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View Full Version : Sharing the Dice Love



Rasagal
2009-08-06, 12:18 AM
So, after years of trying to convince my friends to give a chance on a role-playing game we finally started playing D&D 3.5e. The whole thing was a success as my new players loved it and now they pull me in to dm their game as often as possible(played four 5-hour sessions this week alone. All is going along beautiful.
Except of course that ofter a few rolls of the dice we started to find a pattern. Mainly, the dice love me. In almost every single encounter the barbarian gets a faceful of critical rolled with max damage or the wizard's spell get resisted by my rolls emptying his spell slots with almost no real contribution to the battle. I tried to roll a 20sided die in front of them to show them it doesn't really work that way but i ended up getting 3 natural 20's on a row so i stopped.
And of course it goes the other way around too. After an encounter with a bunch of dire bats where they had the outstanding idea to blind them with a thunderstone(seriously, i was like "whoah") they end up almost getting killed cause they ALL dropped their weapons twice by rolling 1.
Seriously, the barbarian has only critted 3 times in like 7 sessions and the one time the bard critted with his bow he rolled a 1 for damage.
To all you experienced DM's out there, what the hell is going on? They are starting to threaten me with physical violence every time i grasp the d20 now. And i can't really face them up with any strong monsters cause even 3 hobgoblins ended up almost killing them.

dragonfan6490
2009-08-06, 12:23 AM
It is simply DM Ju-Ju. Do the players have their own dice? A relationship must be made with the dice, one of mutual trust. One must purchase a set of dice of their own and then earn their trust. You must have truly earned the trust of your dice.

arguskos
2009-08-06, 12:26 AM
On another note, it is possible that your dice are skewed towards 20s. d20s tend to be a bit malformed, with the die rolling specific numbers higher than others. It seems yours is biased towards 20s. Perhaps you should acquire some other d20s?

If this is happening with ANY dice you pick up, perhaps you need to roll them better, or you simply have been getting amazing luck.

Rasagal
2009-08-06, 12:39 AM
Well, i did buy the dice in the first place. But we all often roll the exact same d20 so it can't be malformed or they would get more 20 results too. Hold on, i got a thought.

Yeah, i just picked up my d20 and rolled it. Got a natural 20. My bro is still rolling now trying to get something better than 15.
I should go on tv or something.

Tyrmatt
2009-08-06, 02:51 AM
If the players feel that you are using loaded dice or are just somehow beating the rules of chance with your throw (entirely possible. The right tiny chip out of the dice and the way it leaves your hand can manipulate it quite easily), the solution is simple: Go to the store with at least one of your players and select a brand new dice.

Or use a dice tower like I do. I built one out of toothpicks and foamboard that we had lying around that has three shelves inside. It's as close to truly random dice rolling as it can get. You can buy them premade as well though my personal favourite is the D6 dice tower, made entirely of dice.

misterk
2009-08-06, 04:36 AM
Assuming this is not you just noticing the unusual and not noting the usual, one way to stop yourself influencing the roll would be to whack the die in a cup and shake. Personally I'm used to my npcs being utterly ineffective, but thats just me.