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View Full Version : Rolls you absolutley suck at.



Vulion
2007-09-25, 12:45 PM
As you can gather from the title, I wanna know what type of rolls people suck at and what types that people do not suck at.

Me personally, I am a physical incarnation of the phrase "crapshoot", either I do really well or a fail so horribley it makes me wanna weep. I have lost two characters to such rolls, one got was killed when I made a critical miss and hit an ally, an ally that just happened to be neutral EVIL, the other was fighting a ghost. I can never seem to confirm critical's either...

My one saving grace is ability score rolls when you first create a character. I am phenominal at that, my last character did not have a single ability score below 15.

Anyway, I'd like to see if anybody else has a similar case of rolling luck.

EndgamerAzari
2007-09-25, 12:58 PM
Everything. The people I play with won't even let me touch their dice any more, since my suckiness seems to spread.

Chaos Bringer
2007-09-25, 01:06 PM
Will saves. I play a cleric so i have a pretty decent bonus to it, but every dice roller i use wont let me roll above a 5. For everything else its all pretty equal, but when i start rolling 20s it tends not to stop :smallbiggrin:

Armoury99
2007-09-25, 01:32 PM
Just finished playing a year long campaign and sucked at damage rolls every single time.

Raolin_Fenix
2007-09-25, 01:40 PM
Everything. I cannot pick up the dice without rolling crap. I think I managed to roll an 18 in a stat once (in my entire experience), in the same set as I also rolled two 7's, an 8, and two 10's. On the other hand, I once rolled a 3 in 4d6-drop-the-lowest. Which means I rolled four 1's. Immediately thereafter, I rolled four 2's. I'm not even joking.

I have had more critical fumbles and rolls of two or three than the rest of the party combined. I consider myself fortunate, on any given day, if I break 5, and downright lucky if I roll above a 10. I think, on average, I roll above a ten on a d20 one time in five.

The only rolls I'm good at are damage rolls. But that's not good either, because the DM has us roll our own damage. I can roll really high for the damage I'm taking. (DM rolls how much damage we deal to the enemy.)

I have such notoriously horrible luck that I've taken to using the Jinxed trait for all of my characters, just to stay thematically correct. (Jinxed, by the way, gives you the chance to fumble on a 2 as well as a 1, and adds +1 to all attack rolls and saves.) I can't roll well to save my soul.

The worst part of it is, I'm using an automatic dice-roll generator. Online campaign. So I can't even complain that the dice are weighted against me (though I can complain that the dude who wrote the dice-rolling program added a script to make me roll poorly).

Green Bean
2007-09-25, 01:42 PM
Will Saves. I have terrible luck with them, matched only by my luck with Fort saves. In one combat, my sorcerer saved against two Finger of Deaths (rolled a 19 and a 20), but fell to a Suggestion spell (natural 1!)

Duke of URL
2007-09-25, 01:52 PM
I roll great for attributes, average for HP, and lousy for attack rolls and initiative.

Kyeudo
2007-09-25, 02:05 PM
I can't roll to save my character's life. If I DM though, my players play careful, because they know my dice like to kill their characters. My dice are hot when rolling for monsters.

hippie_dwarf
2007-09-25, 02:10 PM
Our entire group suck at all rolls. In one fight in the sewers, our Gnoll ranger kept getting hit by streams of...sewer stuff, and falied his save everytime. He didn't do a thing that fight. It gave him a new catch- hrase "I'm covered in sh*t and p*ssed off!".

I personally especially suck at initative rolls, i normally get about 5 or less, i almost always go last. Our other ranger, a catfolk, has the worst luck with attack rolls i have ever seen, but when he was playing a monk he did manage to kill an orc in 1 hit. Not one of the rubish 1/2 CR ones mind you, these were nasty.

Our resident powergamer has either the best or the worst rolls, he practically became the party face becuase he so many natural 20's on diplomacy checks, but hten he has laso managed to get himself into deep doo-doo more time than you can shake a stick at.

wowy319
2007-09-25, 02:14 PM
I USED to suck terribly at Disable device checks... and I was a ROGUE. However, I broke out of the slump and started sucking at attack rolls, but I found a way around that. All hail Luck feats and the Fortune's friend PrC!

DaMullet
2007-09-25, 02:19 PM
Any time it would be either really funny or really bad if I fail, I do.

I rolled a natural 1 on an attack roll against the ground (ranged attack) and another when I tried to bodyslam it. Also, I critically failed my save against explosive runes, and subsequently got the entire party killed when the rest got set off.

