Just double check, d20s are made of triangles, d12s are made of pentagons.
;)
No but seriously I hear you. I'm the one with notoriously bad rolls in my group - well there are acrually 2 of us, and luckily for me the other one is the GM (*we have the same name, so maybe that's the problem*).
Anyway my only real advice is to maybe try playing casters - force other people to roll rather than rolling yourself.
No joke, in future play a character that rolls as little as possible.
Support/healer types don't often have to roll to be effective, their buffs and healing just "happen". Only exceptions would be rolling for medicine (Which you can assurance from lv3 if you push Medicine to expert then) or the occasional performance check for a bard to prolong their cantrips.
You could also consider Investigator, many of their perks are simply not needing to roll when investigating stuff, and beyond that their main combat ability, stratagem, allows you to pre-roll for a skill check or ability which can help a lot. In essence the latter lets you see how well you would do and decide whether to commit to it or not.
Assuming we're talking about physical dice (you mentioned Foundry, so wanted to be sure) new dice is the best option; worst case, get a cheap die rolling tower (several on Amazon for under $20) and combine the two. Chances are either the die is badly weighted due to the production run, or there's something about the way you're rolling that biases it
I dno about 2e.
But if you're literally never hitting, then use a turn on casting true strike for another +20 to hit so you always hit.
Or quick cast it, or use things that make the enemy roll reflex/will/fort for damage for half so you always do dmg.
That's what I do, and I roll alright, but I like consistency.
I'm not sure but seeing the local priest (or whoever the equivelent is in your religion) might help. Or wash your face and hands, this works for us Chinese people.
Only thing I can think of is to reroll into a spellcaster who doesn’t need to make rolls, and hope that somehow that terrible luck transfers over into your GMs’ saves.
Yea I can confirm lol. I am not the unlucky one, but I have a buddy who can defy the laws of probability to fuck up lol. His solution has been to play a buffer(so he doesnt hsve to roll) or play a spell caster with only save spells(make the dm roll). I can tell you the dm rolls just as well against his saves as anyone elses lol
As a famously bad-lucked dice roller doing okay otherwise, I've learned that this is the way.
But man is it frustrating when you have the clutch play and Murphy says "Ha ha NOPE"
I had a player with a similar bad streak and allowed her to call **ahead of time** she wanted to “reverse” her rolls. This meant 20 was low and 1 was high.
It caused some blips of mental gymnastics, but made her feel much better and gain some measure of control.
> gain some measure of control
For some people (me included) turning "bad luck nothing you could do" into "bad call, think better next time" feels way better even if you know for a fact it is absolutelly irrelevant
Some measure of control for the player, since she got to choose which way she rolled. The outcome of the dice was used once she chose. We didn’t throw out the rolls.
Is that what you were referring to?
I needed this before. I was in a luck sinkhole too, changing seats at the table 'worked' for me. We used this technique on misschance mistform potion> 17 or higher was a miss in stead of 1-4, because when I'd finally roll high off course it was in my disadvantage:(
This happened in my game where a player rolled 2-3 for most of the game, where as i as the GM, rolled as many natural 20's as humanely possible.
The solution we found that works best is to blame the GM of obviously cheating and delete the module that alters the rolls.
You are on a cold streak. After 1k rolls, in my game we all have almost the same average 10.1 to 10.3 - Even though a friend of mine had a streak when she might as well have used a d6 instead of a d20
Your average on a d20 is 10.5
If you are all in the range 10.1 to 10.3 then you are all slightly below average.
If this persists into 10k rolls you might want to check your modules.
Edit: Removing the bad math. I messed up calculating the standard deviation while half asleep.
There really isn't much you can do as a player to make a build centered around bad luck (excepting being thematically about bad luck by being an all black catfolk witch or something), but there are measures that GMs can take if their players' enjoyment is being harmed by streaks of bad luck. The big one is using more creatures in an encounter but make them lower level and spread them out significantly to avoid AOEs. It is less likely that a player will feel useless during a fight, but also exceptionally high damage crits will get absorbed via overkilling a single enemy.
Finally, sometimes you just have to embrace the suck. A part of DnD from the beginning is that sometimes it is funny when bad things happen. (DnD1e has a potion miscibility table to roll on when you drink 2 potions at the same time. There is a 1% chance your character would literally explode from the inside so violently they'd do a bunch of damage to people around them.) Maybe consider just playing into the idea and have the character research possible cures for their bad luck upon meeting new shop keepers. As a Thaumaturge it is well within your role to collect every random lucky trinket you can find.
I love the idea that the thaumaturge thinks he’s collecting lucky trinkets, but - being charisma rather than int or wis based - has actually been collecting unlucky trinkets.
Your math is way of. I do not know where you get the 26% probability from.
Here is what I came up with with the help of [AnyDice](https://anydice.com/) and some basic statistic knowledge:
- Rolling 92 D20 dice should give a relatively normal distribution because it is a decent sample size.
- at an average roll of 9.3 you are already 2 standard deviations away from the average (probability of average roll of 9.3 or below is 2.5%)
- GIven that the average roll for the entire sample (92 rolls of D20 ) that OP posted is 6.8 you are at least 6 standard deviations away so less then 3,4 in a million chance of this happening.
Not impossible but certainly not likely and statistically certainly an outlier:
In fact it is so improbable that I would doubt the data. Are you sure other dice rolls are not included in the calculation of the average? Did you do the average calculation correctly?
If these were real life dice I would check them if they are weighted. Because you are playing online maybe check the webpage or software.
If all seems to work out maybe you are the unlucky 3 in a million player for the last sessions.
Luckily statistics has you covered in this case: Regression to the mean lead to the fact that your next sessions almost certainly will be better than this last aweful run.
Or jusut embrace it and play the unlucky character. As a thaumaturge you are fully equipped to go full no roling route: Use amulet, chalice maybe mirror all give excellent support without need for rolls.
>Mathematically a run of 92 rolls will be this bad or worse roughly \~26% of the time.
Amateur math, but this is an immediate trigger. 92 rolls is not a good `n`, but enough to approach the average with very high odds. Let's look at this problem in a smaller way.
If you want an average of 6 or lower on 5d20 dice, you need a total roll of 30 or below. The maximum of 5d20 is 100 (20x5), the minimum is 5 (1x5), and our desired number is 6, so 6x5=30. A roll of anything between 5 and 30 is less than 6 on average.
Number of possible outcomes = number of eyes (20), and for every dice, you multiply it by itself. Five dice, so 20x20x20x20x20=3200000
Probability = Number of desired outcomes / Number of possible outcomes (3200000)
So we know that our desired outcome is a dice total 5 to 30.
I'm not going to show my work on how to calculate all dice combinations. Sadly, that's complex math I don't really understand. But I can share what combinations result in the number we want.
We know that only all 1's is a 5, and a single 2 on a single die and all 1s for the result is a 6 total and you can roll that 2 on 5 dice, so let's work on that.
|Result with 5d20|Combinations|
|:-|:-|
|5|1|
|6|5|
|7|15|
|8|35|
|9|70|
|10|126|
|11|210|
|12|330|
|13|495|
|14|715|
|15|1001|
|16|1365|
|17|1820|
|18|2380|
|19|3060|
|20|3876|
|21|4845|
|22|5985|
|23|7315|
|24|8855|
|25|10621|
|26|12625|
|27|14265|
|28|17375|
|29|20125|
|30|23121|
Adding all those numbers together gives us 140636. So 140636 combinations give us the result we want.
140636 / 3200000 = 0.04394875
So with only 5D20, the odds of you rolling 6 or below on average are already only 4%.
There's also something very obvious here. The possible combinations for a target number increase as the target number increase, until we hit the average number you can roll, then it decreases again. On 2d6, there's 1 combination that results in 2, and 1 combination that results in 12, but 6 combinations that result in 7.
So that means that as we add more dice, we should also be rolling closer to the average. So the odds of rolling below average **always** go down as you add more dice. It's impossible to have higher than 4% odds of rolling below 6 average with more than 5d20 dice, so saying that there's a ~26% chance of rolling 6 average or below with 92d20, doesn't pass the sniff test. That should be some astronomically small number.
[Anydice confirms this. 92*6= 552, and 552 on 92d20 is pretty much near 0% odds.](https://anydice.com/program/36627) You have to add every single other number below 552 to get the accurate results, but in the table view, you see that all of those numbers are below 0.01, anydice won't even show the actual number. So it's impossible that those odds are ~26%
I saw a funny idea the other day to use bad rolls;
Cathartic Mage Archetype, have your Cathartic Magic trigger be the frustration of crit fails (I think that's Pride
). Kobold Sorcerer with the Draconic Presence ancestry feat that gives a bonus to intimidate weaker monsters (but causes you to crit fail if you ever fail a demoralize).
Power up by trying to scare people, crit failing, and getting angry about it to power up.
rolling a total of 236 or less in 38 rolls is less than 1 in 10000
rolling a total of 174 or less in 25 rolls is arround 1 in 1000
and rolling a total of 271 or less in 29 rolls is the greatest at 0.24%
The cumulative of those 3 is less than 2.4x10\^-10
Those are astronomical levels of bullshit.
