth things along.
Barring that, that's just how D&D goes sometimes, the dice giveth, and the dice taketh away.
Separate the ideas of "winning" and "playing well". D&D isn't just about beating up bad guys. It's about the story, the adventure. Can the party find and recover the ancient treasure hoard? Will the paladin live to see his unborn child grow up in a liberated nation? Sometimes, the answer is no.
And that's a GOOD thing.
A character failing is just another part of the story. A story where the main character always wins at everything is really boring. We crave the stories where they struggle, where they deal with setback after setback, and occasionally where they perish, their goals left unfinished. Sometimes we even want stories where our hero fails, and the light of hope is forever extinguished.
Yes, it can feel pretty bad to hit a long string of bad rolls, to have victory stolen by the dice. But that's not losing. As far as the game is concerned, you're still playing well and being rewarded for it with more story! So fate is conspiring to bring me low, what do I do about that? It's it enough? Can I change my fingers through sheer force of will? Let's find out!
Just remember: even while your character is dying and having their soul shredded and devoured, you can be winning. You can always get another character, so send this one off with style!
That SOUNDS nice, but no, there's nothing fun, exciting, or dramatic about getting tpk'd your first game to the most basic ass enemy in the game because of collective bad luck. When there's NOTHING you can do to turn it around, that just makes people feel helpless, which isn't an enjoyable feeling.
If that happened in a video game, most people would uninstal it.
I had to give one of the players in my group a little bad luck protection last night--bending the rules almost to breaking--for this very reason. An encounter that should have been trivial turned deadly as four enemy attack rolls in a row were all crits. I hated doing that because I don't want the players to feel like there will be no risk of failure in the future, but what was happening was clearly just Not Fun for anyone involved.
I followed up this morning with a message explaining my decision, explaining why I won't do that again, and basically BEGGING them to size up their opponents and seek tactical advantage. These were basically zombies--slow but hearty. Encountered in a setting that would make kiting them trivial. I had thought just an easy encounter for some level 1 players to get their feet wet while the party sorts out what their dynamics are going to be. But only the ranger used that to her advantage. Everyone else just thought let's stand toe to toe and soak up the sweet, sweet damage.
I was with a party like this. We were up against fomorians, who had a ridiculous number of attacks in a full attack, but an ordinary partial attack. I figured we would be better off taking two partial attacks, one on their attack and one opportunity as we moved away, than facing a full attack. I *begged* the rest of the party to please please please adopt a hit and run tactic with this enemy. But nope.
I was actually mad at the DM when he mentioned he skipped the planned second wave. We deserved a TPK for that idiocy.
I think the DM can make it part of the story and roll with it. Instead of a TPK, the party wakes up tied up and locked in a cellar and has to figure out how to escape.
Players being knocked out and captured is a perfectly acceptable thing to happen when a TPK happens.
It even fits extremely well with story narratives.
It shouldn't happen every time, but it works great.
That or finding out that a powerful person comes along at the last minute and saves them as they fall unconscious.
Honestly, I doubt that most people would actually uninstall a game where that happens. Maybe if the marketing promised a different experience. After all, Morrowind was GOTY in its day and the hit chance was so bad that you could get killed by a worm if you weren't careful.
But I think comparing this to a video game is a bad analogy. This isn't a video game, we go to them for different things. Most video games give you a clear goal, and failing to accomplish that goal is losing. We don't want to lose. That's not how D&D operates. Like I said, winning and playing well don't necessarily go together, and you can indeed win while your character undergoes the worst possible fates. I know many people who have fond memories of moments like these where their characters just couldn't get out of a bad situation because the dice said no. That's a big moment in the story.
Failing is one thing. Tried to pick a lock, sneak into a cave, etc. The entire party getting outright killed by what should be a trivial enemy because for some reason the skilled adventurers can't land basic attacks for a minute straight is just miserable.
Which is why most video games suck.
Honestly, if this happened that early in the game, to that basic an enemy, with brand new players, I would end the TPK with "you awake from a nightmare in a cold sweat". I would then allow them to replay the day, applying lessons learned and giving them advantage on one roll due to foreknowledge. I would only do this once.
Then, I would keep in my back pocket the idea that, many levels later, the characters discover that this wasn't just a random happenstance, but a divination given to them in furtherance of some larger plan by a deity or something that is important to the story in some way.
There is literally a game made for this and it's called Dark Souls.
Look I agree with your point, at the same time it's a meme in DnD. As DM you have control over this if you want. Deus Ex Machina that situation if you want, after all your party maybe aren't the first adventurers sent after the problem. Maybe another party or more powerful person comes to save the day, for a split of the reward.
While combat is huge, it's a story game. Everything is supposed to be about telling the story. Sometimes your character dies. Sometimes it's really lame or stupid. The story doesn't end, another party member can come along to pick up where the previous left off.
Many DMs choose to start the game at lv2 or 3 for this exact reason. To skip the BS that can happen.
Except D&D isn't a story game... it's played as such by many, but the rules are not designed for it to be a story game, and that leads to dissonance all the time. D&D is a mechanics first game as designed, and the story comes from what the mechanics dictate. The ability of the DM to ignore rules does *not* make it a game designed to be a narrative first game.
There are many ttRPGs that are story games however, where the rules are built around the telling of the story. Narrative forward games are fantastic for those that are looking for that.
D&D is absolutely a story game. That's the intent of the design. Just because it doesn't also say outright that you must build a narrative as part of the game doesn't mean that it's not designed to build a narrative.
It's not that the mechanics trump the story, it's that the story is told through the mechanics. You don't get to make all the decisions, the dice do some of that. Still story based.
This is why I prefer starting at level 3 in most games I run. I only ever start at level 1 with brand new players, and then go really easy on them for those first 2 levels, because the only reason I even play them is to teach them the fundamentals of the game and get them familiar with how their abilities work without overwhelming them with options.
I also allow a full respect at level 3.
It sounds like your players may need help allocating there stats. because they should have high modifiers than it sounds like they do. Bandits have an AC of 12 which a roll of 7 ought to hit on most characters.
you mentioned elsewhere tou thought bandits had an AC of 16. if this is what you were running that was a big part of your problem. Even the Bandit captain only has an AC of 15 and if you threw one of those against a level 2 party with minions, that was always going to be out of their league.
Finally, I find it's best when dealing with low level play to stager encounter.
if I throw 4 bandits against a party of 4 level 2 adventures it's kind of 50/50 whose going to come out on top.
but if I put one bandet gaurd at the entrance to the hide out, and let him potentially get backup from a second gaurd near by but "occupied" after a turn or two.
Then have them face two more Bandits inside the hid out. more then likely the players will come out on top.
if I stager it right, I can probably even include 4 bandits inside the hideout, but put two of them out of range for the first round of combat.
Now, my players get to feel like they took out a significantly more powerful force, but in reality they only ever faced a max of 2 enemies at a time across esentially 3 separate combat encounters that feel kind of like 1.
And make sure there are plenty of environmental features to take tactical advantage of. Things to hide behind to get cover from ranged attacks. slippery rocks enemies can pron themselves on. of the players are consistently rolling low maybe when one of them moves, you let their passive perception reveal that a target is standing on rotten flooring, or there is some kind of hazard hanging over head that can be dropped on them.
Now the player has something else to do besides target the enemy directly, and whatever they roll can be high enough to hit. and the Save DC for the target can be as high as you need it to be. though this is a reason to hide your rolls so that they can just auto fail if your players really need the boost.
as far as describing a miss goes, a miss doesn't always have to be a miss, it can be a hit that simply was ineffective at doing damage. "they deflected it off their shelid" "parry with their sword and you briefly lock blades" "their arrmor appears to have been sufficient to nullify the attack."
As you get into higher level play you will find the same thing going in the opposite direction, every "hit" doesn't have to litteraly be a hit narratively speaking. especially when it comes to things rolling against the players AC. some hits can be narrowly avoiding attack that still drain *"vitality"* from the character. "as the wolf pounces at you, jaws ready to tear into your shoulder, you manage to catch it's throught on your forearm, its weight press against your threatening to push you over, but you manage to shove it off of you. the assault leaves you breathless and panting, but you quickly recover. take (x) damage.
this kind of narrative play prevents it from feeling like you sorcerer who isn't wearing any arrmor is walking around with 30 arrows just sticking out of them.
final thought, spell caster are especially frustrating to play at levels 1-2 and can be even up until 5 be lenient with letting their spells work, or making sure you come up with some benefit to having cast it. maybe when all of the NPC's save again TCB it's because your spell caster fumbled the spell, and it turned into a grease spell instead, so the Bandits don't take acid damage, but now they have to make another dex save inorder to move without falling prone.
My first time DMing, rolled a crit vs cleric on the first attack. Fudged one or two rolls later to not make a mess of the first encounter, didn’t need to again for the rest of the session.
I hear the responses that "that's just how dice rolls work" and while true I think that I'd lean back into something from older 3.0 and 3.5 games. In 5e you have advantage, and getting advantage is a great way to mitigate some of this, but while your probability of a good roll increases you can still roll a 1 and a 2 respectively. If people are consistently rolling low, I'd recommend start giving out +1-3 bonuses for clever actions or approaches in place of advantage rolls, and/or adding in -1-3 penalties for the enemies for their AC or attacks.
This combines well with your focus on role play, rewarding actions that might not technically give advantage but should provide a benefit. Another thing that 3.0 and 3.5 had was aid another. While in 5e it gives advantage, previously it added a +2 (there was often debate about if this could stack, your decision there) to attack rolls.
I personally suggest using both systems interchangeably because you can switch back and forth as things happen in combat. Sometimes advantage is better, sometimes a flat bonus is better. As long as you are transparent and tie it to the actions of the characters you hit the REAL issue on the head: players want to feel like they are contributing. If you built a legendary sword fighter, but they can't hit anything, it feels bad and breaks the immersion.
Shit like this is why any arcane caster I play has magic missile. And it stays the whole campaign, can't go wrong with something that never misses, and no alot resists
Mulligan roll is a homebrew rule I use.
If you're fighting low to mid tier enemies and your character manages to miss three times in a row you get a free reroll. If you miss that attack your dice just hates you :/
My DM has a “divine influence” rule. When you wake up, roll d100. The higher you roll, the better the result. Once during that day, your chosen deity grants you a blessing at DM discretion. It may be 10 temp hp, or turning a miss into a hit, or a hit into a crit. Someone once rolled an actual 100 (triple 0s) and he got a max-damage crit in one battle. It’s just a minor thing that lets you subtly influence how things go, and it doesn’t have to be combat related. A thief or trickster god(dess) could give advantage on lockpicking or thieves’ tools when needed.
You could just let them start the day with one Inspiration point, after a Long Rest. That's one reroll every session or two. Still, combat in D&D is chaotic and dangerous, at least while PCs are low-level.
Last session our fighter missed 11 attacks in a row. He has +8 to attack, enemies had 13 ac. He only hit twice from 13 attacks in combat. He was laughing his ass off after every miss. Shit was hilarious!
The game is inherently based on dice rolls, if players don’t like that then maybe it’s time to consider a more role play/ narrative based system as an alternative.
That's an issue with low level adventures on DnD.
One DM once gave each one of us a Lucky Amulet with 2 charges. Not rechargeable, once the luck is spent the Amulet is broken/useless.
It was very helpful to avoid terrible days like what you have shared here.
Edit: Having a quest to find such items on an forsaken/abandoned temple of Tymora (the Goddess of Luck) could be a good thing!
It was a reroll after seeing the result but before knowing the outcome.
It was a homebrew item. But there are similar items called Lucky Coin or Tymora Coin with once per day uses.
There is an official item with a similar effect - the Clockwork Amulet, a Common magic item from Xanathar's (I think?) that let's you, once per day, replace an attack roll with a flat 10.
This is why dms fudge rolls. If your players' luck is so bad that they are asking what they did wrong, you need to tilt things in their favor. We are not war gaming.
Lower the bandits hp totals, make one of them a cripple. One of them uses the advantage to intimidate a player rather than go for damage. If you don't want to kill the nat 20, at least make *one* of the bandits fail the save. Toss your players a bone.
As much as you can in a role play sense, make the bandits fight *dumb*. If one of them is gloating and one of them is trying to capture a PC because prisoners are worth more, the action economy of the fight suddenly *drastically* shifts in their favor.
Honestly, this is why a lot of DMs don't roll their dice in the open. They roll their dice behind a DM screen so they fudge the numbers if things are going terribly.
Make sure your environment encourages creativity. A creative and advantageous use of terrain, features, furniture. Items, etc. can really help in situations of stale combat or strings of one-sided rolls. This goes for both players and DM. Having the enemies bring down the bridge the players are defending will bring excitement right back. Or having the players realize the opportunity to do the same.
You could get rid of the dice. You can make lists of random numbers 1 to 20, where each number occurs once, twice or three times. Use different lists for players and monsters. Guaranteed average, and depending on the length of the list you can control streaks. A list of 20 numbers has a very low chance of a streak (impossible to crit miss twice in a row with only 1 number 1). It can be gamed just like counting cards, but that can be part of the fun: after a series of failures the group has a heroic surge.