Kurobara
2007-09-25, 02:20 PM
Saves in general. I roll pretty much everything else fine, even initiative (even when it's not d20! I've had amazing Join Battle rolls in Exalted, for example), but I can't roll saves for the life of me.

For reference, I failed like 5 saves last session. With a Favored Soul (all strong progressions). It... really sucked.

Raolin_Fenix
2007-09-25, 02:24 PM
I rolled a natural 1 on an attack roll against the ground (ranged attack) and another when I tried to bodyslam it.

So you hurled yourself at the ground, and (automatically) missed? Did the DM rule that you started flying?

hippie_dwarf
2007-09-25, 02:27 PM
Any time it would be either really funny or really bad if I fail, I do.

I rolled a natural 1 on an attack roll against the ground (ranged attack) and another when I tried to bodyslam it. Also, I critically failed my save against explosive runes, and subsequently got the entire party killed when the rest got set off.

So you missed the ground? Meaning you..flew? Sounds just like Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy.

Hzurr
2007-09-25, 02:46 PM
While I don't have any specific rolls, I do have a specific die that rolls so consistantly badly, we've officially dubbed it the "DM die." We had a new friend who had never experienced it before who was DMing us, and we gave it to him and insisted that he use it. After his 5th natural 1 (out of about 20 rolls total), he came to dread the little bugger as much as the rest of us.

I do have one player in my campaign, who everyso often will make an "untrained Bardic Knowledge" check. We never let him get away with it, but I don't think I've ever seen him roll anything less than an 18 on one. It's uncanny.

Ecalsneerg
2007-09-25, 03:06 PM
My TWF Ranger's weapons seem to fluctuate in effectiveness!

"With my +1 khopesh, doing 2d4+4 damage, I roll a... *throws dice and adds modifers* 14"
"Miss"
"With the mundane shortsword doing a pathetic 1d6+1 damage... *rolls and adds* 23?"
"Hit!"
"I roll 2 damage."

Renx
2007-09-25, 03:24 PM
Stats. I usually have to roll two or three sets until I have more than two over 10.

TheOOB
2007-09-25, 03:26 PM
In 7th Sea (which is what I am currently playing the most) i apparently suck at anything defensively oriented. I can kill two or three brutes a round, and even take out villans in a couple of attacks, but any serious attack at me will hit and will hurt, I just don't roll well on defense and damage resistance :(

Shas aia Toriia
2007-09-25, 03:56 PM
Great at rolling stats (which is why I abhore point buy), but suck with a D20

de-trick
2007-09-25, 03:57 PM
I was playing a archer and when ever I used a sword I screw up, last time I cut the face of are cleric, sword+sword=bad news for a archer halfling

Godna
2007-09-25, 03:58 PM
Attack rolls vs players - Its become perfectly normal for me to alter the results in front of them at this point after a twenty on everyones dice... yeah its not fair.

tsuyoshikentsu
2007-09-25, 04:21 PM
Iaijutsu Focus rolls. It matters more than you'd think.

AslanCross
2007-09-25, 04:44 PM
As a DM, I suck at saving throws. Damage is okay and so are attack rolls, but I don't think I've seen one of my monsters succeed a saving throw. This often results in fried hobgoblins.

Ravyn
2007-09-25, 05:06 PM
For some reason, my d20s hate me, particularly on saving throws--except for every now and then when I toss out a crit at a particularly dramatic moment. My tens, on the other hand, seem to just roll with whatever would be most dramatic.

Quirinus_Obsidian
2007-09-25, 05:16 PM
SR and PR checks. I can make the Fort saves, Will saves, attack and damage, etc. but when it comes to SR or PR, I NEVER get more than a 5 :smalleek: . Seriously. This is when I started finding spells that have no darn SR and powers with no PR. Hard to find, mind you. :smallfurious:

Jannex
2007-09-25, 05:19 PM
My dice luck is... ironic. This is especially true for skills. If I have an obscene skill modifier, I usually roll ridiculously well (especially if the roll is largely meaningless or trivially easy), but if it's something in which I don't have much of a modifier or is even vaguely important, I've got no chance. Whether it was my minotaur ranger with bonuses in excess of 20 to Spot and Listen, or my human bard with absurd Diplomacy, I'd regularly roll +18's. But if my rogue with Str 10 has to roll a climb check? I'll be lucky to break 5 on the d20. And don't even get me started on the Sense Motive checks, with her poor 10 Wisdom...