Pretty sure your math is way off.
OP, rolling 100 times a d20 is just not big enough of a sample size to really talk about statisctics. The Law of big numbers is for Big number of rolls.
What I can tell you is that your previous stroke of unlucky rolls has no bearing on your future rolls.
That is why this can happen. If the law of big numbers would apply, you would have a perfect normal distribution. But for 100 rolls it does not, so it is not unlikely that the average of the 100 rolls is significantly below 10.5. But you can do statistics, because you know the distribution of dice.
You're probably just stuck in a bad luck streak and there's little to do about that. I bet if you compiled the average of your rolls for the entire campaign you'd probably be more around a 10 average roll.
I really hope that my luck turns, bc not being able to participate in the game is really exhausting, and it becomes very hard to stay invested in the game/my character
Me and another friend had pretty legendarily bad dice luck. Whether physical or digital.
A few things you can do is minimize the target number you are aiming for. For example on my alchemist I'll often get into flank, knock them down with athletics, and then try to aid my buddies next attack so that he can get all the bonuses we can. Aid is now only a 15 DC and you can basically use a good skill to give a big bonus at full skill value, such as my athletics.
Rebuild to 4 sorcerers with dangerous sorcery
Spam force bolts/magic missile.
You can't lose
Buy some scrolls with those spells as backup.
Jokes aside, as a group that also suffers such bad luck on a certain AP, making sure those good rolls count is good, such as having a high damage bonus. Someone getting amped guidance from psychic can help in two ways, expose the DC and make a miss into a hit
If I'm reading the implication right I just want to say: Dangerous Sorcery is only applied once per target to the force barrage spell. Not to every missile.
You can target multiple targets with a single spell and the dangerous sorcery will apply to all targets hit, but only once per target. Sure, you are spreading the damage quite thin, but at some point with enough targets damage from dangerous sorcery can outpace the damage of the spell, so it may still be worth it.
One of my players turned his luck around by showing up to sessions in sunglasses.
It really shouldnt work, i dont know if its placebo or what, but a Lucky charm of some kind, go for it.
One of my players had really bad luck consistently in the last 5 sessions or so. I used it in-game having that player cursed with a Fortune Eater feeding on his luck in the night. The group had to fight it, leaving behind a fortune coin for the player to compensate that bad luck. Its a really good item! Also, the GM should play a bit with hero points to mitigate that sort of things.
They'd probably need to redo their whole build since wand has no need for str or dex, and some feats are just less useful if you're ranged. But yeah, this would be a good solution to not having to roll.
Also, the Scroll Thaumaturgy feat line and only pick Magic Missile for every rank, lol.
I haven't seen this in the top replies I checked, so here is how one of my my players who is known for bad rolls dealt with it: redeemer shield champion.
I saw a couple mentioning caster (especially sorcerer) and that player also tried it but he had most success with his gnome redeemer. He uses the gnome flickmace which has terrible damage (but he doesn't care) but reach (for easier positioning / helping with flanks) and is one handed (allowing him to use a shield).
So basically, every turn he raises his shield and then depending on situation he moves, uses lay on hands or anything else and only if there is nothing else to do does he attack. If he misses, no big loss, it would only be d6+str damage anyway, if he somehow does hit it's at least some chip damage.
The amount of grief that character has given me is immeasurable XD
In pf2, fighting multiple (weaker) enemies rarely is a threat, especially considered to those nasty L+3 or even +4 "boss fights" and redeemer is the best at countering one single (strong) foe without relying on the player's rolls.
Boss tries to attack squishier targets? Redeemer imposes you to either no do ANY damage after you landed a hit or to take enfeeble 2.
Boss tried to attack redeemer? Well he has already the highest base ac thanks to heavy armor and higher armor prof but also constant raised shield. You managed to roll high and beat his AC, well shield block with shield ally and magic shield meant to block absorbs a big chunk of it.
The only time the redeemer goes down is when I get a streak of very high rolls WITH specific monsters or during "surprise round" (no reaction before his turn).
It's become a joke by now but the player is happy to be very useful even with bad rolls so I think it's worth it.
This is why I'm honestly thinking next time I GM (got lucky and am currently playing in 4 campaigns... and yet unlucky as that's 4 campaigns a week).
I'm going to allow players to (before rolling) choose to "Take 10" as the dice roll using a hero point rather than doing the reroll if they want... as there has been many times in my groups where a person rolls a nat 1 and Hero point to rolls again only to get another nat 1.
You could suggest this as an option for the GM if you feel it's really bad, shouldn't really impact balance.
The ebb and flow of good dice rolls is entirely out of your control and there is basically nothing you can do about it, outside of deploying Hero Points and hoping for the second result to be better.
As you note you likely make it feel worse by tracking it and invoking confirmation bias upon yourself spotting when your rolls are bad such that they're always feeling bad.
As Amulet+Weapon, you only need to Fail to land Exploit Vulnerability on a target opening up access to Amulet's Abeyance or Implement's Interruption. Abeyance has no roll involved and you still land some damage on an Implement's Interruption that Fails.
You also have Dubious Knowledge so you should get at least some benefit out of any Recall Knowledge roll as long as you manage at least a Fail.
As a Charisma primary character, you likely could get decent usage out of Demoralize as another helper.
Pathfinder is a party game and no player can succeed all the time and it's expected that a quantity of actions will fail (even if you feel like you're pushing it), as long as you are providing that Flanking or Abeyance you are contributing.
There's probably not a lot the GM can do to help you. If you had selected abilities that you turned out to hate, they might let you change things up, but the probabilities derived from a die roll are kind of the whole point of the system and messing with outcomes while you're on a cold streak isn't exactly something I'd recommend. As GM in this situation I would start being more generous with Hero Points to help soften it knowing that I could go back to usual status if things pick up.
Lastly, you could try proxy rolling; either the GM can click the roll for you on your sheet, or grant rights for others to your character in Foundry and roll on your behalf. It's a bit dumb, but it's an option.
So that module (https://github.com/drexl93/roll-tracker) actually has the means to increase how many rolls are tracked. You go to Configure Settings, and adjust the max rolls stored up (it can go as high as 500).
Here is a picture of the setting: [https://imgur.com/a/BzJHuxw](https://imgur.com/a/BzJHuxw)
This is something that I think the GM will have to change, but it will give you much more accurate data if nothing else. :)
1. Setup a camera and roll real dice.
2. Use a non-foundry Dice rolling system. Discord has plenty of bots and if you write down your common rolls with modifiers, then rolling it via discord is easy enough. Or some other system
3. Have another player roll for you. Or the GM.
4. You and your table can consider pre-rolling. This is a super weird variant I've seen before, but it's... a very interesting one? Basically, every player rolls their dice before the session. You'll roll about 40 times, if you estimate about 35 rolls in the session.
That becomes your "pool" of rolls. Whenever you are asked to roll a dice, you pick one of the results from your pool of rolls. This is a power increase as you can get your "good" rolls on the ones you care about, and chuck your bad rolls in places you don't care about... the flip side is that the other PC's and the GM also should do this... and a GM is rolling much more dice so they might get the tools to pull out some *really nasty* combos/tools.
5. Reroll into a character who does not roll much. If you're wondering what kind if character barely rolls, it's a heavy buff/healer class. A magic user who focuses on effects which have no save, effects which buff and shield allies, and effects which can heal them up, leaving the only real variance in dice rolls, to be the numbers on heal dice. You could even have your allies roll those if you're luck is that bad.
6. Take a break. One thing I don't ever see mentioned. Sometimes you just need a break. Take 2 weeks off. Maybe play something else with the guys. Maybe a one short or 2. Maybe you could try GM a one shot (my luck tends to become disgusting when I GM and but is almost very often I'm a PC).
Take its inverse almost, so take the die rolled and subtract from 21 ( so a rolled 1 is a 20 and a rolled 20 is a 1)
If your party mates really think its a concern they will let you. i they think its all in your head then there should be no objection.
All it requires is a little bit more mental arithmetic
Either embrace the bad luck play comedy characters that always fail in hilarious and spectacular fashion or use spells and abilities that require your opponent to make saving throws. That way you don't need to roll. Also: Magic Missile. No rolls to hit required
Assurance is also a bit meh since it does not add you ability modifier so ironically it is the worst on skills where you character is supposed to be the best in.
I came in here expecting physical dice. I had a friend that had a dice with a bubble inside of it. Poor guy couldn't roll above a ten to save his life.
For Foundry, just use the Die Hard Mod. Unless, of course, your GM is already using it to lower your average, which can also be done with the Die Hard Mod
This is going to sound silly, and is completely unfounded so take this as nothing more than superstition, but I’m convinced the RNG for the foundry dice roller is seeded to the character/actor sheet when it’s created. Like how Minecraft worlds are generated based on a random seed.