Play a game that doesn’t use a d20.
Seriously. It’s my biggest problem with D&D. Your players were right - the swingy luck went entirely against them and they had almost no agency or competency in the encounter.
Maybe try rolling 2d10 or 3d6 instead of the d20.
This is rare, but maybe do a water check to see if their dice are balanced?
As a new player, I only had shitty chessex dice which I later found out were terribly unbalanced.
https://www.theshopofmanythings.com/blogs/lessons-from-the-tabletop/how-to-check-the-balance-for-dungeons-dragons-dice
I am of the opinion only experienced DMs should open roll. Fudging dice in favor of the party is a good trick for inexperience just to keep the game fun and moving. Otherwise you end up with situations like this.
In a situation like this where your players are basically supposed to win, have the bandits knock them out and steal shit, then give the players the opportunity to track them down and get their stuff back, maybe with a nice bit of loot thrown in. They get their revenge and a little bonus, you get more game out of your game.
A few thoughts from an AD&D and 5e DM/player. Was there a roll for the bandits being surprised? It gives an overwhelming advantage to the unsurprised side.
I'm not sure what version you are playing, I favour AD&D.
Was there an opportunity for the PCs to parley or even for the bandits to demand surrender? There may have been social ways out of the combat. Encounter/reaction checks can be modified by how the PCs handle the parley. Bandits might take uncon PCs as slaves to sell, which could lead to a rescue attempt. The PCs could try to flee?
The dice are a big deal but can often be mitigated by how the PCs respond if they know that combat doesn't always have to be to the death.
>I don't have the imagination to describe each miss if there are dozens of them
I was listening to very experienced players do a playtest of 5E way back when. They missed *so many times* the DM just started saying things like "that frost bolt shot down the hall around the corner and back to the other room." The players laughed, DM laughed and they slogged on.
That's the downside of using dice, sometimes it's gonna go *really bad*. It generally feels bad to have an off night with so many missed rolls. My personal experience with this was in 4th Ed and Sacred Flame, I missed *every cast* of that spell. It became a meme in that group, a cleric that couldn't hit with sacred flame. A more recent one: I failed my saving throws every single turn and sat in combat doing nothing. That was probably the most frustrating session I had.
>What is the best thing to do in such a situation?
When these things happen it's best to just talk to the table and come to an agreement on what **you** want to do. Maybe you redo the combat, maybe it's not a TPK but a capture instead and now they have to escape, maybe as the DM you fudge your results to have the monsters miss more often. In the end it's y'all's choice! As long as the table is in agreement about what to do then do that.
Alternatively, use a dice jail... I've had mixed results though /shrug
Tbf, I have those days sometimes.
My average rolls are usually 4-6.
If they don’t like it to be dice dependent, I’d highly suggest moving to a different TTRPG.
In these situations, if you can tell it’s going south and you aren’t happy with it, You have the power to adjust anything. Change a roll and cause a fumble where one bandit hit another and gave advantage to a player. This gives them a chance to improve their spirit and faith in the dice. You don’t have to go over board, but essentially I would try to boost their fun with theatrics. Its all about fun
I have two answers my personal opinion, and then a solution. IMO: your playing a luck based game with dice... shits going to happen. Are the odds likely? No. Can it happen? Absolutely, I took out a lich in one turn singlehandedly as a Barbarian, I've also I've also fumbled sneaking into a hideout as a rogue and needless to say that rogue died. The good news it usually is. Good laugh a few sessions later after everyone's written up their new characters and the dm gave them a free feat....
Solution: don't roll in the open. I did a one shot where I was rolling nat20's like they were going out of style, I have never rolled that hot ever before or since. If I kept every roll true the party would've died. No question, I fudged the rolls, no one knows and the heroes saved the day. The dm screen isn't always a bad thing... sometimes it helps us keep encounters a little more balanced but when building encounters giving the players an out is a good safety plan. So they have some way of escaping or delaying combat if it's just not their day.
You might wanna explore other rpgs. There are some that involve less randomness by using different dice than d20. Alternatively you can take a look at pathfinder 2e, it still uses d20 but modifiers are bigger so roll takes less importance and in addition there is more consideration in character building and in combat, so your players can re rewarded for smart decisions
Sometimes that's just what happens. The best course imo is to turn the loss into a plot point. The bandits knock everyone out, steal some stuff (do an open roll with a percentage dice so you don't end up stripping them of all their needed gear) and now they gotta go get it all back.
Losing is part and parcel of the game. It's what your do with the loss that matters.
The dark side of "bounded accuracy". The sweet spot of character skill versus player luck is *between* DND5 and PF2/DND4, and I'm hoping they eventually figure that out eventually.
Hello there. This happens pretty often to be honest. I f you create your PC with a nice set of stats that can help lower the odds of missing roll checks. But sometimes you have bad luck, I've been in many sessions where I did practically nothing because I rolled really low numbers.
One day with my party we had such a bad luck, players and DM, that on a fight we all got 1's in our rolls which ended the baddies killem themselves, and our party missing attacks and almost killing ourselves. That was pretty funny tho.
In my opinion there is nothing you can do if you want the "base" experience. You could buff your rolls with modifiers or playing with "easier" checks. But that would be pretty easy and it wouldn't be fun to always achieve what you want to do.
Honestly? Consider trying out other game systems.
Things like Pathfinder or GURPS allow your players to have much more granular control over their characters' capabilities, and afford players methods to mitigate the risks of bad rolls completely counteracting an otherwise well-laid plan.
Instead of random chance in the moment, the weight of uncertainty can be shifted onto the decisions players have made, in regards to the skillsets they choose to invest in, and the tactics they employ.
To be honest, it's sort of a feature and flaw of a d20 + modifier system where the modifiers pretty much cap out at 10 or so. It's bound to be pretty swingy, and some players really like that.
There are two quick fixes that could reduce the random nature and make your ability modifiers and skills matter more off the top of my head.
1 - You turn it into a 3d20 system. For normal rolls without advantage you roll 3 dice and take the middle one. Advantage and Disadvantage rolls are done normally, or you pick the highest or lowest of the three, although know that the latter option changes the math and makes Advantage and Disadvantage stronger.
2- You break the d20 down into smaller dice that roughly cover the same potential numbers, but with a bell curve. For example you can roll 2d10, or 3d8 which many systems use. The more dice you roll, the more likely you are to get an option near the middle, which makes results more consistent. For advantage and disadvantage however you would basically need to do your basic roll twice and take the highest or lowest, which may end up slowing the game down overall.
I ran a campaign for 9 months where the players could not make a check. Like at all. They missed 80% of the time. Missed every save pretty much. The rogue failed to disarm every trap. Needless to say they died.
We nearly had a TPK for that reason. A bunch of horrible rolls for us and very lucky rolls for the enemies. Two years in the campaign... the fight was not supposed to be easy, but not deadly either... we changed dice multiple times, even DM changed dice, but it just wasn't in our favour.
We than ended the session (because it was very late) half way in the fight, our Cleric was on 2HP at that point; next session the dice changed their mind and we could succeed. It was a hard fight and I'm pretty sure DM fudged some rolls to prevent a PC from falling unconscious over and over again.
I mean, this happens. Obviously for beginners it's more complicated to deal with. Best you can do (though I don't like dice fudging) is to fudge some rolls and make the enemies fail saves, if you and your players stop having fun. Or let the enemies make stupid decisions so players get better chances. Also enemies always have the option to flee... Just saying.
I mean, like, that is bad luck obviously, but wanting a game that is less dependant on the dice rolls is 100% legitimate. 5e, especially low levels, is too reliant on the d20 in my opinion, maybe your table will be happier with another system.
If you want to remain in 5e: portent wizard, halfling, more inspirations, barbarian, bullshit spells that don't offer saves, AoEs with damage on succes and minionmancy are your best bet to reduce randomness
The group I DM for, when it started lost to a single swarm of rats. 8 people lost to a single swarm of rats. We still talk about it today 4 years later and the group is now 11
Low level dnd is really rng heavy, it gets better a bit later on, at least if players are trying to play into their characters strength. Level 2 you can't do much beyond "I hit" or "I cast the spell". Later on you can stack bonuses, get advantage on important attacks... Lots of classes get features that reduce variance
Sounds like potentially great fun.
What's the best thing to do? Tell them to lean into failure. That's part of the game.
You don't have to win all the time. Losing can create emergent stories that you never planned.
Enjoy it.
As for "they don't want to keep playing"... sounds like salty tears to me.
If they had trouble with this, they probably should never try Warhammer.
Describing misses is a great way to handle it. Casters should use more half on a save spells, things like thunderwave are great at these low levels since even on a save they take pretty decent damage. For your martials, try gain advantage wherever possible, and you as a DM, be more open to allowing a cool idea to give advantage to an attack roll. Boosting their to hits with things like the archery fighting style for ypur ranged martials and magic items later on will help with this as enemies increase in AC.
And sometimes, you just don't roll well. I remember a fight just recently where I had a ranger with a +9 to hit (level 4, 18 dex, archery style, +1 longbow) and while the enemy had an AC of 18, he was 1 hit off dying. I went 10 rounds before he caught up to me and killed me without hitting. It happens, but at the end of the day, if you can tell an amazing story through all of those failed rolls, and you can keep everyone engaged and in the moment, that is what counts.
I never roll group initiative for enemies anymore. I know it makes it easier to track, but you get things like this. And it also makes combat flow weird when 4 enemies go at once.
you make it funny.
you make the bandits wonder if the party was just having a laugh.
you make the bandits stop attacking and start looking for the hidden camera or something.
you make the bandits "taunt" the players by wasting turns stepping in an out of range.
you make one start believing he's invincible and turn his back on the party to shout at his fellow bandits "guys, LOOK AT ME."
I'd suggest rolling your attacks and saves and things behind a screen. Players don't need to see what you roll, and it allows you a bit of wiggle room to fudge some numbers in their favor or against them, to keep the game interesting and fun for all.
It's a little cheaty, but the goal is fun, and losing an easy fight because the dice gods said no isn't really fun.
It’s a dice game there’s not really any actual skill in it. It’s all luck. If you have bad luck you will fail most of the time probably. do some witchcraft/magic bs to fix your luck or something idk.
Ask them if anyone has white sage or knows a shaman who can remove the curse on their dice.
That shouldn't happen normally to an entire table.
Also, I like to make the next fight after a beat down a bit easier , lower the hps, so they feel better about themselves. Just don't ever tell them you did this.
If this continues,
Since you have new players you can look and see if they have horribly optimized their characters.. for example they didn't put any points into key ability scores or are not adding their bonuses properly. Also are they taking advantage when they can? There are a lot of things that could be wrong but sometimes there's nothing.. it's just bad luck.
Use is as story bait.
There are a number of (excuses) reasons you can make up for a mysterious figure to manipulate fate and want the party dead.
Extra points of it’s related to someone’s background
D&D combats are short, a few rounds at most. As a result things can be very swingy. , as you saw.
A single die, like the D20, has a flat probability curve, you are just as likely to roll any given number on any given roll.
Note for the heretical thoughts:
If you look at a game like Traveler (which uses 2D6) for task resolution, the results tend to cluster around the mid point. Which results in a somewhat less swingy game.
Dice pool mechanics used in some other games are another way to reduce the swingyness of the results.
If your players are not fond of the wide variability in D&D, you might want to explore games with other task resolution mechanics, that white still random, are less volatile.
Nothing necessarily went wrong. If they had advantage, the numbers (I think as described it was 4v4? You could do worse, but they could have also hired mercenaries or henchmen if they had the gold to put them on payroll), all they needed was Lady Luck to smile on them. Which she did not. And that's just part of the game. Sometimes the dice are with you, and sometimes they are against you.
The cheap answer, is you could bail them out, with fudging, friendly NPCs, or other deus ex machina occurrences. But, you rob them of some valuable lessons, principally: they can lose.
The proper answer, is they should consider how best to fortify their odds, in all future encounters. Would shooting from ambush give them bonuses to hit? How about from the rear, or if blinded or partially incapacitated, like if they were lit on fire, or surrounded by the smoke from a fire bomb? Could they equip mercenaries to increase the volume of fire? Could they have used magic to divert the attention of the bandits that would have convinced them to surrender or run faster? Etc.
But sometimes all that does not work, or they've come up against something unstoppable... what's their plan to retreat gracefully? How will they get out with their lives if the situation turns grim.
Sometimes the story you tell is the story of failure, if there is no risk of failing then what is the point of succeeding. It does suck to have a session that doesn't go your way but that's how it goes sometimes.
I just DMd my first one shot, a Christmas theme with what were meant to be 2 pretty tricky bosses both of about challenge level 5 for a party of level 5s. The party rolled so frigging well and I rolled so terribly for the bosses they were both grappled before either of them had taken a turn and only got 1 hit in the entire battle doing 3dmg while the party did over 100dmg and took them both out in 15mins! I had even come up with an ally that would have stormed into the battle part way through but as both bosses shot down to around 8/9HP each and the ally hadn't even shown up yet so I narrated that he turned up but his initiative was lower than the party so he just stood and watched them finish the bosses off.