Funny story. That minotaur ranger I mentioned? Oversize TWF with bastard swords (not optimized, but it sure was fun), and in the final battle of the campaign, got his hands on an artifact-weapon vorpal bastard sword. I must've rolled about three natural 20's... with his other hand. The vorpal sword critted a few times (Improved Critical ftw!), but vorpal only goes off on a natural 20. *sigh*

starwoof
2007-09-25, 05:20 PM
I can't roll a die except to save my life. Generally all I do during sessions is survive which, frankly, is an improvement over how I've done before. I tend to roll well only when DMing. :smallannoyed:

My player mortality rate is high. Thats bad rolling, mostly.

I can't fudge everything.

Leicontis
2007-09-25, 05:39 PM
My bad rolls tend to spread themselves out, but I've seen other people that the dice HATED...

In my first D&D game, one member of our party for a long time was a Kobold sorcerer who often rolled "Standard Damage (TM)", which is to say that his average damage per d6 was around 2-2.5 most of the time, and sometimes lower. There were at least one or two occasions of a pile of d6s coming up all 1s and 2s.

In the game I'm currently in, our spiked-chain-wielding rogue is lucky to see double digits on her attack rolls. Actually, it's a decent day if she gets above a natural 5 - and she's been one of our primary damage-dealers...

Orzel
2007-09-25, 06:22 PM
Spell Resistance!!!

1, 3 ,5, Screw this I'm full attacking it with my bow.

Reflex saves too. I play high dex just to balance out the 3's and 4's when dragons spit at me.

Enzario
2007-09-25, 06:36 PM
Roll-playing. I try, but I suck.
'nuff said.

Dairun Cates
2007-09-25, 06:37 PM
I'm well-known for my rolling habits around my groups. The best description for my kind of roller is "The Infinite Improbability Field". Along with my infamous "D20 of Infinite Improbability", I somehow manage to always make rolls that are improbable. Because of this, I have moments of sheer ultra bad luck, but I have also managed to never have a character die no matter how suicidal I act. Examples of this include one of my characters almost single-handedly taking out a CR 14 encounter at level 8 while fatigued and the encounter started with an ambush. On the other hand, a lot of my stat rolls are abysmal sometimes. Of the few times I've rolled for stats, I can remember getting the following rolls: 8,8,10,11,13,12 and 6,8,10,11,13,14. However, these two characters, no matter how many pits they fell down and no matter how much the GM intentionally tried to kill one of them in one case, were impossible to kill.

As a GM, this has led to some interesting sessions. My minions crit, and my BBEG's critically fail. My arbitrary justice rolls are almost always 1's and 20's. Rogues fail their stealth checks while 3 year boys can outstealth a veteran. Only the running gag BBNG in most of my campaigns seems immune to insane good and bad luck.

Hell Puppi
2007-09-25, 06:43 PM
If there's a roll I must absolutely, positively, life-or death make, I will fail.

If it's just something really cool, I will fail 50% of the time

If it's to annoy the GM, or to kill characters that he really really needed later on to progress the story, I will succeed.

On a side note he really shouldn't have placed 3 mages without armor in a dark tower while my character was a shadowdancer. That was just silly. Can't believe he's still mad about that :smallannoyed:

Quellian-dyrae
2007-09-25, 06:44 PM
I've lost more characters than I want to think about to the instant kill variant and/or death from massive damage and/or save-or-dies. Also, if I'm playing a stealth-based character, I am pretty much guaranteed to have absolutely no luck. If I'm playing an arrogant stealth-based character, well, may the gods have mercy on its soul.

Specific instances of horrible luck: when one of my chars missed an orc I think three times in a row with natural 1's. Then rolled a 1 on his suicide attempt. Then there was the time when my dwarf barbarian/wizard (high Strength, true strike on, charging, might have raged after casting true strike, the works) went for a bull rush against a rogue BBEG standing at the edge of a pit. I hit of course, true strike ya know, but rolled a 1 on my Str check. So my raging, muscular, 190-pound dwarf hurls himself full tilt directly into the skinny little thief's center mass with precognitive accuracy and bounces off like the goblin in OoTS #1.

When times are desperate my luck is good. All the more opportunity for my characters to die in some trivial battle to a worthless mook with three natural 20's.

Not that I'm bitter, or anything.

Leon
2007-09-25, 06:56 PM
Combat rolls: most times its just hard to get a hit in, then i do maage to hit and roll crummy damage

case point: threw a spear at the wizard we were trying to stop from completeing a spell in a magic circle, i crit hit and confirmed with a thrown spear (min damage possible was 9) and i rolled a 7 for a total of 13 - found out later that if i'd rolled decently i'd have dropped him

also of note is Morale Checks in DDM, its really hard to roll high consistantly for those...