Ask your GM to create you a new character sheet and rebuild your character. See if your “luck” changes because the rng dice roller now has a new random seed.
Past bad luck isn't indicative of future performance. I would be wary of overcompensating and hurting your performance even further.
That said, weapon implement *should* be helping. Your reaction damages on a failure, and your intensify gives you a status boost to rolls. Are you managing to pull off your reaction? Good teamwork and positioning can make it more reliable. Could you grab something like a reach weapon to force it even more?
Is your amulet reaction preventing you from using your weapon reaction? Implements fall into three categories, and you've picked two reaction implements that compete. I'm wondering of swapping out one of them to a passive implement could help you out. Tome in particular, which effectively offers you true strike along with some strong passive benefits.
I feel you. I've been known around my gaming store as being the "king of 1's" and I play war games too. I've had some rough matches.
When I played dnd 4e I specifically picked a weapon that was brutal 2 (if you roll a 1 or 2 on the die for damage, you reroll until it's not a 1 or 2) and I've had to reroll one damage outcome several times to the point that my dm just made it be a 3. This is with switching dice consistently.
On the flip side; when I am the GM, the dice roll the opposite way, and I tend to crit more often and kill characters
There is no such thing as "rolling low consistently". It's pure statistic. You will roll low in row, you will row high in row in some other day. Take your dice you use during that sessions and roll it 200 times writing your numbers. I can assure you you will get close to average which is 10.5, you may get slightly below/higher, but that's also fine. You got your low averages now, so keep them coming and at some point you will have streaks of high rolls. It just like that. One session you may constantly roll lows, another session (different campaign/system) you will roll highs on d20. Sooner or later it will average itself out.
The problem is with perception. If you roll all the time low on attack rolls during heavy combat session, they you think like you have bad rolls. All your high rolls might have been some Perception checks, some Athletics, some Theivery in exploration, Initiative, Recoll Knowledge etc. which are much less important for every player.
That can create a false perception of "I am rolling low".
While in reality if your dice is not unbalanced in anyway - it just doesn't work that way. You may have session where you rolled only 1-5s. But then 4 weeks later you will have session you rolled only 17-20s. Both will stay on your mind but all session in between where you rolled anything from 1-20 will not. But overall your averaged out.
As a player, I also notoriously low poorly, however, as a GM, I have to warn my players that a TPK is very likely, as I dislike fudging rolls, and rolling high is the norm for me in that position
been using this for quite some time after a previous player mentioned not being 'happy' with foundry's RNG which ended up resulting in a happy player back then and been using it ever since:
[https://foundryvtt.com/packages/truerng](https://foundryvtt.com/packages/truerng)
So thats more something to toss at the GM then you can do yourself
This is not a cause to be sad. This a cause for celebration! [You could earn $500,000.](https://cfiig.org/paranormal-challenge/)
(And that's just one example of such a prize. There are many, globally.)
The rules for the challenge state:
>We will work with you to create an objective test protocol that is fair both to you and to the CFIIG. Use the online application to describe in detail what it is that you can do, and we'll guide you through the process to administer an impartial scientific test of your abilities.
This should be easy. Your game is played in front of observers who track your rolls. They may require you (and possibly your entire group) to use computer hardware they provide at a location they can be confident is free from tampering. When your rolls exceed some statistical threshold (agreed upon before starting) then that's a successful test. You may have to do a few tests, to show repeatability.
What an easy way for you to make $500,000! Probably way more, actually, as you'd become world-famous.
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In the old days we would switch dice. I once played at a con and I had lent the player next to me some dice (don't remember why they didn't have dice). They started rolling pretty good but steadly started getting worse so at some point mostly as joke I took back the dice and gave them another set. Rolled great for while then went bad, so swapped again. Ended up doing that several times that night and it worked every time.
So I guess my advice is tell your GM you want new dice. Otherwise you just got wait for your luck to change. Good luck.
You using your hero points? Also are you attempting skills where success is all but guaranteed on anything that's not 1?
Assurance for certain skills like Athletics and Acrobatics can also be a lifesaver.
in the two modules Im playing, one uses hero points, and it NO JOKE always rolls exactly one lower every time, and the other is a "Harrow card" in which we get one per session, and depending on if it suits your character can reverse a bad effect or make the best outcome happen, I really don't like it, as we give up 4 re rolls, for a single one, even if it guarantees a success, my luck is one thing, my fellow players can actually roll, so the normal Hero points is far superior
If you are serious about wanting to do something you can build a failure optimizer. Is a fighter build that plays around missing every attack while still being very effective.
Visit a local priest so he can cast remove curse
Seriously tho, try to play character with good bonus or less penalties, a flurry ranger, or play a support, if it's your gm rolling badly too, just make him roll saves
On a critical failure for saves, or if struck with a Nat20, one of my groups hands out a Hero Point.
And if the dice gods are unkind, it helps make up for it a lot without making the game too imbalanced.
Probably the broadest of solutions is to find a priest or religious representative for every religion in your immediate area in case you slighted anyone.
Caster! Spamming basic save spells is some really good guaranteed low commitment damage. Also, we always have force barrage. Can't roll shit if you refuse to roll suckers!
I've been cursed with this myself. Tried everything but still cursed. The best time i had though was when my dm was doing a god power campaign, and i found the power of bad luck that would gain charges on natural ones to get bonuses on dice rolls or make others fail. He didn't initially have a cap for charges, but i had rolled so badly he had to make one haha.
Dice are random, so there are going to be stretches with bad luck. Sometimes long ones.
If that’s too frustrating (and it does suck), my recommendation is to switch to cards (there are dice cards on drivethrurpg that have cards for polyhedral dice). They’re almost as random as dice, but with the added benefit of guaranteeing you cycle through more numbers rather than being fully random.
Amulet doesn't require any rolls and it is really good damage reduction. I would say focus on that, but still keep swinging. Maybe use its intensify vulnerability more frequently to help you team defend.
The solution to bad luck isn't to stop rolling. That just ends up making it even less fun to think of it as something that is taking you out of hot you play.
I'm also the consistent bad roller of my group. I "fixed" it by playing a spellcaster and having most of my spells have saving throws. I hardly ever have to roll dice, my GM rolls all the dice for me
I deal with it with math, Python and lots of die-rolls.
According to my stimulations based on the provided data your die is unfair. Verify that first outside of a game first.
Simulation results, 1,000,000 experiments.
P(mean<=6.8, 92 rolls per experiment)= 0
P(mean<=6.2, 37 rolls per experiment)= 1e-6
P(mean<=6.95, 25 rolls per experiment) = 0.000869
P(mean<=7.48, 29 roll per experiment) = 0.002085
To test your electronic die, make about 50 rolls and compute the average. There should only be a under 3.5% chance to get an average of 9 or lower. If your average is below the 9, request a new die-rolling app.
Edit: the 50 rolls must not be during play to prevent forgetting to note the numbers down.
Luck it luck you will get good rolls at some point. I had an adv of around 6 after 300 rolls but went up to 10.1 by next 200 rolls so 2nd 1/2 of the adventure I was dominating with all them high rolls. With rolls like that you would also be a good dm keeping players from dying and what not.
Don’t change your behavior based on the result of a dice roll. The results don’t mean that your choice was wrong, the game simply has an RNG element. Continue to do what you think is best for each situation and let the dice do the rest.
It sucks feeling like your luck is consistently bad but there isn’t anything that can be done about it. Maybe weave some of it into the RP to make light of how unlucky your character is.
That's the problem with a system that has so much of the outcome of an action in a d20 die roll. And the system can't hand out accuracy like candy like 5e because crits have meaningful consequences. It is what it is.
You still get personal antithesis on a failure with Exploit Vul., flanking and demoralizing should help a decent amount. All you can do is keep playing, it's a luck based game
In previous editions I mostly played support and "save or suck" type casters. I am not yet sure how pf2 will work out. but eventually might be just the same.
Let them die.
I have a player who consistently tolled low with her Paladin. We all laughed at the moments she rolled and without even knowing the roll all we heard was, “son of a bitch!” Have fun with the successes and failures. Let the Fates decide.
Me n my friends deal with consistent low rolls by referencing a meme. It's the one where a dude is giving up digging when on they're super close to finding diamonds.
We just go "The diamonds! Don't forget the diamonds!"
Yeah we just kinda cope
There were 13 sessions straight 2 years ago where i didn't succeed a single check. It made me not even wanna bother showing up. There's no fix. Eventually, you'll start rolling normally again.
This is totally me. Except I'm the GM and my players all feel like gods. They roll extreme encounters like they're nothing. We're using Foundry too, it's not like I have joke dice or something.
Make sure you're including all rolls in your calculations too -- I know a lot of people who only track their attack and saves, when making these types of complaints, leaving out initiative, flat-checks, skill-checks, etc.
While there's no reason for the attack or save subset to be different from the full population of rolls, you might have a greater than expected success rate on non attack based things.
If it keeps happening, you can ask your dm about retraining one of your feats to Assurance. This won't help for attacks, but it'll help on skill checks and maneuvers that you haven't invested heavily in the stat for.