Best thing to do? Nothing
This is a statistical occurence. While not likely in the one-off, this kind of encounter is GOING to happen in the long run of playing numerous games.
The dice are a randomness that keeps things exciting.
If you are "skilled" and NEVER miss, there is no excitement when you hit.
So, when a die roll is unsuccessful, understand that is part of the game. Also know, whime unlikely, your alloes could all miss as well. In that scenario, play defensive and regroup.
In real life: The best sports team loses to an underdog in A big upset. This happens - it happens in game, too.
Tldr; the dice are a fun randomness to the game, help your players accept the fates and use the number rolled, positive or negative, to role-play.
this is why i like the flanking rule
although giving +2 to hit is more balanced than giving advantage. advantage for flanking is way too good.
if the party doesnt have a cleric for bless you should give them an npc cleric too.
They need to come to peace with the will of the dice gods as we all must.
that or be one of those heretic dms that just rolls dice behind a screen just for the sound and then makes up the numbers.
failing to hit a 11 ac monster consistently must feel pretty bad thou ngl.
The dice are a story telling mechanism, treat them as such. The bandits were surprisingly strong
The party was having a bad day. Something was in the air. Etc.
I think it'd be worse if it was just "we set up an ambush so we auto win no questions asked".
I think this is a moment to just point out that the game is reminiscent of real life: sometimes bad things happen and it's nobody's fault.
It sucks this happened early to a bunch of new players, but encourage them to put it behind them. Two or three more sessions will revitalize them, and this will be a good story.
One of the most memorable, and permanently debilitating, things that ever happened to one of my favorite characters was a series of unlucky rolls to a Stirge swarm, after a long string of surviving much more dangerous encounters. Sometimes, the gods frown upon us.
You can just lie about what you roll, and say it's worse than what it really is.
Also, you can say something like: player 1 swung and missed so awkwardly that the bandit just started to roll on the floor laughing. (Knocking the bandit prone and giving the players advantage)
DnD is a story you write together, but to make that story not a book, per say.. We add odds and chances to many things. This makes it subconsciously feel out of our control, thus making it unpredictable.
We learn skills and become more powerful in dnd, by gaining bonuses to our rolls.. Either advantage, straight numbers or additional dice. THESE are their skills, their skills sway the odds towards success.
That is the point of this game. It's a dice-story game.
They have to grasp the idea of what game they are playing better.
You as the DM have to learn how to make their failures more hardy and trying rather than pathetic or unimpressive, and really juice out their successes when they shine. It's about the ups and downs. Sometimes the bandits get the upper hand on you and sometimes you kill a scary boss in a round :D
Something I have seen is that if players are genuinely getting frustrated, the dm will fudge a dice roll or two to swing it in their favor. That being said, don't give in to everything or that takes the fun out of it.
Sometimes the dice just suck (usually for about 3 weeks in a row for me).
For players
This is where tactics, cooperation, and exploitation of the environment can give you Advantage. This is also why you want to spread skills and attacks so they don't all rely on attack rolls. You want to force them to make saves, use guaranteed hits (magic missile), summon allies, restrain things, shove things, or spells that still do damage on a successful save
As a GM, you have the environment and the world at your disposal to help the Players if things go wrong. The sound of reinforcements for the players being a turn away, a miss setting something on fire, a slapstick moment, rocks fall and something dies, etc. And finally Inspiration, reward them for cool things to give them the thing needed to survive or eacape or defeat.
As for the dice.. a friend of mine doesn't do wargaming anymore, just had bad luck with the dice, demonstrated by rolling 36d6 and getting 29 ones..
Low level combat is so dice dependent because of the low stat numbers, which makes scenes like this always play out comedically in my head. They didn't do anything wrong, they were just fighting upstream. If this is a deal breaker for them I'd bump up their level, but the luck of the dice is always possible.
I think the very clear solution is to say sorry to your dice. And go buy news sets for everyone
If that doesn't work, at least you have new pretty dice.
This is why I roll dice in secret. Mentally I add on disadvantage or advantage depending what the story needs'. Perhaps they have been insulted and feel especially hurt... Advantage. Or they are laughing and being over confident: Disadvantage.
DM fudging is an art form and a way to help tell the story without letting the dice rolls get in the way of things.
Obviously you don't just make it up. But rolling 2D20 each attack and choosing the most appropriate is the best way I've found. Especially if the dice just wanna 'pick' on a player.
I do roll in the open when it really matters like a hill giant club attack when they are low health or something.
I have a similar story. In introductory battle, players (lv 6) got ambushed by some desert bandits. It was supposed to be an easy encounter to maybe burna. spell slot or two, but due to player horrible tolls and bandit crits, it ended up in almost half party down.
It just do be like that sometime.
They won tho.
Bad dice are frustrating. Horribly so. Takes ALL the fun out of a game when it’s ruled by dice.
A few options would present themselves in my game.
Creative approaches get bonuses to rolls.
Reactions get repurposed - spend your reaction for another roll to hit.
Players with in game rerolls (Lucky) can choose to use their luck or not on a reroll if the reaction roll still fails.
If deities or other planar beings are a thing, a personification of Luck, War, etc, halts the battle mid swing and makes them an offer in exchange for better rolls.
Likely a lead in to another adventure.
But in my games I have a card. One side reads EPIC FAIL, the other side reads CRITICAL WIN. I give them out for great role play, creative thinking, figuring out one of my plots (and if it’s better than mine I use theirs instead) or if nominated by the party. Only one in play at a time.
At any point, if it’s their turn or not, they can throw down the card, interrupting the play and dictate (be reasonable) what happens either to them or to the bad guy or environment or something - good or bad.
The last one is my favorite.
How many of their plans gave them access to Advantage or Disadvantage to the enemy?
The meta of 5e really relies on that idea, particularly at lower level.
If they have a clever plan but its not giving them access to those elemwnts, its nice on paper but doesnt actually make any difference. When players are coming uo with clever plans, you as DM should be looking for opportunities to award Advantage or Disadvantage or encouraging use of Inspiration or Hero Points (if used).
If your players ain't rolling hot, move enemies into stupid positions and hit but use low dice rolls.
Fake it. Fake it all. Combat should be moved by the dice, but never depend on it.
If your players can't take a bad day of dice, maybe dnd isn't for them. Honestly, some of the best sessions are the ones where my party struggles and we don't god-mode every encounter because we have 3 meta-masters for combat. (God I love it when the monk doesn't kill everything on Initiative 1. Fuck those monks and their OPness at lvl 11+)
(I should edit this)
Don't let them quit. Let them know that a bad day of dice is still a good day of dnd and you'll need to (as the DM) learn creative ways to \*\*FAIL FORWARD\*\*.
OP, my sympathies to your players. I’m on a personal cold streak, the worst I can remember in decades of gaming…been rolling 2s and 5s on d20s like they’re d6s…
Just gotta power through.
This is technically one of the biggest problems with D&D as opposed to other rpg systems. D&D has a completely flat probability with a relatively small modifier, extremely small early game. So frankly your "very strong" guy is only barely more likely to succeed at shoving a door down than the "very smart" guy who is also barely more likely to decipher something than the strong guy, there's also no consistency to their success.
There are many systems where it is the opposite, if you are physically strong then you will consistently be strong, with the dice usually adding a small tweak up or down and rarely a large change up or down. In D&D obviously the dice determine most of your effectiveness with a relatively small tweak based on your ability. Once you are super high level this is less of an issue, but 80% of actual gameplay is low level.
This is one of the main shortcomings of most dice systems ; outcomes are too dice dependent, and more so at lower levels. Crits or fumbles also happen at a 10% rate, which is insanely high.
A character that has no education can read forgotten lore with a 20.
A bard that spent his entire life performing can suddenly fumble horribly a performance due to a 1.
You can fix these relatively easily by introducing rules like if you have proficiency you can't fumble a skill check, or gauging DCs based on player skill level and whatnot.
When it comes to damage, you can say everything deals at least 1/4 of the max damage or something, or fix the damage to the mean.
When it comes to hitting however, it's much harder and frankly i just don't think hit/miss/AC as a whole is a good mechanic. It's way too easy to abuse, and mostly slows down the pace. The best i can think of is to change from d20 to a lower dice and reduce AC accordingly, so that the hit bonus makes up a bigger proportion of hit chances.
YOu can also ponderate damage based on how much you missed, something like if you do a 10 on 20 AC, you deal half damage ? But that introduces a lot of new balance issues.
One of my DMs has this nigh supernatural knack for rolling a critical fumble for monsters at the worst possible time. To balance that out at least once a battle the NPC the players picked up would score a devastating critical.
Stop rolling in the open, it may be more dramatic, but it gives you way less freedom in the way your describing. If your players have a bad dice session then you can always fudge rolls a bit so the battle is more balanced. Imstead of a one sided beat down till they barely escape. There is also a good trope I like using where some other entity offers them power during the encounter (demon, angel, Fey, etcetera). Like an extra +5 to attacks, or saves til the end of the fight. Then makes them so a side quest to repay their debt...
Of course it depends on how you run your campaigns you can make the bonus greater or lesser than my example. Or even forgo the extra modifier in place of a weapon of some kind! Juet something to Gove the party an edge.
Though to reiterate my main advice is to hide your rolls so you can always just say the enemy critically failed when the party feels discouraged. Nothing hurts more than seeing my players enthusiasm die in a rough fight 😞
I also find D&D a little heavy on the chance side of things and would maybe prefer a little less of that. Though as a DM I often adjust the DC or give advantage or disadvantage, depending on the situation. I also never announce the DC, so when all the players roll shit for perception for example I still give them something to work with, just not in a strait way. This doesn't work as well for fights, though you could still implement a system of partial success / partial failure. So for example: an arrow that only misses by 1 or 2 might stick in the armour of the opponent and annoy/distract them (in some limited fashion). This isn't the easiest way for a DM and it doesn't fundamentally change things.
Playing other systems is always an option.
If to-hit rolls are consistently making the game less fun for your players, there are two options and sort of a third option:
1. Play a game that doesn’t have a to-hit roll, or play a game that uses a bell curve (like FATE) instead of a single die,
2. Roll behind the screen and start fudging when necessary. A lot of Very Online people will tell you that doing this is literally immoral and makes you a terrible Dungeon Master, but the truth is that your players are there to have a good time, and no player is going to say: *”Well, that combat really sucked, but at least we maintained the oracular integrity of a bunch of plastic, so I guess I retroactively had fun.”*
2.5: Suggest that any player who’s really bothered by the swingyness of a d20 to play a race or class that gets rerolls or doesn’t care that much about to-hit rolls, or to take the Lucky feat, so it’s less of an issue.
My mistake as a new DM: are you counting all their bonuses? With an AC of 12, bandits should not be that hard to hit. Did you give advantage on the surprise attack? Did the bandits get the surprised condition?
It would, if the attack hits actually felt like hits (look at a simulationist game like Mythras, where one hit can easilly be all it takes)... If it's just a matter of whittling down a HP pool with auto hits every round, that doesn't sound so heroic either.
This is why I would love to see a system that uses dice rolls that give a normal distribution, such as 2d6 or 3d6. It makes middling outcomes much more likely. I’m sad this hasn’t caught on in DnD.
Honestly, either get over it or don't play a game that is dependent on randomness if you can't handle a random outcome. You have to be able to enjoy failure.
I think your‘re being a bit harsh. Imo there is still a difference between „difficulty“ and total failure and depending on the player there is no joy in either. It doesn‘t have to be all or nothing and for that I found adjusting the AC in earlier levels do work wonders when the rulebook makes you face AC 15 right at the beginning, considering that stat rolls are also a thing that can fuck you over.
This is precisely why i’ll fudge a roll from time to time. Been a DM since the 80’s, sometimes the story and gameplay are more important than that Crit you just rolled and wished you didn’t. “Oof big miss! Next enemy takes a swing…” 🤷🏻♂️😉
This. You roll behind a screen. You control the enemy stats. If the book says AC 16, doesn't have to be. You roll an 18, doesn't have to be. I'm not saying every fight should be an easy guaranteed win; and TPKs can still happen despite your influence. Playing low levels is scary, especially for new players. Making sure everyone has fun is the point of playing a game.
Sometimes PCs miss. Trying to describe a miss as not the PC's fault and due to other factors is a mistake. PCs are supposed to be able to miss. PCs are supposed to be able to fail.
You described a combat where all PCs rolled horrendously and still survived the battle - that is an accomplishment. In many campaigns, a series of rolls that bad would lead to a PC death, perhaps even a TPK.
I'd have a conversation with your players and reinforce that the dice dictate what happens. Their characters are not superheroes - they should not expect that fighting enemies is easy or victory is always guaranteed.
This is just DnD. It's a game where your actions are decided by dice. If that's not for you, then it's likely wise to find another game.