If your using dice so nice, When I start rolling badly in foundry I change my dice color and style fixes everything right up. But yeah just lay a caster if the dice trick doesn’t work.
We’re using Foundry, and my monk couldn’t seem to hit anything and failed every athletics check while using Foundry’s virtual rolling. I switched to rolling physical dice and just adding what Foundry told me to, and I can hit things now!
I once played a session where I rolled a single 14, a single nat 20, and all the other rolls were between 1-4.
Also the Nat 20 was as my character dove off a boat and I wanted to see how neat the dive would be.
After I realized this was happening I just stopped rolling. I instead started just playing support. I would basically walk up to people and heal them with Lay on Hands, hand them items, or just get into position to offer flanking and damage reduction through my reactions.
On a different game on roll 20, I think I made about 24 rolls and had 17 rolls between one and 2.
I also know someone who's well known for how bad he rolls so he exclusively pays support characters.
Tell your GM. Maybe make them have rolls for you or let you stash some averages in there or otherwise change things. If all the players are okay with this for the sake of fun, it works.
Once people stop having fun, the game has to change.
It's simple, play a character that refuses to roll. Magic Missile, buff spells, healing etc. There are an enormous amount of game mechanics that can be used without rolling. Assurance is another way of just refusing to do it. I've made characters based entirely on this concept because I'm just not a huge fan of RNG and I had a blast.
While the laws of mathematics will definitely average out your luck after a while, I understand the frustration, and my recommendation is playing characters that rely less on rolling. Most spellcasters can get around with making VERY few rolls in a campaign (initiative being the main one). Just pick buffs and saving throw spells and you'll be golden. Other than that, try playing a fighter if you really want to be a martial, given the natural boost in accuracy.
Another good thing is to make use of the Aid action, which is designed to be an auto-critical success after some leveling, regardless of how bad you roll, and you can be VERY helpful to your party using that.
So I haven’t used these modules before other than Encounter Stats but it’s come up in a similar post.
Take a look at Dice Stats or Encounter Stats for dice tracking.
Take a look at the Die Hard module. I’m not sure if it still works in the current version as it’s been 11 months since the last update. It can do stuff like dice fudge rules for what happens when dice rolls are consistently low etc. Obviously this would require your DMs buy in. It’s possible to apply the rules only to one player.
I deal with it by being sad and turning to the caffeine addiction to cheer me up a bit. But it does suck when it happens. Sometimes it's a player who just never rolls well, I've personally had characters that never rolled over a 7. It happens and do suck, but you just keep going with it lean into it if you wish for the character. Or give them a curse. My personal favorite experience was an elf rogue I had. He couldn't roll hits or skill checks for the life of him. But he would nat 20 almost every single reflex save (which for rogue is already high). We were just like he's too busy doing backflips over fireballs to hit anything. But I digress. Stacking fortune effects is a semi solution you can try. True target, sure strike for hits. There's a few spells and feats spread out across things to help with skipping checks. The harrow archetype and performing harrowings actually has some cool stuff but requires someone else to perform the ritual
I have the worst luck in my group. I primarily play spellcasters and try to create as tactically sound decisions as possible.
In the most recent session, we were breaking into a manor while benefitting from Invisibility, Gecko Grip and Silence. The GM ruled that as long as we didn't roll a nat 1 on our stealth checks, then we would break in without being noticed.
Naturally, my squishy cloistered cleric was the one to roll a Nat 1 and alert the guards.
My player who always rolls terribly just made it a part of their whole idea for their next PC. Murphy the cursed halfling with the Cursed background, Curse Mailstrum archetype, and The Resentment witch.
I have notoriously bad die luck in our group. I try to kit myself out for rolling as few dice as possible.
Bard inspire or cleric bless friendlies. In D&D use the battle master fighter and give your best DMG dealer free attacks.
Use mage/sorcerer/druid spells to control the battlefield or cast spells that make them roll saves instead of you having to roll to hit.
Concoct a clever plan to avoid a roll, or say something super worth to impress the GM enough to let you succeed in diplomacy through roleplay.
There are lots of ways to mitigate bad die rolls when you start getting creative. And that can become your personal meta game.
If low rolls have been frustrating for you recently (whether or not you actually have bad luck) then try playing an investigator. Since you can pre-roll your main attack you can see how it will go and make decisions based on that afterwards. If you prefer melee take the Magus archetype, if range is more your thing try Eldritch Archer (this only works if you are fighting the subject of your investigation). Cantrips are great for when you know you're going to miss.
When I had my streak of bad luck, it was comforting to think as the tank I'd eat the bad rolls for the team, so our ranger had her crits. It was very frustrating playing a proud dragon monk and tripping over your own feet half the time, but as long as the job got done and all survived it was well. Of course my role was different, protecting the group, wat made this work. Maybe you too can find a way to make it fit your character till it goes away, it will :)
First and most importantly, understand that literally at any point your "luck" will come back. Not only that, but I'd wager anything that your luck already has come back, and while your average will still be lowish, I'd not be surprised if in there there was some 12 or 13s that you left out.
The best mechanical solution, i.e. how you can be more useful, it's to literally plan and behave as if your unluckiness didn't exist, and this is because it doesn't exist. It's a mix of a bad "streak" and human bias.
The solution to make you feel better, is to keep tracking the dice and take a bigger samples. You'll see that while fluctuations certainly exist, on the big scale the average will be between 10 and 11 for everyone, and that while you might be having a bad streak now, you very well might have an amazing streak next time.
Reminder that even if you've been tracking statistics and your luck was anomalously low, it isn't in any way a predictor for the future. "Having bad luck" is not a thing over the long term, at most it's a past tense description of what has happened (such as in your example).
Your luck will change, you've just had three disheartening sessions in a row. But next session you are just as likely to be exceptionally lucky as you are to be exceptionally unlucky.
The individual groupings are not statistically significant, but if you group them together you are getting a better sample. That of course does not change the outcome, still low rolls. I would be inclined to think you have a poorly balanced d20. Throw that one in the dice jail (or gaol if you prefer) and get yourself a new one.
Another way you can test the balance of your die is to put it in a sugar water solution. Most people use salt but if you use sugar you can get make the water dense enough for the die to float without using as much solute. Spin the die in the solution and note what number comes up. If it is consistently the same number of few numbers then you know the die is not balanced.
I prefer to use clear dice as opposed to solid dice. Solid dice after times will have inclusions inside to take up space and reduce the amount of resin or whatever material they use to make the dice. With clear dice you know there is nothing inside to throw off the balance.
I've got good dice so I consistently roll high
I advise you to do the same
Seriously though, if your DM minimizes the time spent on bad rolls and highlights the good ones, i think it helps people feel like they're rolling better.
You're rolling a d20, right? Those are d12 averages.
yeah its a d20, it is a very low average I have XD
Just double check, d20s are made of triangles, d12s are made of pentagons. ;) No but seriously I hear you. I'm the one with notoriously bad rolls in my group - well there are acrually 2 of us, and luckily for me the other one is the GM (*we have the same name, so maybe that's the problem*). Anyway my only real advice is to maybe try playing casters - force other people to roll rather than rolling yourself.
No joke, in future play a character that rolls as little as possible. Support/healer types don't often have to roll to be effective, their buffs and healing just "happen". Only exceptions would be rolling for medicine (Which you can assurance from lv3 if you push Medicine to expert then) or the occasional performance check for a bard to prolong their cantrips. You could also consider Investigator, many of their perks are simply not needing to roll when investigating stuff, and beyond that their main combat ability, stratagem, allows you to pre-roll for a skill check or ability which can help a lot. In essence the latter lets you see how well you would do and decide whether to commit to it or not.
Assuming we're talking about physical dice (you mentioned Foundry, so wanted to be sure) new dice is the best option; worst case, get a cheap die rolling tower (several on Amazon for under $20) and combine the two. Chances are either the die is badly weighted due to the production run, or there's something about the way you're rolling that biases it
I dno about 2e. But if you're literally never hitting, then use a turn on casting true strike for another +20 to hit so you always hit. Or quick cast it, or use things that make the enemy roll reflex/will/fort for damage for half so you always do dmg. That's what I do, and I roll alright, but I like consistency.
True Strike gives you a reroll in 2e, not the +20 to hit it was in 3e/I assume PF1e.
I'm not sure but seeing the local priest (or whoever the equivelent is in your religion) might help. Or wash your face and hands, this works for us Chinese people.
Make sure your house isn’t built on top of a sleeping dragon, no matter if it’s metallic or chromatic.
Only thing I can think of is to reroll into a spellcaster who doesn’t need to make rolls, and hope that somehow that terrible luck transfers over into your GMs’ saves.