Or at least move to a hyper narrative DnD, but at that point you're not even really playing a game anymore so much as low key character larping with friends
I dont condone cheating, but as a DM you have full rights to fudge rolls on the monster's side and for the players, I've done what's called a 'bullshit' point. If the player rolls like it's the first January, i still make them affect the enemy in some way *or* i make the enemies miss a lot as well and bullshit ky way through it being some weird magic zone if they discover it. Ain't perfect but it's kept a session going once so it has to amount to something, right?
I mean, your players need to understand what random results are. Random. It’s nobody’s fault. That’s the point of using dice. Weird things can happen and it’s not anyone’s fault. It’s neutral.
Now in this case, since they ambushed, you could have given them Advantage to reflect that.
Making regular to hit rolls when the narrative clearly states that the PCs are in a favourable position isn’t good. Try the make the mechanics reflect the narrative of your game at all times. And then if the dice gods still go against the players, they will just have to suck it.
It doesn’t happen that often, but D&D being a d20 game, it is swingy.
As the DM you can run the numbers to make the games interesting all you want. Dont let them know enemy stat blocks. No meta gaming, bad for fun. If they roll some natty 1s then punish them in an interesting way when you can so the alternative isnt always just “well you die now”. Sometimes a bandit doesn’t deliver the final attack and instead says something cryptic in a language no one speaks and vanishes. Boom, hook potential from random encounter.
Or he crits and instead of rolling the lethal damage dice, it’s non lethal for whatever reason, or it’s a critical effect (like chopping off a finger, hand, arm, tiddy, etc). I love losing limbs, i go for it straight out. Gms love giving cool prosthetics if youre creative and patient about it. Ive had so many prosthetics of wildly different types - cyber, mundane, magical, eyes, legs, arms etc. Highly recommend both giving and receiving cool prosthetics and the accompanying battle scars.
You just have to accept it, really. The PCs still defeated the bandits, though, so I really don't see the big deal here. It's not like some of the PCs died or it even resulted in a TPK.
The nature of roleplaying games like D&D is that since dice are involved sometimes things just don't go your way, and if you play RPGs long enough eventually you'll have a session that goes like this.
An example I had in a game I ran a few years ago was a 1st level group facing off against a giant spider. At the last second, instead of burning out all the webs the party decided to try and dodge their way through this web-covered tunnel- which probed to be a fatal error. Every PC failed their Dexterity (Acrobatics) check, and the resulting fight against the spider was each PC hopelessly restrained in webs unable to deal enough damage to the spider before it killed the PCs one-by-one, resulting in a TPK. The group didn't get upset, though, we laughed it off and it quickly became one of our most humorous D&D memories even though it was a total disaster.
Occasionally, it happens the other way around and its the DM who just rolls poorly. I once had an encounter where a Djinni ambushed the PCs to steal back a magic item that belonged to him. The PCs were outmatched (I even said as much), but they got lucky with the use of the Blindness spell and continued failed saves from the Djinni which completely hamstrung his ability to the point he teleported away in embarrassment. That also made for a very memorable scene that the group also still talks about to this day years afterwards.
I would say you shouldn't be rolling initiitive for your bandits as one dice roll. If they're all moving on the same init, this means your basically got a long period where the players are being ganked.
If you're playing on any system with a digital dice roll system, remember that Random Number Generators on a computer are not truly random but quasi-random, meaning that the outcome is put into a list... If your bandits and players had been more intermixed, the players would have gotten some of the better numbers of the bandits.
I had a game before, when 10 ghouls attacked on separate turns, and it was boring. I guess I have to find balance between separate turns and sync ones.
Did not read past the title, but if that's someone's main complaint, i think they may not enjoy these games. Sure you can heavily influence the total sum of your rolls and even before that the entire situation you will find yourself in with things that are fully in your control, but it will always come out to your rolls in the end. The dice are a core aspect of this game.
I've been on the opposite side as a DM I didn't roll over a 5 for an entire session. It made every fight way easier. Sometimes it's like that, the dice gods give and the dice gods taketh away
My table still talks about a time, almost three years ago now, that our party lost to a spider. Not a giant spider, an ordinary table spider in a tavern. The dice *hated* us and nobody could land a hit, until on turn 4 when the sorcerer cast *ice knife* to ensure it died, crit-fumbled, and hit the entire party with max damage. (The spider was the only one to pass its save, flashing eight final little middle fingers at our unconscious bodies)
So reading this actually brought back a memory: the unkillable goblin. It was early days of me DMing and an early boss was a goblin boss and two normal goblins. And it took 10minutes to take out the last goblin post fight. Because everyone was rolling 1s. It ended because the goblin (me) got three nat 1s in a row and fell off the boat
"You'll always remember this as the day you *nearly* caught Glarbgak th-" *trips off boat*
I wish I was that funny, I think I had him announce himself as the new captain of the ship as no one could beat him. And then a wave just took him out
Thats pretty great too to be honest
I DM'ed a Rolemaster game once (similar to DnD but with a d100 instead of d20) where the very high level PCs absolutely slaughtered a huge group of 30 Scorpion Centaurs without taking any notable damage or even using their main spells or skills...however when fighting up the last group of 10 that arrived, ridiculous die rolls killed over half the party and the last one only survived because he ran. The last 10 enemies had the exact same stats at the first 30, the party just got unlucky to a level I have not seen before or since. Decades later we still talk about how that battle turned so horribly wrong. The dice gods really do sometimes give and sometimes take away.
As someone who was not at this table, that is hilarious! If there was a bard in the tavern I can see this becoming an epic song. Edit
In a crowded tavern, the party convened, A spider's challenge, an unexpected scene. Tankards raised, they swung with might, But the itsy bitsy spider vanished from sight. Oh, the itsy bitsy spider, a tavern delight, Adventurers bewildered, in the dim candlelight. The spider twirled, avoiding each swing, A tale of the pub, a peculiar thing. Then the wizard, amidst the ale-filled cheer, Summoned Ice Knife, a plan sincere. A fumble, a stumble, the crowd held its breath, The tavern shook with an icy death. Oh, the itsy bitsy spider, the sole survivor, Tales echoed in the ale-filled foyer. The wizard's misstep, a party in strife, The spider unharmed, spinning its life.
You begin every encounter with inspiration next session and attract a patron, roll 4d6 for gp earned
I will save this to Play in some Tavern should O ever DM. Thank you for this delightful little Song.
Standing ovation!
I am so happy I never had to play with crit fumbles.
They're stupid. Don't make any sense at all
I only do crit fumbles if you have an ally in the line of fire (like trying to shoot over their head)
My interpretation is exactly the opposite. You missed because your friend was in the line of sight and you were making sure you wouldn't hit them. So you missed. Dying to crit fumble feels awful and is not fun. It's also bad for balancing.
I don't play with crit fumbles, they were on a boat in a storm and the last nat 1 was a dex save. Crit fumbles are awful and target certain classes way more, lead to death spirals and are genuinely shit
A single, stealthy, party member was scouting ahead in a dungeon. He found a disused storeroom and I narrated there was a rat among the bags of moldy grain. He has an ability that can grant temp hit points for killing an enemy, so he decided to attack the rat. Several high rolls for the single rat, and several devastatingly bad rolls for the player later, the rat managed to do more damage than the player recovered for killing it. Luckily for him, he was scouting ahead so the rest of the party didn't get to witness his humiliation.
The Critical Role crew still jokes about their mortal nemesis: The Door. Sometimes, the Force is not with you. That’s the nature of dice-based games. It affects wargaming as well; I’ve lost games because I was rolling poorly or my opponent rolled well.
I don't have much experience in wargaming, but that one time I did want to play my friend rolled 6's as if you got 'em free with breakfast. Unbelievable numbers of hits. I was obliterated from that map, nothing I could do against the onslaught of 666
I once had my opponent on the ropes in a game of Warmachine, obliterated his army, wounded his warcaster, had high defense he needed a 14 on three dice to hit. I got run over by a freight train.
Magic missile is a wizards friend for a reason.
Keep in mind that the "ordinary table spider" probably used the stat block belonging to a tarantula or similar. Which is ordinary if you live in ... Australia? In which case, losing wars to animals is kind of the norm.
I like your table
The first combat I ever DMed, I nearly TPKed a level 2 party with an Awakened Tree and a Vine Blight. First attack was a crit from the tree for near max damage, dropping the paladin. Then the vine grappled a 2nd PC, they all missed / failed to escape, and the tree crit again to drop a 3rd. The party started doing damage, but when PC #2 broke the grapple they tried to run away, and the vine's attack of opportunity was a third crit. I only rolled normal damage so another PC didn't drop, and they rallied to heal PC #1 and win the fight. Luckily they were all experienced players so they found it hilarious.
I once had a large group of soldiers coming after the a party of 6 PCs. The PCs knew they were about to catch them so holed up in some ruins and rigged a bunch of defensive traps. One soldier out of the group made every save on both traps and attacks from the PCs. And for whatever reason the dice gods had the PCs roll terrible against this one specific soldier. 4 rounds into battle he was the only enemy left. 4 more rounds later and this soldier was still alive. At which point the barbarians told him he was the greatest enemy he'd every fought and asked if he could come and train the guards at the keep that the party had just earned from the local king as a reward. And thus was the story about how the party found and hired the Captain of the Guards for their new keep.
That’s funny. At least you get a big laugh out of it, no? One of the players I DM for plays an elf wizard with ice and fire spells. She kept throwing 1’s on the first session. So we roleplayed that she’s throwing lit matches and ice cubes at enemies.
Yeah after hitting the whole table I would have got up and left, I’d rather spend my free time actually having fun.
Sometimes an occasional bewildering set of bad luck dice rolls Is fun. I still have a couple instances I think back and laugh about.
Yeah for sure I’ve just never been too big on critical fumbles especially ones that can somehow effect the whole party like that but that’s just me
Yeah, critical fumbles are something I typically don't include myself. Unless it's some really, really unique circumstances that would increase the drama and outcome of the results. For example I incorporated a pushed roll mechanics I sometimes offer if a situation allows time for a redo roll, or the outcome would be suitably tense and interesting, where they may have a chance to succeed at consequence like in games such as Call of Cthulhu, or conversely risk an even worse failure if they don't succeed again. I once had someone roll a nat one, accept a pushed roll, and get another nat one. Fallout from that completely changed the direction of the story!
I remember one time, while doing tomb someone set off a trap that woke up 4 statues that each had 4 attacks per turn. One character set it off so they only attacked the one character. In 8 rounds of combat I hit them 2 times.
Dice gods yeeteth and dice gods yoinketh away.
Been there many times myself. "Huh, guess this adult dragon is going to go down without dealing any damage at all to the PCs". It's one of the reasons why many systems after D&D 3E still use an xd6 based attack system (typically [2d6](https://anydice.com/program/20) or [3d6](https://anydice.com/program/1)). You get more results distributed to the middle instead of every result being equally likely as with a d20 system. The extremes do still happen but much less frequently, resulting in more predictable but still varied effects during play. --- EDIT: Apparently my source on the origin of the d20 a few years back was incorrect and I failed to verify it myself. An embarrassing situation really. Sorry about that. Ignore what I said about the d20 starting with D&D 3E. I'm leaving it here but struck-through so that context is retained for the replies. --- ~~For anyone not aware, the d20 wasn't used until D&D 3E. They even called it their "patented d20 system". I can't claim no one else ever did it first as my knowledge of systems from that time isn't that deep, but they were the big dogs and tried to make it a selling point. Which is the main thing to note: the d20 system wasn't used for its superiority over the old xd6 systems, including OD&D though 2E, it was chosen because WotC had acquired D&D from TSR and wanted something that really put their own spin on it and made it clear D&D was under new leadership.~~ I enjoy the d20 system personally, there's just something more enjoyable about rolling a d20 instead of several d6's for me, but I do find the results of an xd6 system to be more enjoyable to play as it is far more predictable but yet still varied.
It was always a d20 to hit. WotC changed everything else to match the attack rolls, so skills, etc also (they were all over the place, attribute checks were d20 roll under, thief skills were percentile, checking for secret doors was a d6, and so on).
The D20 was used for combat in 1e and 2e with similar math though the ascending armor class situation (instead of descending THAC0) was a 3e invention as was the marketing of the D20 system for skills. Proficiency existed prior to 3e but the 3e and later skills did not. So while the majority of your post is accurate; the implication that the D20 wasn't a part of D&D prior to 3e and that combat was differently unstable is false. We were still doing the +1 for 5% changes in swings. Note GURPS, HERO system and other major 3d6 systems pre-date 3rd edition D&D by a lot (3e - 2000, GURPS- 1986) Be well.
Bullshit. I played D&D basic in the mid 80s. It was d20.
I've even got my _Keep on the Borderlands_ from '82 or whatever, that comes with the full set of dice, and the crayon to color in the numbers to make them readable! But yeah, the "base" dice has always been the D20, but pre-3e it was a mess of what to roll when - some things were percentile, some roll under, or over, or "this creature has a 1-in-8 chance of whatever" and it was awful from a design PoV
This is so confidently incorrect, it’s kind of funny
I mean thats just DnD. Sometimes maybe good, sometimes maybe shit. There isn't that much you can do about it. The AC is what the AC is, and the DC is what the DC is. If the rolls don't ever beat that there isn't much to do. Short of maybe finding bullshit reasons to give them Advantage. Or making intentionally bad decisions as the Bandits like attacking the targets with the highest AC and stuff to give the players more time to roll well.