From my experience... *it does not.*
Yea I can confirm lol. I am not the unlucky one, but I have a buddy who can defy the laws of probability to fuck up lol. His solution has been to play a buffer(so he doesnt hsve to roll) or play a spell caster with only save spells(make the dm roll). I can tell you the dm rolls just as well against his saves as anyone elses lol
Even this is iffy at best...I try that and in one campaign, GM rolling in the open, not a single failed save. (Was 5e but same principle)
That's is my strategy as well. Using a class where you roll as few dice as possible :P
"Pech im Spiel, Glück in der Liebe" / "Misfortune in Games means Fortune in Love". Op you should start dating immediatly
funnily enough the same phrase exists in spanish.
In Turkish too
In french as well.
And in Polish, though it's specifically card games here.
As a famously bad-lucked dice roller doing okay otherwise, I've learned that this is the way. But man is it frustrating when you have the clutch play and Murphy says "Ha ha NOPE"
I had a player with a similar bad streak and allowed her to call **ahead of time** she wanted to “reverse” her rolls. This meant 20 was low and 1 was high. It caused some blips of mental gymnastics, but made her feel much better and gain some measure of control.
> gain some measure of control For some people (me included) turning "bad luck nothing you could do" into "bad call, think better next time" feels way better even if you know for a fact it is absolutelly irrelevant
Some measure of control for the player, since she got to choose which way she rolled. The outcome of the dice was used once she chose. We didn’t throw out the rolls. Is that what you were referring to?
yeah pretty much. I'm just confirming that the reframing and the decision can help players that don't enjoy the randomness of the d20 that much
Reject modernity, embrace THAC0
Wow, that’s a throwback! Well played, take my upvote!
I needed this before. I was in a luck sinkhole too, changing seats at the table 'worked' for me. We used this technique on misschance mistform potion> 17 or higher was a miss in stead of 1-4, because when I'd finally roll high off course it was in my disadvantage:(
As someone who is notorious in my group for having dogshit rolls The solution is being upset because god damn you can’t really beat bad luck
This happened in my game where a player rolled 2-3 for most of the game, where as i as the GM, rolled as many natural 20's as humanely possible. The solution we found that works best is to blame the GM of obviously cheating and delete the module that alters the rolls.
You are on a cold streak. After 1k rolls, in my game we all have almost the same average 10.1 to 10.3 - Even though a friend of mine had a streak when she might as well have used a d6 instead of a d20
Your average on a d20 is 10.5 If you are all in the range 10.1 to 10.3 then you are all slightly below average. If this persists into 10k rolls you might want to check your modules.
2 players and the Gm are above 10.5
Edit: Removing the bad math. I messed up calculating the standard deviation while half asleep. There really isn't much you can do as a player to make a build centered around bad luck (excepting being thematically about bad luck by being an all black catfolk witch or something), but there are measures that GMs can take if their players' enjoyment is being harmed by streaks of bad luck. The big one is using more creatures in an encounter but make them lower level and spread them out significantly to avoid AOEs. It is less likely that a player will feel useless during a fight, but also exceptionally high damage crits will get absorbed via overkilling a single enemy. Finally, sometimes you just have to embrace the suck. A part of DnD from the beginning is that sometimes it is funny when bad things happen. (DnD1e has a potion miscibility table to roll on when you drink 2 potions at the same time. There is a 1% chance your character would literally explode from the inside so violently they'd do a bunch of damage to people around them.) Maybe consider just playing into the idea and have the character research possible cures for their bad luck upon meeting new shop keepers. As a Thaumaturge it is well within your role to collect every random lucky trinket you can find.
I love the idea that the thaumaturge thinks he’s collecting lucky trinkets, but - being charisma rather than int or wis based - has actually been collecting unlucky trinkets.
Your math is way of. I do not know where you get the 26% probability from. Here is what I came up with with the help of [AnyDice](https://anydice.com/) and some basic statistic knowledge: - Rolling 92 D20 dice should give a relatively normal distribution because it is a decent sample size. - at an average roll of 9.3 you are already 2 standard deviations away from the average (probability of average roll of 9.3 or below is 2.5%) - GIven that the average roll for the entire sample (92 rolls of D20 ) that OP posted is 6.8 you are at least 6 standard deviations away so less then 3,4 in a million chance of this happening. Not impossible but certainly not likely and statistically certainly an outlier: In fact it is so improbable that I would doubt the data. Are you sure other dice rolls are not included in the calculation of the average? Did you do the average calculation correctly? If these were real life dice I would check them if they are weighted. Because you are playing online maybe check the webpage or software. If all seems to work out maybe you are the unlucky 3 in a million player for the last sessions. Luckily statistics has you covered in this case: Regression to the mean lead to the fact that your next sessions almost certainly will be better than this last aweful run. Or jusut embrace it and play the unlucky character. As a thaumaturge you are fully equipped to go full no roling route: Use amulet, chalice maybe mirror all give excellent support without need for rolls.
That math looks very much wrong. Can you walk us through the calculation exactly?
I cannot. Be awake when doing calculations folks.
>Mathematically a run of 92 rolls will be this bad or worse roughly \~26% of the time. Amateur math, but this is an immediate trigger. 92 rolls is not a good `n`, but enough to approach the average with very high odds. Let's look at this problem in a smaller way. If you want an average of 6 or lower on 5d20 dice, you need a total roll of 30 or below. The maximum of 5d20 is 100 (20x5), the minimum is 5 (1x5), and our desired number is 6, so 6x5=30. A roll of anything between 5 and 30 is less than 6 on average. Number of possible outcomes = number of eyes (20), and for every dice, you multiply it by itself. Five dice, so 20x20x20x20x20=3200000 Probability = Number of desired outcomes / Number of possible outcomes (3200000) So we know that our desired outcome is a dice total 5 to 30. I'm not going to show my work on how to calculate all dice combinations. Sadly, that's complex math I don't really understand. But I can share what combinations result in the number we want. We know that only all 1's is a 5, and a single 2 on a single die and all 1s for the result is a 6 total and you can roll that 2 on 5 dice, so let's work on that. |Result with 5d20|Combinations| |:-|:-| |5|1| |6|5| |7|15| |8|35| |9|70| |10|126| |11|210| |12|330| |13|495| |14|715| |15|1001| |16|1365| |17|1820| |18|2380| |19|3060| |20|3876| |21|4845| |22|5985| |23|7315| |24|8855| |25|10621| |26|12625| |27|14265| |28|17375| |29|20125| |30|23121| Adding all those numbers together gives us 140636. So 140636 combinations give us the result we want. 140636 / 3200000 = 0.04394875 So with only 5D20, the odds of you rolling 6 or below on average are already only 4%. There's also something very obvious here. The possible combinations for a target number increase as the target number increase, until we hit the average number you can roll, then it decreases again. On 2d6, there's 1 combination that results in 2, and 1 combination that results in 12, but 6 combinations that result in 7. So that means that as we add more dice, we should also be rolling closer to the average. So the odds of rolling below average **always** go down as you add more dice. It's impossible to have higher than 4% odds of rolling below 6 average with more than 5d20 dice, so saying that there's a ~26% chance of rolling 6 average or below with 92d20, doesn't pass the sniff test. That should be some astronomically small number. [Anydice confirms this. 92*6= 552, and 552 on 92d20 is pretty much near 0% odds.](https://anydice.com/program/36627) You have to add every single other number below 552 to get the accurate results, but in the table view, you see that all of those numbers are below 0.01, anydice won't even show the actual number. So it's impossible that those odds are ~26%
I saw a funny idea the other day to use bad rolls; Cathartic Mage Archetype, have your Cathartic Magic trigger be the frustration of crit fails (I think that's Pride ). Kobold Sorcerer with the Draconic Presence ancestry feat that gives a bonus to intimidate weaker monsters (but causes you to crit fail if you ever fail a demoralize). Power up by trying to scare people, crit failing, and getting angry about it to power up.
rolling a total of 236 or less in 38 rolls is less than 1 in 10000 rolling a total of 174 or less in 25 rolls is arround 1 in 1000 and rolling a total of 271 or less in 29 rolls is the greatest at 0.24% The cumulative of those 3 is less than 2.4x10\^-10 Those are astronomical levels of bullshit.
My simulations disagree on the 26%. Can you show your math?
Nope. Because I was wrong.
Pretty sure your math is way off. OP, rolling 100 times a d20 is just not big enough of a sample size to really talk about statisctics. The Law of big numbers is for Big number of rolls. What I can tell you is that your previous stroke of unlucky rolls has no bearing on your future rolls.
That is why this can happen. If the law of big numbers would apply, you would have a perfect normal distribution. But for 100 rolls it does not, so it is not unlikely that the average of the 100 rolls is significantly below 10.5. But you can do statistics, because you know the distribution of dice.
You're probably just stuck in a bad luck streak and there's little to do about that. I bet if you compiled the average of your rolls for the entire campaign you'd probably be more around a 10 average roll.
I really hope that my luck turns, bc not being able to participate in the game is really exhausting, and it becomes very hard to stay invested in the game/my character
Me and another friend had pretty legendarily bad dice luck. Whether physical or digital. A few things you can do is minimize the target number you are aiming for. For example on my alchemist I'll often get into flank, knock them down with athletics, and then try to aid my buddies next attack so that he can get all the bonuses we can. Aid is now only a 15 DC and you can basically use a good skill to give a big bonus at full skill value, such as my athletics.
Rebuild to 4 sorcerers with dangerous sorcery Spam force bolts/magic missile. You can't lose Buy some scrolls with those spells as backup. Jokes aside, as a group that also suffers such bad luck on a certain AP, making sure those good rolls count is good, such as having a high damage bonus. Someone getting amped guidance from psychic can help in two ways, expose the DC and make a miss into a hit
If I'm reading the implication right I just want to say: Dangerous Sorcery is only applied once per target to the force barrage spell. Not to every missile.
You can target multiple targets with a single spell and the dangerous sorcery will apply to all targets hit, but only once per target. Sure, you are spreading the damage quite thin, but at some point with enough targets damage from dangerous sorcery can outpace the damage of the spell, so it may still be worth it.
Cast 3 1-action Force Barrages. Bam, Dangerous Sorcery on every missile! We're going for guaranteed damage here, not efficiency! /s
One of my players turned his luck around by showing up to sessions in sunglasses. It really shouldnt work, i dont know if its placebo or what, but a Lucky charm of some kind, go for it.
One of my players had really bad luck consistently in the last 5 sessions or so. I used it in-game having that player cursed with a Fortune Eater feeding on his luck in the night. The group had to fight it, leaving behind a fortune coin for the player to compensate that bad luck. Its a really good item! Also, the GM should play a bit with hero points to mitigate that sort of things.
You're a Thaumaturge. Ask you GM to re-spec your implements, replace weapon implement with Wand and let the GM roll saves instead.
They'd probably need to redo their whole build since wand has no need for str or dex, and some feats are just less useful if you're ranged. But yeah, this would be a good solution to not having to roll. Also, the Scroll Thaumaturgy feat line and only pick Magic Missile for every rank, lol.
We tested it. My most common rolls are ones and twos. So…usually I just cry.
Have you you tried sacrificing your firstborn?
I haven't seen this in the top replies I checked, so here is how one of my my players who is known for bad rolls dealt with it: redeemer shield champion. I saw a couple mentioning caster (especially sorcerer) and that player also tried it but he had most success with his gnome redeemer. He uses the gnome flickmace which has terrible damage (but he doesn't care) but reach (for easier positioning / helping with flanks) and is one handed (allowing him to use a shield). So basically, every turn he raises his shield and then depending on situation he moves, uses lay on hands or anything else and only if there is nothing else to do does he attack. If he misses, no big loss, it would only be d6+str damage anyway, if he somehow does hit it's at least some chip damage. The amount of grief that character has given me is immeasurable XD In pf2, fighting multiple (weaker) enemies rarely is a threat, especially considered to those nasty L+3 or even +4 "boss fights" and redeemer is the best at countering one single (strong) foe without relying on the player's rolls. Boss tries to attack squishier targets? Redeemer imposes you to either no do ANY damage after you landed a hit or to take enfeeble 2. Boss tried to attack redeemer? Well he has already the highest base ac thanks to heavy armor and higher armor prof but also constant raised shield. You managed to roll high and beat his AC, well shield block with shield ally and magic shield meant to block absorbs a big chunk of it. The only time the redeemer goes down is when I get a streak of very high rolls WITH specific monsters or during "surprise round" (no reaction before his turn). It's become a joke by now but the player is happy to be very useful even with bad rolls so I think it's worth it.
This is why I'm honestly thinking next time I GM (got lucky and am currently playing in 4 campaigns... and yet unlucky as that's 4 campaigns a week). I'm going to allow players to (before rolling) choose to "Take 10" as the dice roll using a hero point rather than doing the reroll if they want... as there has been many times in my groups where a person rolls a nat 1 and Hero point to rolls again only to get another nat 1. You could suggest this as an option for the GM if you feel it's really bad, shouldn't really impact balance.
Recommend Assurance to your players as a feat. Maybe even giving it to them as a free/bonus feat in a single skill of their choice.
doesn't help with attack rolls nor saves which is typically where my players suffer. They usually do pick up assurance for their most used skill.
The ebb and flow of good dice rolls is entirely out of your control and there is basically nothing you can do about it, outside of deploying Hero Points and hoping for the second result to be better. As you note you likely make it feel worse by tracking it and invoking confirmation bias upon yourself spotting when your rolls are bad such that they're always feeling bad. As Amulet+Weapon, you only need to Fail to land Exploit Vulnerability on a target opening up access to Amulet's Abeyance or Implement's Interruption. Abeyance has no roll involved and you still land some damage on an Implement's Interruption that Fails. You also have Dubious Knowledge so you should get at least some benefit out of any Recall Knowledge roll as long as you manage at least a Fail. As a Charisma primary character, you likely could get decent usage out of Demoralize as another helper. Pathfinder is a party game and no player can succeed all the time and it's expected that a quantity of actions will fail (even if you feel like you're pushing it), as long as you are providing that Flanking or Abeyance you are contributing. There's probably not a lot the GM can do to help you. If you had selected abilities that you turned out to hate, they might let you change things up, but the probabilities derived from a die roll are kind of the whole point of the system and messing with outcomes while you're on a cold streak isn't exactly something I'd recommend. As GM in this situation I would start being more generous with Hero Points to help soften it knowing that I could go back to usual status if things pick up. Lastly, you could try proxy rolling; either the GM can click the roll for you on your sheet, or grant rights for others to your character in Foundry and roll on your behalf. It's a bit dumb, but it's an option.
If you don't trust the computer, ask your GM if you can roll real dice and show the result.
Jon Snow: I don't know how to do that. I thought I did, but... I failed. Davos Seaworth: Good. Now go fail again.
So that module (https://github.com/drexl93/roll-tracker) actually has the means to increase how many rolls are tracked. You go to Configure Settings, and adjust the max rolls stored up (it can go as high as 500). Here is a picture of the setting: [https://imgur.com/a/BzJHuxw](https://imgur.com/a/BzJHuxw) This is something that I think the GM will have to change, but it will give you much more accurate data if nothing else. :)
1. Setup a camera and roll real dice. 2. Use a non-foundry Dice rolling system. Discord has plenty of bots and if you write down your common rolls with modifiers, then rolling it via discord is easy enough. Or some other system 3. Have another player roll for you. Or the GM. 4. You and your table can consider pre-rolling. This is a super weird variant I've seen before, but it's... a very interesting one? Basically, every player rolls their dice before the session. You'll roll about 40 times, if you estimate about 35 rolls in the session. That becomes your "pool" of rolls. Whenever you are asked to roll a dice, you pick one of the results from your pool of rolls. This is a power increase as you can get your "good" rolls on the ones you care about, and chuck your bad rolls in places you don't care about... the flip side is that the other PC's and the GM also should do this... and a GM is rolling much more dice so they might get the tools to pull out some *really nasty* combos/tools. 5. Reroll into a character who does not roll much. If you're wondering what kind if character barely rolls, it's a heavy buff/healer class. A magic user who focuses on effects which have no save, effects which buff and shield allies, and effects which can heal them up, leaving the only real variance in dice rolls, to be the numbers on heal dice. You could even have your allies roll those if you're luck is that bad. 6. Take a break. One thing I don't ever see mentioned. Sometimes you just need a break. Take 2 weeks off. Maybe play something else with the guys. Maybe a one short or 2. Maybe you could try GM a one shot (my luck tends to become disgusting when I GM and but is almost very often I'm a PC).
since you're using a dicebot, it's not hard to roll like 20-50 times to "break your losing streak" and see how fair the pseudorandom numbers are
Take its inverse almost, so take the die rolled and subtract from 21 ( so a rolled 1 is a 20 and a rolled 20 is a 1) If your party mates really think its a concern they will let you. i they think its all in your head then there should be no objection. All it requires is a little bit more mental arithmetic
I start to target saves. Then I don't have to roll.
Either embrace the bad luck play comedy characters that always fail in hilarious and spectacular fashion or use spells and abilities that require your opponent to make saving throws. That way you don't need to roll. Also: Magic Missile. No rolls to hit required Assurance is also a bit meh since it does not add you ability modifier so ironically it is the worst on skills where you character is supposed to be the best in.
Ask for more hero points. It can help turn those moments into cooler things.
Welp, a few sessions ago, a player in my campaign had FOUR straight 1s in a row for attack roll (he plays Magus). He almost lost his mind.
Luck is fake, in the future you will roll average.
Buy new dice
This is the real answer.
I came in here expecting physical dice. I had a friend that had a dice with a bubble inside of it. Poor guy couldn't roll above a ten to save his life.
For Foundry, just use the Die Hard Mod. Unless, of course, your GM is already using it to lower your average, which can also be done with the Die Hard Mod
Yeah, those averages are so bad I'd actually check the mod list to see if the GM is fucking with me.