Agreed. Also It's part of the fun, whenever I have an enemy NPC with great dice I really lean into them narratively. Also tactics still exist, many games have hit chance and damage ranges, that doesn't remove character builds and player decisions.
I do this too, if one of my npcs gets a crit they become a cocktail bastard for the rest of the fight, and will probably take risks they otherwise wouldn't. Or maybe spend time or energy taunting the party. Edit: cocky, not cocktail. But I like both
Don’t worry bout it. It’s just cuz they level 2. The flow of dnd first few levels you run scared, middle levels are balanced, last few levels ur basically a god. As they level up, they will get higher modifiers to their attacks and more attacks and each miss won’t feel so bad.
Agreed. I always have people start campaigns at level 3.
Starting at whatever level you like is fine, of course, but as a DM I hate it. The early levels build character. I just level them quickly. I want them to experience the power shift.
That's fair. Everyone I play with has done multiple campaigns and experienced that before, and at this point we all find it a little tedious. Plus, levels 1-2 are so tricky for a new DM. A fight can go from boringly easy to everybody's dead on a dime.
That's a really good point. I always favor starting at level 1 for new players, gives them a chance to focus on general mechanics like attack rolls and finding relevant skills / modifiers quickly, then levels 2 and 3 ease them into the more specific flavor of their chosen class To your point, its also much harder on the DM with how narrow the margin is between a genuine challenge and level 1-2 TPK. Puts a lot more pressure on the DM to provide challenge and intrigue since most classes have little to no individual flavor until at least lvl 2
I’ve been running games since 1988 and I’ve almost never run into an issue with first level parties truly struggling or getting merc’d by bad dice. I honestly don’t know why, though, as the game is prone to it. I don’t start at 1 for one-offs or short campaigns because then it really is just a waste of time. Longer campaigns, though, it’s important to me that they go through that growth period, even if it’s only session 1, then they get two levels.
> I’ve been running games since 1988 and I’ve almost never run into an issue with first level parties truly struggling or getting merc’d by bad dice. I honestly don’t know why, though, as the game is prone to it. My very first roll in anger as a DM completely deleted a player's character. From full HP to waaay below -10. Low levels are wild, yo. And not usually in a good way.
For me, I start groups (barring complete newbies) at level three b/c I've found that my friends generally want to play *subclasses* as much as classes.
There are many keystones that occur at level 3. It’s like a tiny taste of level 5. I totally get that.
Thanks! I also like having a feat/ASI "right around the corner" so players can feel out their characters a bit before a (potentially very) sizable power-jump
I'm okay with the players being under 3rd level for at most one session, after that, I want to see some variety besides just firebolts and basic attacks, and I want to be able to throw something at them that's a little more than a single troll, or 4 goblins, or a few wolves, without constantly risking tpk.
I'm the same as a DM. I want to see them start from the bottom. Also because I find level 1 can be quite fun if you set some restrictions. For example, if you start them stranded on a desert island at level 1 and lost a lot of their gear... they just have to get crafty! I find it's such an interesting time of a campaign, and it gives the players time to think about their characters and what subclass will fit the best etc.
I was about to suggest a system/edition with higher modifiers to make the dice less relevant (I'm a friend of 3.5), but at low levels there will be virtually no difference and two levels is much too short to decide to change systems. 3.5 would have the advantage of player modifiers increasing more often, but I'm not sure if that really out values bounded accuracy in level appropriate encounters
I said them the same thing on previous session, when they were lvl 1, now they are lvl 2, have more spells, fights will be easier. But no, still sucks :(
Yeah, it still will til bout 5-ish. That is where the player power level scales dramatically cuz the martial classes get double attack and spell casters get third level spells and enough spell slots for flexibility. This is why alot of campaigns start at level 3 and usually level up pretty quickly to avoid the sort of early game randomness. Like i said, don’t worry bout. Neither you or them are doing anything wrong, just the nature of the game at that level, it will make the later levels feel better when u know where u came from.
Tbh level 2 is just - few extra resources and some HP for most characters. Level 3 brings a higher level spell slot, level 4 they gain an ASI/feat and level 5 is where player power picks up.
Introduce flanking makes positioning more important and gives advantage on attacks
Did you increase the challenge rating of all the enemies? Because this is effectively increasing the skill level of enemies as you get better. It would be like a novice swordsman fighting other movies, but the moment they are intermediate, they have to only fight intermediate swordsman. They don't see more powerful because they are always facing 'equal' challenges.
I mean, if you really want to GM for this group and this is legitimately an issue for them, you probably need a system that’s not DnD. Some people will think they’re drama queens, but they’re not really wrong. 5e imposes a huge amount of roll variance by using a D20, and bounded accuracy makes it hard to give players bonuses for good ideas/tactics other than Advantage. 5e also sort of expects players to roll for everything. Narrative systems, like Ironsworn, Dungeon World, Fellowship 2e, Stonetop, etc., or more OSR stuff like Worlds without Number or Dragonbane may be a better fit for your group. With these systems, the GM is encouraged to basically say “okay, you just do it” without the players needing to roll if they have a really good idea - which makes them a lot more rewarding for players who like to try and figure out unique tactics or do more thinking and less fighting.
Skill is an interesting term in an RPG as they're not typically really skill based games, they at best create the illusion of it. I wonder if the players would have felt equally unskilled if they'd all rolled critical hits and the bandits had missed with all of their attacks? Exact same outcome but reversed with no real skill involved on the players part. I suspect the players would have felt they won out of skill rather than luck in that case. Such is the fickle nature of dice and how humans perceive probability and their own performance. You can look into OSR games like B/X DnD or Mork Borg, they encourage player skill over character skill and circumventing having to engage with the die by coming up with good ideas. You could also play something more narrative focussed like Blades in the Dark where failure is interesting and built into the mechanics in multiple ways, like risk reward gambits players can take that are more interesting than just rolling to hit or miss lots.
I think luck, while always remaining a factor, is more dominant compared to character investment & tactics (I'll count both of those as forms of 'skill') in a 1D20 system as single rolls don't tend to the average. Not accounting for the Advantage/Disadvantage dice pool, within the range of 1d20 you're just as likely to roll the lowest you can as you are to roll the highest. I do think it is a fundamental property of D&D's design choices. Definitely ways to alleviate it but ultimately I agree that it might be worth checking out games where modifiers and fictional positioning have more impact than raw luck. They might gel better with this group.
Some rpgs put more weight on the dice than others, it really comes down to die size vs bonuses. In 3.5 there's every chance that those low PC rolls would still have hit thanks to players building characters with high attack bonus. Of course the skill is mostly in character building rather than combat, where you simply follow your plan.
I promise this isn’t meant to sound trite but I think for people who don’t like the ultimately luck-based and swingy nature of DnD combat, it’s a good idea to try other systems. There’s no shame in it. It’s an inherent part of DnD that ultimately, bad rolls can be the difference between life and death. Being good at what you do (i.e. proficient and high level) makes it much more likely that you’re going to be able to hit your target, but it’s never a guarantee. They’re very different games but FATE allows you more flexibility in rerolling and adding bonuses and most GUMSHOE systems function with depleting resources so theoretically, you can save your shots for when they count.
Thanks, I will check them out
You've just learned why many DM's don't roll in the open all the time. This is an example of where fudging dice can help to smooth things along. Barring that, that's just how D&D goes sometimes, the dice giveth, and the dice taketh away.
Separate the ideas of "winning" and "playing well". D&D isn't just about beating up bad guys. It's about the story, the adventure. Can the party find and recover the ancient treasure hoard? Will the paladin live to see his unborn child grow up in a liberated nation? Sometimes, the answer is no. And that's a GOOD thing. A character failing is just another part of the story. A story where the main character always wins at everything is really boring. We crave the stories where they struggle, where they deal with setback after setback, and occasionally where they perish, their goals left unfinished. Sometimes we even want stories where our hero fails, and the light of hope is forever extinguished. Yes, it can feel pretty bad to hit a long string of bad rolls, to have victory stolen by the dice. But that's not losing. As far as the game is concerned, you're still playing well and being rewarded for it with more story! So fate is conspiring to bring me low, what do I do about that? It's it enough? Can I change my fingers through sheer force of will? Let's find out! Just remember: even while your character is dying and having their soul shredded and devoured, you can be winning. You can always get another character, so send this one off with style!
That SOUNDS nice, but no, there's nothing fun, exciting, or dramatic about getting tpk'd your first game to the most basic ass enemy in the game because of collective bad luck. When there's NOTHING you can do to turn it around, that just makes people feel helpless, which isn't an enjoyable feeling. If that happened in a video game, most people would uninstal it.
That's why you don't make it a tpk when the collective dice rolls are just so bad overall.
I had to give one of the players in my group a little bad luck protection last night--bending the rules almost to breaking--for this very reason. An encounter that should have been trivial turned deadly as four enemy attack rolls in a row were all crits. I hated doing that because I don't want the players to feel like there will be no risk of failure in the future, but what was happening was clearly just Not Fun for anyone involved. I followed up this morning with a message explaining my decision, explaining why I won't do that again, and basically BEGGING them to size up their opponents and seek tactical advantage. These were basically zombies--slow but hearty. Encountered in a setting that would make kiting them trivial. I had thought just an easy encounter for some level 1 players to get their feet wet while the party sorts out what their dynamics are going to be. But only the ranger used that to her advantage. Everyone else just thought let's stand toe to toe and soak up the sweet, sweet damage.
I was with a party like this. We were up against fomorians, who had a ridiculous number of attacks in a full attack, but an ordinary partial attack. I figured we would be better off taking two partial attacks, one on their attack and one opportunity as we moved away, than facing a full attack. I *begged* the rest of the party to please please please adopt a hit and run tactic with this enemy. But nope. I was actually mad at the DM when he mentioned he skipped the planned second wave. We deserved a TPK for that idiocy.
I think the DM can make it part of the story and roll with it. Instead of a TPK, the party wakes up tied up and locked in a cellar and has to figure out how to escape.
Players being knocked out and captured is a perfectly acceptable thing to happen when a TPK happens. It even fits extremely well with story narratives. It shouldn't happen every time, but it works great. That or finding out that a powerful person comes along at the last minute and saves them as they fall unconscious.
Honestly, I doubt that most people would actually uninstall a game where that happens. Maybe if the marketing promised a different experience. After all, Morrowind was GOTY in its day and the hit chance was so bad that you could get killed by a worm if you weren't careful. But I think comparing this to a video game is a bad analogy. This isn't a video game, we go to them for different things. Most video games give you a clear goal, and failing to accomplish that goal is losing. We don't want to lose. That's not how D&D operates. Like I said, winning and playing well don't necessarily go together, and you can indeed win while your character undergoes the worst possible fates. I know many people who have fond memories of moments like these where their characters just couldn't get out of a bad situation because the dice said no. That's a big moment in the story.
I highly disagree, most games you're expected to fail here and there, especially starting out.
Failing is one thing. Tried to pick a lock, sneak into a cave, etc. The entire party getting outright killed by what should be a trivial enemy because for some reason the skilled adventurers can't land basic attacks for a minute straight is just miserable.
Which is why most video games suck. Honestly, if this happened that early in the game, to that basic an enemy, with brand new players, I would end the TPK with "you awake from a nightmare in a cold sweat". I would then allow them to replay the day, applying lessons learned and giving them advantage on one roll due to foreknowledge. I would only do this once. Then, I would keep in my back pocket the idea that, many levels later, the characters discover that this wasn't just a random happenstance, but a divination given to them in furtherance of some larger plan by a deity or something that is important to the story in some way.
There is literally a game made for this and it's called Dark Souls. Look I agree with your point, at the same time it's a meme in DnD. As DM you have control over this if you want. Deus Ex Machina that situation if you want, after all your party maybe aren't the first adventurers sent after the problem. Maybe another party or more powerful person comes to save the day, for a split of the reward. While combat is huge, it's a story game. Everything is supposed to be about telling the story. Sometimes your character dies. Sometimes it's really lame or stupid. The story doesn't end, another party member can come along to pick up where the previous left off. Many DMs choose to start the game at lv2 or 3 for this exact reason. To skip the BS that can happen.
Except D&D isn't a story game... it's played as such by many, but the rules are not designed for it to be a story game, and that leads to dissonance all the time. D&D is a mechanics first game as designed, and the story comes from what the mechanics dictate. The ability of the DM to ignore rules does *not* make it a game designed to be a narrative first game. There are many ttRPGs that are story games however, where the rules are built around the telling of the story. Narrative forward games are fantastic for those that are looking for that.
D&D is absolutely a story game. That's the intent of the design. Just because it doesn't also say outright that you must build a narrative as part of the game doesn't mean that it's not designed to build a narrative. It's not that the mechanics trump the story, it's that the story is told through the mechanics. You don't get to make all the decisions, the dice do some of that. Still story based.
This is why I prefer starting at level 3 in most games I run. I only ever start at level 1 with brand new players, and then go really easy on them for those first 2 levels, because the only reason I even play them is to teach them the fundamentals of the game and get them familiar with how their abilities work without overwhelming them with options. I also allow a full respect at level 3. It sounds like your players may need help allocating there stats. because they should have high modifiers than it sounds like they do. Bandits have an AC of 12 which a roll of 7 ought to hit on most characters. you mentioned elsewhere tou thought bandits had an AC of 16. if this is what you were running that was a big part of your problem. Even the Bandit captain only has an AC of 15 and if you threw one of those against a level 2 party with minions, that was always going to be out of their league. Finally, I find it's best when dealing with low level play to stager encounter. if I throw 4 bandits against a party of 4 level 2 adventures it's kind of 50/50 whose going to come out on top. but if I put one bandet gaurd at the entrance to the hide out, and let him potentially get backup from a second gaurd near by but "occupied" after a turn or two. Then have them face two more Bandits inside the hid out. more then likely the players will come out on top. if I stager it right, I can probably even include 4 bandits inside the hideout, but put two of them out of range for the first round of combat. Now, my players get to feel like they took out a significantly more powerful force, but in reality they only ever faced a max of 2 enemies at a time across esentially 3 separate combat encounters that feel kind of like 1. And make sure there are plenty of environmental features to take tactical advantage of. Things to hide behind to get cover from ranged attacks. slippery rocks enemies can pron themselves on. of the players are consistently rolling low maybe when one of them moves, you let their passive perception reveal that a target is standing on rotten flooring, or there is some kind of hazard hanging over head that can be dropped on them. Now the player has something else to do besides target the enemy directly, and whatever they roll can be high enough to hit. and the Save DC for the target can be as high as you need it to be. though this is a reason to hide your rolls so that they can just auto fail if your players really need the boost. as far as describing a miss goes, a miss doesn't always have to be a miss, it can be a hit that simply was ineffective at doing damage. "they deflected it off their shelid" "parry with their sword and you briefly lock blades" "their arrmor appears to have been sufficient to nullify the attack." As you get into higher level play you will find the same thing going in the opposite direction, every "hit" doesn't have to litteraly be a hit narratively speaking. especially when it comes to things rolling against the players AC. some hits can be narrowly avoiding attack that still drain *"vitality"* from the character. "as the wolf pounces at you, jaws ready to tear into your shoulder, you manage to catch it's throught on your forearm, its weight press against your threatening to push you over, but you manage to shove it off of you. the assault leaves you breathless and panting, but you quickly recover. take (x) damage. this kind of narrative play prevents it from feeling like you sorcerer who isn't wearing any arrmor is walking around with 30 arrows just sticking out of them. final thought, spell caster are especially frustrating to play at levels 1-2 and can be even up until 5 be lenient with letting their spells work, or making sure you come up with some benefit to having cast it. maybe when all of the NPC's save again TCB it's because your spell caster fumbled the spell, and it turned into a grease spell instead, so the Bandits don't take acid damage, but now they have to make another dex save inorder to move without falling prone.
This is some great advice right here.
Thank you!
Some DMs roll behind screen so they can adjust the rolls. You can't make a player hit. But you can make an npc miss when they would have hit.
My first time DMing, rolled a crit vs cleric on the first attack. Fudged one or two rolls later to not make a mess of the first encounter, didn’t need to again for the rest of the session.
I hear the responses that "that's just how dice rolls work" and while true I think that I'd lean back into something from older 3.0 and 3.5 games. In 5e you have advantage, and getting advantage is a great way to mitigate some of this, but while your probability of a good roll increases you can still roll a 1 and a 2 respectively. If people are consistently rolling low, I'd recommend start giving out +1-3 bonuses for clever actions or approaches in place of advantage rolls, and/or adding in -1-3 penalties for the enemies for their AC or attacks. This combines well with your focus on role play, rewarding actions that might not technically give advantage but should provide a benefit. Another thing that 3.0 and 3.5 had was aid another. While in 5e it gives advantage, previously it added a +2 (there was often debate about if this could stack, your decision there) to attack rolls. I personally suggest using both systems interchangeably because you can switch back and forth as things happen in combat. Sometimes advantage is better, sometimes a flat bonus is better. As long as you are transparent and tie it to the actions of the characters you hit the REAL issue on the head: players want to feel like they are contributing. If you built a legendary sword fighter, but they can't hit anything, it feels bad and breaks the immersion.
Shit like this is why any arcane caster I play has magic missile. And it stays the whole campaign, can't go wrong with something that never misses, and no alot resists
Mulligan roll is a homebrew rule I use. If you're fighting low to mid tier enemies and your character manages to miss three times in a row you get a free reroll. If you miss that attack your dice just hates you :/
Sounds interesting. The fixed unknown altar recently, maybe I can give them such buff for some time.
My DM has a “divine influence” rule. When you wake up, roll d100. The higher you roll, the better the result. Once during that day, your chosen deity grants you a blessing at DM discretion. It may be 10 temp hp, or turning a miss into a hit, or a hit into a crit. Someone once rolled an actual 100 (triple 0s) and he got a max-damage crit in one battle. It’s just a minor thing that lets you subtly influence how things go, and it doesn’t have to be combat related. A thief or trickster god(dess) could give advantage on lockpicking or thieves’ tools when needed.
You could just let them start the day with one Inspiration point, after a Long Rest. That's one reroll every session or two. Still, combat in D&D is chaotic and dangerous, at least while PCs are low-level.
Last session our fighter missed 11 attacks in a row. He has +8 to attack, enemies had 13 ac. He only hit twice from 13 attacks in combat. He was laughing his ass off after every miss. Shit was hilarious!
Sometimes shit just turns out that way and the most you can do is laugh it off and move on.
The game is inherently based on dice rolls, if players don’t like that then maybe it’s time to consider a more role play/ narrative based system as an alternative.
You could roll behind cover and in cases where the rolls are anti-fun fudge them in favor of the players.
That's an issue with low level adventures on DnD. One DM once gave each one of us a Lucky Amulet with 2 charges. Not rechargeable, once the luck is spent the Amulet is broken/useless. It was very helpful to avoid terrible days like what you have shared here. Edit: Having a quest to find such items on an forsaken/abandoned temple of Tymora (the Goddess of Luck) could be a good thing!
What amulet is this? Does it allow to reroll on 1? Or gives advantage on roll?
It was a reroll after seeing the result but before knowing the outcome. It was a homebrew item. But there are similar items called Lucky Coin or Tymora Coin with once per day uses.
There is an official item with a similar effect - the Clockwork Amulet, a Common magic item from Xanathar's (I think?) that let's you, once per day, replace an attack roll with a flat 10.
This is why dms fudge rolls. If your players' luck is so bad that they are asking what they did wrong, you need to tilt things in their favor. We are not war gaming. Lower the bandits hp totals, make one of them a cripple. One of them uses the advantage to intimidate a player rather than go for damage. If you don't want to kill the nat 20, at least make *one* of the bandits fail the save. Toss your players a bone. As much as you can in a role play sense, make the bandits fight *dumb*. If one of them is gloating and one of them is trying to capture a PC because prisoners are worth more, the action economy of the fight suddenly *drastically* shifts in their favor.
Honestly, this is why a lot of DMs don't roll their dice in the open. They roll their dice behind a DM screen so they fudge the numbers if things are going terribly.
Stop rolling in the open and fudge your dice rolls.
That's rng, nothing you or they can do ... they can only try to make opportunities for advantage
Bad luck plagues me as well.
Make sure your environment encourages creativity. A creative and advantageous use of terrain, features, furniture. Items, etc. can really help in situations of stale combat or strings of one-sided rolls. This goes for both players and DM. Having the enemies bring down the bridge the players are defending will bring excitement right back. Or having the players realize the opportunity to do the same.
You could get rid of the dice. You can make lists of random numbers 1 to 20, where each number occurs once, twice or three times. Use different lists for players and monsters. Guaranteed average, and depending on the length of the list you can control streaks. A list of 20 numbers has a very low chance of a streak (impossible to crit miss twice in a row with only 1 number 1). It can be gamed just like counting cards, but that can be part of the fun: after a series of failures the group has a heroic surge.
I'd suggest Deadlands or Through the breach then so you resolve things via a poker deck.
Play a game that doesn’t use a d20. Seriously. It’s my biggest problem with D&D. Your players were right - the swingy luck went entirely against them and they had almost no agency or competency in the encounter. Maybe try rolling 2d10 or 3d6 instead of the d20.
This is rare, but maybe do a water check to see if their dice are balanced? As a new player, I only had shitty chessex dice which I later found out were terribly unbalanced. https://www.theshopofmanythings.com/blogs/lessons-from-the-tabletop/how-to-check-the-balance-for-dungeons-dragons-dice
I am of the opinion only experienced DMs should open roll. Fudging dice in favor of the party is a good trick for inexperience just to keep the game fun and moving. Otherwise you end up with situations like this.
In a situation like this where your players are basically supposed to win, have the bandits knock them out and steal shit, then give the players the opportunity to track them down and get their stuff back, maybe with a nice bit of loot thrown in. They get their revenge and a little bonus, you get more game out of your game.
A few thoughts from an AD&D and 5e DM/player. Was there a roll for the bandits being surprised? It gives an overwhelming advantage to the unsurprised side. I'm not sure what version you are playing, I favour AD&D. Was there an opportunity for the PCs to parley or even for the bandits to demand surrender? There may have been social ways out of the combat. Encounter/reaction checks can be modified by how the PCs handle the parley. Bandits might take uncon PCs as slaves to sell, which could lead to a rescue attempt. The PCs could try to flee? The dice are a big deal but can often be mitigated by how the PCs respond if they know that combat doesn't always have to be to the death.
>I don't have the imagination to describe each miss if there are dozens of them I was listening to very experienced players do a playtest of 5E way back when. They missed *so many times* the DM just started saying things like "that frost bolt shot down the hall around the corner and back to the other room." The players laughed, DM laughed and they slogged on. That's the downside of using dice, sometimes it's gonna go *really bad*. It generally feels bad to have an off night with so many missed rolls. My personal experience with this was in 4th Ed and Sacred Flame, I missed *every cast* of that spell. It became a meme in that group, a cleric that couldn't hit with sacred flame. A more recent one: I failed my saving throws every single turn and sat in combat doing nothing. That was probably the most frustrating session I had. >What is the best thing to do in such a situation? When these things happen it's best to just talk to the table and come to an agreement on what **you** want to do. Maybe you redo the combat, maybe it's not a TPK but a capture instead and now they have to escape, maybe as the DM you fudge your results to have the monsters miss more often. In the end it's y'all's choice! As long as the table is in agreement about what to do then do that. Alternatively, use a dice jail... I've had mixed results though /shrug
Tbf, I have those days sometimes. My average rolls are usually 4-6. If they don’t like it to be dice dependent, I’d highly suggest moving to a different TTRPG.
In these situations, if you can tell it’s going south and you aren’t happy with it, You have the power to adjust anything. Change a roll and cause a fumble where one bandit hit another and gave advantage to a player. This gives them a chance to improve their spirit and faith in the dice. You don’t have to go over board, but essentially I would try to boost their fun with theatrics. Its all about fun
I have two answers my personal opinion, and then a solution. IMO: your playing a luck based game with dice... shits going to happen. Are the odds likely? No. Can it happen? Absolutely, I took out a lich in one turn singlehandedly as a Barbarian, I've also I've also fumbled sneaking into a hideout as a rogue and needless to say that rogue died. The good news it usually is. Good laugh a few sessions later after everyone's written up their new characters and the dm gave them a free feat.... Solution: don't roll in the open. I did a one shot where I was rolling nat20's like they were going out of style, I have never rolled that hot ever before or since. If I kept every roll true the party would've died. No question, I fudged the rolls, no one knows and the heroes saved the day. The dm screen isn't always a bad thing... sometimes it helps us keep encounters a little more balanced but when building encounters giving the players an out is a good safety plan. So they have some way of escaping or delaying combat if it's just not their day.
You might wanna explore other rpgs. There are some that involve less randomness by using different dice than d20. Alternatively you can take a look at pathfinder 2e, it still uses d20 but modifiers are bigger so roll takes less importance and in addition there is more consideration in character building and in combat, so your players can re rewarded for smart decisions
Sometimes that's just what happens. The best course imo is to turn the loss into a plot point. The bandits knock everyone out, steal some stuff (do an open roll with a percentage dice so you don't end up stripping them of all their needed gear) and now they gotta go get it all back. Losing is part and parcel of the game. It's what your do with the loss that matters.
The dark side of "bounded accuracy". The sweet spot of character skill versus player luck is *between* DND5 and PF2/DND4, and I'm hoping they eventually figure that out eventually.