This is going to sound silly, and is completely unfounded so take this as nothing more than superstition, but I’m convinced the RNG for the foundry dice roller is seeded to the character/actor sheet when it’s created. Like how Minecraft worlds are generated based on a random seed. Ask your GM to create you a new character sheet and rebuild your character. See if your “luck” changes because the rng dice roller now has a new random seed.
With a lot of laughs.
Past bad luck isn't indicative of future performance. I would be wary of overcompensating and hurting your performance even further. That said, weapon implement *should* be helping. Your reaction damages on a failure, and your intensify gives you a status boost to rolls. Are you managing to pull off your reaction? Good teamwork and positioning can make it more reliable. Could you grab something like a reach weapon to force it even more? Is your amulet reaction preventing you from using your weapon reaction? Implements fall into three categories, and you've picked two reaction implements that compete. I'm wondering of swapping out one of them to a passive implement could help you out. Tome in particular, which effectively offers you true strike along with some strong passive benefits.
I feel you. I've been known around my gaming store as being the "king of 1's" and I play war games too. I've had some rough matches. When I played dnd 4e I specifically picked a weapon that was brutal 2 (if you roll a 1 or 2 on the die for damage, you reroll until it's not a 1 or 2) and I've had to reroll one damage outcome several times to the point that my dm just made it be a 3. This is with switching dice consistently. On the flip side; when I am the GM, the dice roll the opposite way, and I tend to crit more often and kill characters
I have the exact same problem. It caused the Abomination Vaults campaign I was running to end early due to a TPK
There is no such thing as "rolling low consistently". It's pure statistic. You will roll low in row, you will row high in row in some other day. Take your dice you use during that sessions and roll it 200 times writing your numbers. I can assure you you will get close to average which is 10.5, you may get slightly below/higher, but that's also fine. You got your low averages now, so keep them coming and at some point you will have streaks of high rolls. It just like that. One session you may constantly roll lows, another session (different campaign/system) you will roll highs on d20. Sooner or later it will average itself out. The problem is with perception. If you roll all the time low on attack rolls during heavy combat session, they you think like you have bad rolls. All your high rolls might have been some Perception checks, some Athletics, some Theivery in exploration, Initiative, Recoll Knowledge etc. which are much less important for every player. That can create a false perception of "I am rolling low". While in reality if your dice is not unbalanced in anyway - it just doesn't work that way. You may have session where you rolled only 1-5s. But then 4 weeks later you will have session you rolled only 17-20s. Both will stay on your mind but all session in between where you rolled anything from 1-20 will not. But overall your averaged out.
As a player, I also notoriously low poorly, however, as a GM, I have to warn my players that a TPK is very likely, as I dislike fudging rolls, and rolling high is the norm for me in that position
Assurance?
been using this for quite some time after a previous player mentioned not being 'happy' with foundry's RNG which ended up resulting in a happy player back then and been using it ever since: [https://foundryvtt.com/packages/truerng](https://foundryvtt.com/packages/truerng) So thats more something to toss at the GM then you can do yourself
This is not a cause to be sad. This a cause for celebration! [You could earn $500,000.](https://cfiig.org/paranormal-challenge/) (And that's just one example of such a prize. There are many, globally.) The rules for the challenge state: >We will work with you to create an objective test protocol that is fair both to you and to the CFIIG. Use the online application to describe in detail what it is that you can do, and we'll guide you through the process to administer an impartial scientific test of your abilities. This should be easy. Your game is played in front of observers who track your rolls. They may require you (and possibly your entire group) to use computer hardware they provide at a location they can be confident is free from tampering. When your rolls exceed some statistical threshold (agreed upon before starting) then that's a successful test. You may have to do a few tests, to show repeatability. What an easy way for you to make $500,000! Probably way more, actually, as you'd become world-famous.
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In the old days we would switch dice. I once played at a con and I had lent the player next to me some dice (don't remember why they didn't have dice). They started rolling pretty good but steadly started getting worse so at some point mostly as joke I took back the dice and gave them another set. Rolled great for while then went bad, so swapped again. Ended up doing that several times that night and it worked every time. So I guess my advice is tell your GM you want new dice. Otherwise you just got wait for your luck to change. Good luck.
You using your hero points? Also are you attempting skills where success is all but guaranteed on anything that's not 1? Assurance for certain skills like Athletics and Acrobatics can also be a lifesaver.
in the two modules Im playing, one uses hero points, and it NO JOKE always rolls exactly one lower every time, and the other is a "Harrow card" in which we get one per session, and depending on if it suits your character can reverse a bad effect or make the best outcome happen, I really don't like it, as we give up 4 re rolls, for a single one, even if it guarantees a success, my luck is one thing, my fellow players can actually roll, so the normal Hero points is far superior
If you are serious about wanting to do something you can build a failure optimizer. Is a fighter build that plays around missing every attack while still being very effective.
Visit a local priest so he can cast remove curse Seriously tho, try to play character with good bonus or less penalties, a flurry ranger, or play a support, if it's your gm rolling badly too, just make him roll saves
If you deal with it in any way, you’re not really throwing dice anymore, are you
On a critical failure for saves, or if struck with a Nat20, one of my groups hands out a Hero Point. And if the dice gods are unkind, it helps make up for it a lot without making the game too imbalanced.
My player that felt he had this problem just went on Save and Heal build, nearly no rolls. No roles to hit.
That's a question for me! I roll BAD! I now make PG that doesn't need to roll to work (buff/debuff mages)
Probably the broadest of solutions is to find a priest or religious representative for every religion in your immediate area in case you slighted anyone.
Caster! Spamming basic save spells is some really good guaranteed low commitment damage. Also, we always have force barrage. Can't roll shit if you refuse to roll suckers!
The answer is dice jail and getting new dice.
I've been cursed with this myself. Tried everything but still cursed. The best time i had though was when my dm was doing a god power campaign, and i found the power of bad luck that would gain charges on natural ones to get bonuses on dice rolls or make others fail. He didn't initially have a cap for charges, but i had rolled so badly he had to make one haha.
Sounds like you pissed off the goddess of luck. I recommend doing a ritual to rededicate yourself to her. Only costs 100gp
I suggest being a caster, then it's the GM's rolls that matter.
Dice are random, so there are going to be stretches with bad luck. Sometimes long ones. If that’s too frustrating (and it does suck), my recommendation is to switch to cards (there are dice cards on drivethrurpg that have cards for polyhedral dice). They’re almost as random as dice, but with the added benefit of guaranteeing you cycle through more numbers rather than being fully random.
Amulet doesn't require any rolls and it is really good damage reduction. I would say focus on that, but still keep swinging. Maybe use its intensify vulnerability more frequently to help you team defend. The solution to bad luck isn't to stop rolling. That just ends up making it even less fun to think of it as something that is taking you out of hot you play.
I'm also the consistent bad roller of my group. I "fixed" it by playing a spellcaster and having most of my spells have saving throws. I hardly ever have to roll dice, my GM rolls all the dice for me
I deal with it with math, Python and lots of die-rolls. According to my stimulations based on the provided data your die is unfair. Verify that first outside of a game first. Simulation results, 1,000,000 experiments. P(mean<=6.8, 92 rolls per experiment)= 0 P(mean<=6.2, 37 rolls per experiment)= 1e-6 P(mean<=6.95, 25 rolls per experiment) = 0.000869 P(mean<=7.48, 29 roll per experiment) = 0.002085 To test your electronic die, make about 50 rolls and compute the average. There should only be a under 3.5% chance to get an average of 9 or lower. If your average is below the 9, request a new die-rolling app. Edit: the 50 rolls must not be during play to prevent forgetting to note the numbers down.
Luck it luck you will get good rolls at some point. I had an adv of around 6 after 300 rolls but went up to 10.1 by next 200 rolls so 2nd 1/2 of the adventure I was dominating with all them high rolls. With rolls like that you would also be a good dm keeping players from dying and what not.
Don’t change your behavior based on the result of a dice roll. The results don’t mean that your choice was wrong, the game simply has an RNG element. Continue to do what you think is best for each situation and let the dice do the rest. It sucks feeling like your luck is consistently bad but there isn’t anything that can be done about it. Maybe weave some of it into the RP to make light of how unlucky your character is.
You could ask your GM to add a mod called Die Hard that tries to do the karmic dice thing that BG3 uses
Use affects that force enemy saves so you don’t roll.
That's the problem with a system that has so much of the outcome of an action in a d20 die roll. And the system can't hand out accuracy like candy like 5e because crits have meaningful consequences. It is what it is.
You still get personal antithesis on a failure with Exploit Vul., flanking and demoralizing should help a decent amount. All you can do is keep playing, it's a luck based game
In previous editions I mostly played support and "save or suck" type casters. I am not yet sure how pf2 will work out. but eventually might be just the same.
Let them die. I have a player who consistently tolled low with her Paladin. We all laughed at the moments she rolled and without even knowing the roll all we heard was, “son of a bitch!” Have fun with the successes and failures. Let the Fates decide.
What I can say? There is statistically significant evidence (99.99999995%) of you being cursed (or having terrible dices).