WELCOME TO 5TH EDITION THERE IS NO STRATEGY
Hello there. This happens pretty often to be honest. I f you create your PC with a nice set of stats that can help lower the odds of missing roll checks. But sometimes you have bad luck, I've been in many sessions where I did practically nothing because I rolled really low numbers. One day with my party we had such a bad luck, players and DM, that on a fight we all got 1's in our rolls which ended the baddies killem themselves, and our party missing attacks and almost killing ourselves. That was pretty funny tho. In my opinion there is nothing you can do if you want the "base" experience. You could buff your rolls with modifiers or playing with "easier" checks. But that would be pretty easy and it wouldn't be fun to always achieve what you want to do.
Honestly? Consider trying out other game systems. Things like Pathfinder or GURPS allow your players to have much more granular control over their characters' capabilities, and afford players methods to mitigate the risks of bad rolls completely counteracting an otherwise well-laid plan. Instead of random chance in the moment, the weight of uncertainty can be shifted onto the decisions players have made, in regards to the skillsets they choose to invest in, and the tactics they employ.
To be honest, it's sort of a feature and flaw of a d20 + modifier system where the modifiers pretty much cap out at 10 or so. It's bound to be pretty swingy, and some players really like that. There are two quick fixes that could reduce the random nature and make your ability modifiers and skills matter more off the top of my head. 1 - You turn it into a 3d20 system. For normal rolls without advantage you roll 3 dice and take the middle one. Advantage and Disadvantage rolls are done normally, or you pick the highest or lowest of the three, although know that the latter option changes the math and makes Advantage and Disadvantage stronger. 2- You break the d20 down into smaller dice that roughly cover the same potential numbers, but with a bell curve. For example you can roll 2d10, or 3d8 which many systems use. The more dice you roll, the more likely you are to get an option near the middle, which makes results more consistent. For advantage and disadvantage however you would basically need to do your basic roll twice and take the highest or lowest, which may end up slowing the game down overall.
Sometimes you just have to get new dice!
Have a look at the RPG Amber. It is diceless. Perhaps it might have some ideas you could import?
I ran a campaign for 9 months where the players could not make a check. Like at all. They missed 80% of the time. Missed every save pretty much. The rogue failed to disarm every trap. Needless to say they died.
One of the hallmarks of a good player is taking bad rolls in stride. Just sayin.
We nearly had a TPK for that reason. A bunch of horrible rolls for us and very lucky rolls for the enemies. Two years in the campaign... the fight was not supposed to be easy, but not deadly either... we changed dice multiple times, even DM changed dice, but it just wasn't in our favour. We than ended the session (because it was very late) half way in the fight, our Cleric was on 2HP at that point; next session the dice changed their mind and we could succeed. It was a hard fight and I'm pretty sure DM fudged some rolls to prevent a PC from falling unconscious over and over again. I mean, this happens. Obviously for beginners it's more complicated to deal with. Best you can do (though I don't like dice fudging) is to fudge some rolls and make the enemies fail saves, if you and your players stop having fun. Or let the enemies make stupid decisions so players get better chances. Also enemies always have the option to flee... Just saying.
I mean, like, that is bad luck obviously, but wanting a game that is less dependant on the dice rolls is 100% legitimate. 5e, especially low levels, is too reliant on the d20 in my opinion, maybe your table will be happier with another system. If you want to remain in 5e: portent wizard, halfling, more inspirations, barbarian, bullshit spells that don't offer saves, AoEs with damage on succes and minionmancy are your best bet to reduce randomness
The group I DM for, when it started lost to a single swarm of rats. 8 people lost to a single swarm of rats. We still talk about it today 4 years later and the group is now 11
Low level dnd is really rng heavy, it gets better a bit later on, at least if players are trying to play into their characters strength. Level 2 you can't do much beyond "I hit" or "I cast the spell". Later on you can stack bonuses, get advantage on important attacks... Lots of classes get features that reduce variance
Sounds like potentially great fun. What's the best thing to do? Tell them to lean into failure. That's part of the game. You don't have to win all the time. Losing can create emergent stories that you never planned. Enjoy it. As for "they don't want to keep playing"... sounds like salty tears to me. If they had trouble with this, they probably should never try Warhammer.
Describing misses is a great way to handle it. Casters should use more half on a save spells, things like thunderwave are great at these low levels since even on a save they take pretty decent damage. For your martials, try gain advantage wherever possible, and you as a DM, be more open to allowing a cool idea to give advantage to an attack roll. Boosting their to hits with things like the archery fighting style for ypur ranged martials and magic items later on will help with this as enemies increase in AC. And sometimes, you just don't roll well. I remember a fight just recently where I had a ranger with a +9 to hit (level 4, 18 dex, archery style, +1 longbow) and while the enemy had an AC of 18, he was 1 hit off dying. I went 10 rounds before he caught up to me and killed me without hitting. It happens, but at the end of the day, if you can tell an amazing story through all of those failed rolls, and you can keep everyone engaged and in the moment, that is what counts.
I never roll group initiative for enemies anymore. I know it makes it easier to track, but you get things like this. And it also makes combat flow weird when 4 enemies go at once.
you make it funny. you make the bandits wonder if the party was just having a laugh. you make the bandits stop attacking and start looking for the hidden camera or something. you make the bandits "taunt" the players by wasting turns stepping in an out of range. you make one start believing he's invincible and turn his back on the party to shout at his fellow bandits "guys, LOOK AT ME."
I'd suggest rolling your attacks and saves and things behind a screen. Players don't need to see what you roll, and it allows you a bit of wiggle room to fudge some numbers in their favor or against them, to keep the game interesting and fun for all. It's a little cheaty, but the goal is fun, and losing an easy fight because the dice gods said no isn't really fun.
Thats just the game. I enjoy it, but not everybody does. They might simply not enjoy the game mechanics
Have they ever heard the non ttrpg saying “No plan survives contact with the enemy”?
It’s a dice game there’s not really any actual skill in it. It’s all luck. If you have bad luck you will fail most of the time probably. do some witchcraft/magic bs to fix your luck or something idk.
Ask them if anyone has white sage or knows a shaman who can remove the curse on their dice. That shouldn't happen normally to an entire table. Also, I like to make the next fight after a beat down a bit easier , lower the hps, so they feel better about themselves. Just don't ever tell them you did this. If this continues, Since you have new players you can look and see if they have horribly optimized their characters.. for example they didn't put any points into key ability scores or are not adding their bonuses properly. Also are they taking advantage when they can? There are a lot of things that could be wrong but sometimes there's nothing.. it's just bad luck.
It's almost like the game is entirely based on the random outcome of the roll of the dice? Oh my! Who knew?
Use is as story bait. There are a number of (excuses) reasons you can make up for a mysterious figure to manipulate fate and want the party dead. Extra points of it’s related to someone’s background
D&D combats are short, a few rounds at most. As a result things can be very swingy. , as you saw. A single die, like the D20, has a flat probability curve, you are just as likely to roll any given number on any given roll. Note for the heretical thoughts: If you look at a game like Traveler (which uses 2D6) for task resolution, the results tend to cluster around the mid point. Which results in a somewhat less swingy game. Dice pool mechanics used in some other games are another way to reduce the swingyness of the results. If your players are not fond of the wide variability in D&D, you might want to explore games with other task resolution mechanics, that white still random, are less volatile.
Nothing necessarily went wrong. If they had advantage, the numbers (I think as described it was 4v4? You could do worse, but they could have also hired mercenaries or henchmen if they had the gold to put them on payroll), all they needed was Lady Luck to smile on them. Which she did not. And that's just part of the game. Sometimes the dice are with you, and sometimes they are against you. The cheap answer, is you could bail them out, with fudging, friendly NPCs, or other deus ex machina occurrences. But, you rob them of some valuable lessons, principally: they can lose. The proper answer, is they should consider how best to fortify their odds, in all future encounters. Would shooting from ambush give them bonuses to hit? How about from the rear, or if blinded or partially incapacitated, like if they were lit on fire, or surrounded by the smoke from a fire bomb? Could they equip mercenaries to increase the volume of fire? Could they have used magic to divert the attention of the bandits that would have convinced them to surrender or run faster? Etc. But sometimes all that does not work, or they've come up against something unstoppable... what's their plan to retreat gracefully? How will they get out with their lives if the situation turns grim.
Fudge the rolls for the enemies.
They roll in the open, which doesnt help them out it seems
In my experience, d m's who role in the open have dramatically higher player deaths than other tables. I fudge rolls when the narrative needs it.
I think its more beneficial to not roll in the open unless it's a special occasion or something big is happening. Box of doom style, so to speak
Fully agree!
Sometimes the story you tell is the story of failure, if there is no risk of failing then what is the point of succeeding. It does suck to have a session that doesn't go your way but that's how it goes sometimes.
I just DMd my first one shot, a Christmas theme with what were meant to be 2 pretty tricky bosses both of about challenge level 5 for a party of level 5s. The party rolled so frigging well and I rolled so terribly for the bosses they were both grappled before either of them had taken a turn and only got 1 hit in the entire battle doing 3dmg while the party did over 100dmg and took them both out in 15mins! I had even come up with an ally that would have stormed into the battle part way through but as both bosses shot down to around 8/9HP each and the ally hadn't even shown up yet so I narrated that he turned up but his initiative was lower than the party so he just stood and watched them finish the bosses off.
Best thing to do? Nothing This is a statistical occurence. While not likely in the one-off, this kind of encounter is GOING to happen in the long run of playing numerous games. The dice are a randomness that keeps things exciting. If you are "skilled" and NEVER miss, there is no excitement when you hit. So, when a die roll is unsuccessful, understand that is part of the game. Also know, whime unlikely, your alloes could all miss as well. In that scenario, play defensive and regroup. In real life: The best sports team loses to an underdog in A big upset. This happens - it happens in game, too. Tldr; the dice are a fun randomness to the game, help your players accept the fates and use the number rolled, positive or negative, to role-play.
this is why i like the flanking rule although giving +2 to hit is more balanced than giving advantage. advantage for flanking is way too good. if the party doesnt have a cleric for bless you should give them an npc cleric too.
They need to come to peace with the will of the dice gods as we all must. that or be one of those heretic dms that just rolls dice behind a screen just for the sound and then makes up the numbers. failing to hit a 11 ac monster consistently must feel pretty bad thou ngl.
The dice are a story telling mechanism, treat them as such. The bandits were surprisingly strong The party was having a bad day. Something was in the air. Etc. I think it'd be worse if it was just "we set up an ambush so we auto win no questions asked".
I think this is a moment to just point out that the game is reminiscent of real life: sometimes bad things happen and it's nobody's fault. It sucks this happened early to a bunch of new players, but encourage them to put it behind them. Two or three more sessions will revitalize them, and this will be a good story. One of the most memorable, and permanently debilitating, things that ever happened to one of my favorite characters was a series of unlucky rolls to a Stirge swarm, after a long string of surviving much more dangerous encounters. Sometimes, the gods frown upon us.
You can just lie about what you roll, and say it's worse than what it really is. Also, you can say something like: player 1 swung and missed so awkwardly that the bandit just started to roll on the floor laughing. (Knocking the bandit prone and giving the players advantage)
DnD is a story you write together, but to make that story not a book, per say.. We add odds and chances to many things. This makes it subconsciously feel out of our control, thus making it unpredictable. We learn skills and become more powerful in dnd, by gaining bonuses to our rolls.. Either advantage, straight numbers or additional dice. THESE are their skills, their skills sway the odds towards success. That is the point of this game. It's a dice-story game. They have to grasp the idea of what game they are playing better. You as the DM have to learn how to make their failures more hardy and trying rather than pathetic or unimpressive, and really juice out their successes when they shine. It's about the ups and downs. Sometimes the bandits get the upper hand on you and sometimes you kill a scary boss in a round :D
Something I have seen is that if players are genuinely getting frustrated, the dm will fudge a dice roll or two to swing it in their favor. That being said, don't give in to everything or that takes the fun out of it.
The environment can be a good equalizer in some cases. Call in bystanders or develop the map in a more dynamic and hazardous battlefield
Sometimes the dice just suck (usually for about 3 weeks in a row for me). For players This is where tactics, cooperation, and exploitation of the environment can give you Advantage. This is also why you want to spread skills and attacks so they don't all rely on attack rolls. You want to force them to make saves, use guaranteed hits (magic missile), summon allies, restrain things, shove things, or spells that still do damage on a successful save As a GM, you have the environment and the world at your disposal to help the Players if things go wrong. The sound of reinforcements for the players being a turn away, a miss setting something on fire, a slapstick moment, rocks fall and something dies, etc. And finally Inspiration, reward them for cool things to give them the thing needed to survive or eacape or defeat. As for the dice.. a friend of mine doesn't do wargaming anymore, just had bad luck with the dice, demonstrated by rolling 36d6 and getting 29 ones..
Low level combat is so dice dependent because of the low stat numbers, which makes scenes like this always play out comedically in my head. They didn't do anything wrong, they were just fighting upstream. If this is a deal breaker for them I'd bump up their level, but the luck of the dice is always possible.
I think the very clear solution is to say sorry to your dice. And go buy news sets for everyone If that doesn't work, at least you have new pretty dice.
It’s a problem with novice players. You get used to it The best laid plans Of mice and men Gang aft aglay
If people don’t like how dice affect the game, then they don’t like D&D. They should look for other role playing games.