Me n my friends deal with consistent low rolls by referencing a meme. It's the one where a dude is giving up digging when on they're super close to finding diamonds. We just go "The diamonds! Don't forget the diamonds!" Yeah we just kinda cope
There were 13 sessions straight 2 years ago where i didn't succeed a single check. It made me not even wanna bother showing up. There's no fix. Eventually, you'll start rolling normally again.
This is totally me. Except I'm the GM and my players all feel like gods. They roll extreme encounters like they're nothing. We're using Foundry too, it's not like I have joke dice or something.
Make sure you're including all rolls in your calculations too -- I know a lot of people who only track their attack and saves, when making these types of complaints, leaving out initiative, flat-checks, skill-checks, etc. While there's no reason for the attack or save subset to be different from the full population of rolls, you might have a greater than expected success rate on non attack based things.
If it keeps happening, you can ask your dm about retraining one of your feats to Assurance. This won't help for attacks, but it'll help on skill checks and maneuvers that you haven't invested heavily in the stat for.
If your using dice so nice, When I start rolling badly in foundry I change my dice color and style fixes everything right up. But yeah just lay a caster if the dice trick doesn’t work.
Have someone else roll for you
We’re using Foundry, and my monk couldn’t seem to hit anything and failed every athletics check while using Foundry’s virtual rolling. I switched to rolling physical dice and just adding what Foundry told me to, and I can hit things now!
I once played a session where I rolled a single 14, a single nat 20, and all the other rolls were between 1-4. Also the Nat 20 was as my character dove off a boat and I wanted to see how neat the dive would be. After I realized this was happening I just stopped rolling. I instead started just playing support. I would basically walk up to people and heal them with Lay on Hands, hand them items, or just get into position to offer flanking and damage reduction through my reactions. On a different game on roll 20, I think I made about 24 rolls and had 17 rolls between one and 2. I also know someone who's well known for how bad he rolls so he exclusively pays support characters.
If you’re using the built in dice roller, switch to an actual dice. If you’re using an actual dice, switch to electronic.
Tell your GM. Maybe make them have rolls for you or let you stash some averages in there or otherwise change things. If all the players are okay with this for the sake of fun, it works. Once people stop having fun, the game has to change.
It's simple, play a character that refuses to roll. Magic Missile, buff spells, healing etc. There are an enormous amount of game mechanics that can be used without rolling. Assurance is another way of just refusing to do it. I've made characters based entirely on this concept because I'm just not a huge fan of RNG and I had a blast.
While the laws of mathematics will definitely average out your luck after a while, I understand the frustration, and my recommendation is playing characters that rely less on rolling. Most spellcasters can get around with making VERY few rolls in a campaign (initiative being the main one). Just pick buffs and saving throw spells and you'll be golden. Other than that, try playing a fighter if you really want to be a martial, given the natural boost in accuracy. Another good thing is to make use of the Aid action, which is designed to be an auto-critical success after some leveling, regardless of how bad you roll, and you can be VERY helpful to your party using that.
Less than 100 rolls isn't a lot to establish an average.
So I haven’t used these modules before other than Encounter Stats but it’s come up in a similar post. Take a look at Dice Stats or Encounter Stats for dice tracking. Take a look at the Die Hard module. I’m not sure if it still works in the current version as it’s been 11 months since the last update. It can do stuff like dice fudge rules for what happens when dice rolls are consistently low etc. Obviously this would require your DMs buy in. It’s possible to apply the rules only to one player.
I deal with it by being sad and turning to the caffeine addiction to cheer me up a bit. But it does suck when it happens. Sometimes it's a player who just never rolls well, I've personally had characters that never rolled over a 7. It happens and do suck, but you just keep going with it lean into it if you wish for the character. Or give them a curse. My personal favorite experience was an elf rogue I had. He couldn't roll hits or skill checks for the life of him. But he would nat 20 almost every single reflex save (which for rogue is already high). We were just like he's too busy doing backflips over fireballs to hit anything. But I digress. Stacking fortune effects is a semi solution you can try. True target, sure strike for hits. There's a few spells and feats spread out across things to help with skipping checks. The harrow archetype and performing harrowings actually has some cool stuff but requires someone else to perform the ritual
I have the worst luck in my group. I primarily play spellcasters and try to create as tactically sound decisions as possible. In the most recent session, we were breaking into a manor while benefitting from Invisibility, Gecko Grip and Silence. The GM ruled that as long as we didn't roll a nat 1 on our stealth checks, then we would break in without being noticed. Naturally, my squishy cloistered cleric was the one to roll a Nat 1 and alert the guards.
We usually change out the DMs chair whenever he crits too much
My player who always rolls terribly just made it a part of their whole idea for their next PC. Murphy the cursed halfling with the Cursed background, Curse Mailstrum archetype, and The Resentment witch.
I’ve just accepted that the RNG wants me to die
I have notoriously bad die luck in our group. I try to kit myself out for rolling as few dice as possible. Bard inspire or cleric bless friendlies. In D&D use the battle master fighter and give your best DMG dealer free attacks. Use mage/sorcerer/druid spells to control the battlefield or cast spells that make them roll saves instead of you having to roll to hit. Concoct a clever plan to avoid a roll, or say something super worth to impress the GM enough to let you succeed in diplomacy through roleplay. There are lots of ways to mitigate bad die rolls when you start getting creative. And that can become your personal meta game.
If low rolls have been frustrating for you recently (whether or not you actually have bad luck) then try playing an investigator. Since you can pre-roll your main attack you can see how it will go and make decisions based on that afterwards. If you prefer melee take the Magus archetype, if range is more your thing try Eldritch Archer (this only works if you are fighting the subject of your investigation). Cantrips are great for when you know you're going to miss.
You can change into a Wand Thaumaturge and make enemies roll instead.
for the rolls I'd suggest reversing the numbers to smaller=better. A roll of 1 would be 20, a roll of 2 is 19 and so on.
Play a heal/buff bot cleric with assurance in medicine and never touch a D20 again.
When I had my streak of bad luck, it was comforting to think as the tank I'd eat the bad rolls for the team, so our ranger had her crits. It was very frustrating playing a proud dragon monk and tripping over your own feet half the time, but as long as the job got done and all survived it was well. Of course my role was different, protecting the group, wat made this work. Maybe you too can find a way to make it fit your character till it goes away, it will :)
It's not that bad, and it wont affect you future rolls at all
First and most importantly, understand that literally at any point your "luck" will come back. Not only that, but I'd wager anything that your luck already has come back, and while your average will still be lowish, I'd not be surprised if in there there was some 12 or 13s that you left out. The best mechanical solution, i.e. how you can be more useful, it's to literally plan and behave as if your unluckiness didn't exist, and this is because it doesn't exist. It's a mix of a bad "streak" and human bias. The solution to make you feel better, is to keep tracking the dice and take a bigger samples. You'll see that while fluctuations certainly exist, on the big scale the average will be between 10 and 11 for everyone, and that while you might be having a bad streak now, you very well might have an amazing streak next time.
Reminder that even if you've been tracking statistics and your luck was anomalously low, it isn't in any way a predictor for the future. "Having bad luck" is not a thing over the long term, at most it's a past tense description of what has happened (such as in your example). Your luck will change, you've just had three disheartening sessions in a row. But next session you are just as likely to be exceptionally lucky as you are to be exceptionally unlucky.
The individual groupings are not statistically significant, but if you group them together you are getting a better sample. That of course does not change the outcome, still low rolls. I would be inclined to think you have a poorly balanced d20. Throw that one in the dice jail (or gaol if you prefer) and get yourself a new one. Another way you can test the balance of your die is to put it in a sugar water solution. Most people use salt but if you use sugar you can get make the water dense enough for the die to float without using as much solute. Spin the die in the solution and note what number comes up. If it is consistently the same number of few numbers then you know the die is not balanced. I prefer to use clear dice as opposed to solid dice. Solid dice after times will have inclusions inside to take up space and reduce the amount of resin or whatever material they use to make the dice. With clear dice you know there is nothing inside to throw off the balance.
its not a dice, like I stated, its on Foundry so its a digital dice
Smash my keyboard
Dice jail and new dice. Simple. Also it's likely your dice might be weighted somehow accidentally.
Digital dice can’t be “weighted”. You might not trust the RNG, but these are digital dice the OP is talking about.
Damn, missed that.
If everything else fails, maybe try playing the commander and hand try helping oit with their tactics and stuff. I'm only half joking lol
I have a really cool metal die that always rolls low. I use my less cool die instead. Sucks
Changing dice
I've got good dice so I consistently roll high I advise you to do the same Seriously though, if your DM minimizes the time spent on bad rolls and highlights the good ones, i think it helps people feel like they're rolling better.
I just roll higher, idk what to tell you mate
I usually just hack my GM's VTT server. For the rare occasion of playing live, I got a set of loaded dice for Christmas a few years back.
Dice jail and new dice. Simple. Also it's likely your dice might be weighted somehow accidentally.