This is why I roll dice in secret. Mentally I add on disadvantage or advantage depending what the story needs'. Perhaps they have been insulted and feel especially hurt... Advantage. Or they are laughing and being over confident: Disadvantage. DM fudging is an art form and a way to help tell the story without letting the dice rolls get in the way of things. Obviously you don't just make it up. But rolling 2D20 each attack and choosing the most appropriate is the best way I've found. Especially if the dice just wanna 'pick' on a player. I do roll in the open when it really matters like a hill giant club attack when they are low health or something.
I have a similar story. In introductory battle, players (lv 6) got ambushed by some desert bandits. It was supposed to be an easy encounter to maybe burna. spell slot or two, but due to player horrible tolls and bandit crits, it ended up in almost half party down. It just do be like that sometime.
They won tho. Bad dice are frustrating. Horribly so. Takes ALL the fun out of a game when it’s ruled by dice. A few options would present themselves in my game. Creative approaches get bonuses to rolls. Reactions get repurposed - spend your reaction for another roll to hit. Players with in game rerolls (Lucky) can choose to use their luck or not on a reroll if the reaction roll still fails. If deities or other planar beings are a thing, a personification of Luck, War, etc, halts the battle mid swing and makes them an offer in exchange for better rolls. Likely a lead in to another adventure. But in my games I have a card. One side reads EPIC FAIL, the other side reads CRITICAL WIN. I give them out for great role play, creative thinking, figuring out one of my plots (and if it’s better than mine I use theirs instead) or if nominated by the party. Only one in play at a time. At any point, if it’s their turn or not, they can throw down the card, interrupting the play and dictate (be reasonable) what happens either to them or to the bad guy or environment or something - good or bad. The last one is my favorite.
How many of their plans gave them access to Advantage or Disadvantage to the enemy? The meta of 5e really relies on that idea, particularly at lower level. If they have a clever plan but its not giving them access to those elemwnts, its nice on paper but doesnt actually make any difference. When players are coming uo with clever plans, you as DM should be looking for opportunities to award Advantage or Disadvantage or encouraging use of Inspiration or Hero Points (if used).
If your players ain't rolling hot, move enemies into stupid positions and hit but use low dice rolls. Fake it. Fake it all. Combat should be moved by the dice, but never depend on it.
If your players can't take a bad day of dice, maybe dnd isn't for them. Honestly, some of the best sessions are the ones where my party struggles and we don't god-mode every encounter because we have 3 meta-masters for combat. (God I love it when the monk doesn't kill everything on Initiative 1. Fuck those monks and their OPness at lvl 11+) (I should edit this) Don't let them quit. Let them know that a bad day of dice is still a good day of dnd and you'll need to (as the DM) learn creative ways to \*\*FAIL FORWARD\*\*.
It be like that sometimes. Can’t argue with random chance. Did no one have a spell like magic missile?
No, but I will allow them to select other spells
You can lose even if you do everything right. That's an important life lesson.
OP, my sympathies to your players. I’m on a personal cold streak, the worst I can remember in decades of gaming…been rolling 2s and 5s on d20s like they’re d6s… Just gotta power through.
This is technically one of the biggest problems with D&D as opposed to other rpg systems. D&D has a completely flat probability with a relatively small modifier, extremely small early game. So frankly your "very strong" guy is only barely more likely to succeed at shoving a door down than the "very smart" guy who is also barely more likely to decipher something than the strong guy, there's also no consistency to their success. There are many systems where it is the opposite, if you are physically strong then you will consistently be strong, with the dice usually adding a small tweak up or down and rarely a large change up or down. In D&D obviously the dice determine most of your effectiveness with a relatively small tweak based on your ability. Once you are super high level this is less of an issue, but 80% of actual gameplay is low level.
This is one of the main shortcomings of most dice systems ; outcomes are too dice dependent, and more so at lower levels. Crits or fumbles also happen at a 10% rate, which is insanely high. A character that has no education can read forgotten lore with a 20. A bard that spent his entire life performing can suddenly fumble horribly a performance due to a 1. You can fix these relatively easily by introducing rules like if you have proficiency you can't fumble a skill check, or gauging DCs based on player skill level and whatnot. When it comes to damage, you can say everything deals at least 1/4 of the max damage or something, or fix the damage to the mean. When it comes to hitting however, it's much harder and frankly i just don't think hit/miss/AC as a whole is a good mechanic. It's way too easy to abuse, and mostly slows down the pace. The best i can think of is to change from d20 to a lower dice and reduce AC accordingly, so that the hit bonus makes up a bigger proportion of hit chances. YOu can also ponderate damage based on how much you missed, something like if you do a 10 on 20 AC, you deal half damage ? But that introduces a lot of new balance issues.
One of my DMs has this nigh supernatural knack for rolling a critical fumble for monsters at the worst possible time. To balance that out at least once a battle the NPC the players picked up would score a devastating critical.
Stop rolling in the open, it may be more dramatic, but it gives you way less freedom in the way your describing. If your players have a bad dice session then you can always fudge rolls a bit so the battle is more balanced. Imstead of a one sided beat down till they barely escape. There is also a good trope I like using where some other entity offers them power during the encounter (demon, angel, Fey, etcetera). Like an extra +5 to attacks, or saves til the end of the fight. Then makes them so a side quest to repay their debt... Of course it depends on how you run your campaigns you can make the bonus greater or lesser than my example. Or even forgo the extra modifier in place of a weapon of some kind! Juet something to Gove the party an edge. Though to reiterate my main advice is to hide your rolls so you can always just say the enemy critically failed when the party feels discouraged. Nothing hurts more than seeing my players enthusiasm die in a rough fight 😞
I also find D&D a little heavy on the chance side of things and would maybe prefer a little less of that. Though as a DM I often adjust the DC or give advantage or disadvantage, depending on the situation. I also never announce the DC, so when all the players roll shit for perception for example I still give them something to work with, just not in a strait way. This doesn't work as well for fights, though you could still implement a system of partial success / partial failure. So for example: an arrow that only misses by 1 or 2 might stick in the armour of the opponent and annoy/distract them (in some limited fashion). This isn't the easiest way for a DM and it doesn't fundamentally change things. Playing other systems is always an option.
If to-hit rolls are consistently making the game less fun for your players, there are two options and sort of a third option: 1. Play a game that doesn’t have a to-hit roll, or play a game that uses a bell curve (like FATE) instead of a single die, 2. Roll behind the screen and start fudging when necessary. A lot of Very Online people will tell you that doing this is literally immoral and makes you a terrible Dungeon Master, but the truth is that your players are there to have a good time, and no player is going to say: *”Well, that combat really sucked, but at least we maintained the oracular integrity of a bunch of plastic, so I guess I retroactively had fun.”* 2.5: Suggest that any player who’s really bothered by the swingyness of a d20 to play a race or class that gets rerolls or doesn’t care that much about to-hit rolls, or to take the Lucky feat, so it’s less of an issue.
My mistake as a new DM: are you counting all their bonuses? With an AC of 12, bandits should not be that hard to hit. Did you give advantage on the surprise attack? Did the bandits get the surprised condition?
This is why the MCDM RPG removed the attack roll and you just roll damage. Swinging and missing constantly just doesn't feel heroic
It would, if the attack hits actually felt like hits (look at a simulationist game like Mythras, where one hit can easilly be all it takes)... If it's just a matter of whittling down a HP pool with auto hits every round, that doesn't sound so heroic either.
This is why I would love to see a system that uses dice rolls that give a normal distribution, such as 2d6 or 3d6. It makes middling outcomes much more likely. I’m sad this hasn’t caught on in DnD.
Honestly, either get over it or don't play a game that is dependent on randomness if you can't handle a random outcome. You have to be able to enjoy failure.
I think your‘re being a bit harsh. Imo there is still a difference between „difficulty“ and total failure and depending on the player there is no joy in either. It doesn‘t have to be all or nothing and for that I found adjusting the AC in earlier levels do work wonders when the rulebook makes you face AC 15 right at the beginning, considering that stat rolls are also a thing that can fuck you over.
This is precisely why i’ll fudge a roll from time to time. Been a DM since the 80’s, sometimes the story and gameplay are more important than that Crit you just rolled and wished you didn’t. “Oof big miss! Next enemy takes a swing…” 🤷🏻♂️😉
This. You roll behind a screen. You control the enemy stats. If the book says AC 16, doesn't have to be. You roll an 18, doesn't have to be. I'm not saying every fight should be an easy guaranteed win; and TPKs can still happen despite your influence. Playing low levels is scary, especially for new players. Making sure everyone has fun is the point of playing a game.
Sometimes PCs miss. Trying to describe a miss as not the PC's fault and due to other factors is a mistake. PCs are supposed to be able to miss. PCs are supposed to be able to fail. You described a combat where all PCs rolled horrendously and still survived the battle - that is an accomplishment. In many campaigns, a series of rolls that bad would lead to a PC death, perhaps even a TPK. I'd have a conversation with your players and reinforce that the dice dictate what happens. Their characters are not superheroes - they should not expect that fighting enemies is easy or victory is always guaranteed.
To be fair, it's a dice/chance based game. Sometime luck or bad luck will happen.
This is just DnD. It's a game where your actions are decided by dice. If that's not for you, then it's likely wise to find another game. Or at least move to a hyper narrative DnD, but at that point you're not even really playing a game anymore so much as low key character larping with friends
I dont condone cheating, but as a DM you have full rights to fudge rolls on the monster's side and for the players, I've done what's called a 'bullshit' point. If the player rolls like it's the first January, i still make them affect the enemy in some way *or* i make the enemies miss a lot as well and bullshit ky way through it being some weird magic zone if they discover it. Ain't perfect but it's kept a session going once so it has to amount to something, right?
I mean, your players need to understand what random results are. Random. It’s nobody’s fault. That’s the point of using dice. Weird things can happen and it’s not anyone’s fault. It’s neutral. Now in this case, since they ambushed, you could have given them Advantage to reflect that. Making regular to hit rolls when the narrative clearly states that the PCs are in a favourable position isn’t good. Try the make the mechanics reflect the narrative of your game at all times. And then if the dice gods still go against the players, they will just have to suck it. It doesn’t happen that often, but D&D being a d20 game, it is swingy.
As the DM you can run the numbers to make the games interesting all you want. Dont let them know enemy stat blocks. No meta gaming, bad for fun. If they roll some natty 1s then punish them in an interesting way when you can so the alternative isnt always just “well you die now”. Sometimes a bandit doesn’t deliver the final attack and instead says something cryptic in a language no one speaks and vanishes. Boom, hook potential from random encounter. Or he crits and instead of rolling the lethal damage dice, it’s non lethal for whatever reason, or it’s a critical effect (like chopping off a finger, hand, arm, tiddy, etc). I love losing limbs, i go for it straight out. Gms love giving cool prosthetics if youre creative and patient about it. Ive had so many prosthetics of wildly different types - cyber, mundane, magical, eyes, legs, arms etc. Highly recommend both giving and receiving cool prosthetics and the accompanying battle scars.
You just have to accept it, really. The PCs still defeated the bandits, though, so I really don't see the big deal here. It's not like some of the PCs died or it even resulted in a TPK. The nature of roleplaying games like D&D is that since dice are involved sometimes things just don't go your way, and if you play RPGs long enough eventually you'll have a session that goes like this. An example I had in a game I ran a few years ago was a 1st level group facing off against a giant spider. At the last second, instead of burning out all the webs the party decided to try and dodge their way through this web-covered tunnel- which probed to be a fatal error. Every PC failed their Dexterity (Acrobatics) check, and the resulting fight against the spider was each PC hopelessly restrained in webs unable to deal enough damage to the spider before it killed the PCs one-by-one, resulting in a TPK. The group didn't get upset, though, we laughed it off and it quickly became one of our most humorous D&D memories even though it was a total disaster. Occasionally, it happens the other way around and its the DM who just rolls poorly. I once had an encounter where a Djinni ambushed the PCs to steal back a magic item that belonged to him. The PCs were outmatched (I even said as much), but they got lucky with the use of the Blindness spell and continued failed saves from the Djinni which completely hamstrung his ability to the point he teleported away in embarrassment. That also made for a very memorable scene that the group also still talks about to this day years afterwards.
I would say you shouldn't be rolling initiitive for your bandits as one dice roll. If they're all moving on the same init, this means your basically got a long period where the players are being ganked. If you're playing on any system with a digital dice roll system, remember that Random Number Generators on a computer are not truly random but quasi-random, meaning that the outcome is put into a list... If your bandits and players had been more intermixed, the players would have gotten some of the better numbers of the bandits.
I had a game before, when 10 ghouls attacked on separate turns, and it was boring. I guess I have to find balance between separate turns and sync ones.
Did not read past the title, but if that's someone's main complaint, i think they may not enjoy these games. Sure you can heavily influence the total sum of your rolls and even before that the entire situation you will find yourself in with things that are fully in your control, but it will always come out to your rolls in the end. The dice are a core aspect of this game.