LordVader
2007-09-25, 07:00 PM
Well, in 40k I always miss whenever I'm rolling to hit with heavy weapons for that game-breaking tank kill. So I would suck at rolls for any weapons that have even a remote chance of killing the target.

starwoof
2007-09-25, 07:01 PM
Well, in 40k I always miss whenever I'm rolling to hit with heavy weapons for that game-breaking tank kill. So I would suck at rolls for any weapons that have even a remote chance of killing the target.

I suck at every roll that is not killing tanks!

And my warboss usually rolls 4 1's to wound! (he has 6 attacks and str 10...)

Winged One
2007-09-25, 07:07 PM
My skill-monkey characters can't do anything at all unless I take 10 or 20. I once had a tiefling rogue(who was pretending to be human) who got repeatedly facinated into poisoned spiked pit traps by the same damn harpy. Admittedly this was White Plume Mountain, but still. The only exception to this is my Star Wars scoundrel character, who apparantly used up most of his bad luck by having his immediate family on Alderaan when it went boom. And even he can't do anything that isn't his party role(basicly, he's the tech guy with Force powers. He also does social stuff, but we have another character who's more specialized in that. He also has Stealth trained, but he suffers from my normal bad luck in that area).

Guy_Whozevl
2007-09-25, 07:08 PM
Generally, my attack rolls suck. There was one time where I made three attack rolls; all were natural 1's. Other times, I mostly get anywhere from a 2-8. This is partially circumvented when I use my friend's dice and utter the phrase, "Why do I always get bad luck?" When I do that, I roll 16+ always. Too bad said friend almost never comes to sessions anymore...

....
2007-09-25, 07:12 PM
I cannot ever hit with an attack roll.

I think its because for a long time I was the only DM in our group and I always hoped I wouldn't hit the PCs, because I didn't want to kill them. In fact, sometimes I'd fudge rolls as a DM so I would hit the PCs just to make it seem like they were in some friggen danger.

Now that I play as a player, I can't hit the broad side of a barn. I constantly roll under 12, its so bad that people won't let me use their d20s because I may rub off on them.

Golthur
2007-09-25, 07:49 PM
Let's see....

Initiative: roll great.
Attack rolls: suck.
Damage rolls: about average.
Skill checks: about average.
Saving throws: mostly rolls great, unless it's a save or die, then I fail every time.
Caster level checks: roll great.

Of course, this is all superstitious and likely the result of selective memory.

BardicDuelist
2007-09-25, 09:32 PM
Initiative. I always get below 10, usually below 5, so even my high dex characters aren't doing much in the first round.

The only time I ever seem to crit is against things which are immune.

Generic PC
2007-09-25, 10:37 PM
hmm. I have this one set i bought, the second one i think, which is terrible... I have used it for one session, and in said session, i rolled no higher that 8 on the d20.

Vulion
2007-09-26, 11:41 AM
I wonder I Giant sucks at any rolls...

Stabby
2007-09-26, 12:34 PM
Well, I roll amazing when it comes to init and to skill checks. I mean really amazing. However, I can't make a fort save or a stabilization save to "save my life". Ever.

My brother isn't allowed to roll for loot anymore. The DM says that its not fair and it overpowers the game. Ive seen my brother, with 4 different sets of dice, roll 90+ five times in a row. The DM just kept groaning and reading off the chart. It was insane.

Curmudgeon
2007-09-26, 12:53 PM
Most saving throws. Improved Evasion has saved (half of) my Rogue's bacon repeatedly. What I have done is taken a level of Cleric (so +2 to both saves Rogues are weak at) with the Pride domain and bought the best Cloak of Resistance. The Pride domain is great: re-roll a 1 on every save, once. With the worst rolls taken care of now I really wish I could see a way to gaining Mettle.

Edit: I seem to do OK (not well, just average) on to hit and damage rolls, and I prefer point buy for stats so that's not an issue. Saving throws, though, represent possible instant death. I worry about that.

bigbaddragon
2007-09-26, 04:12 PM
I think there is no other person in the world that has angered the god of d8s in such a great magnitude. My HP rolls with d8 are more than terrible and my damage rolls are very crappy too, I usually get 1 or 2 when I roll d8 for damage. At one session I was using my composite longbow (d8+2 damage) very much and all rolls were 1 or 2 except one time when I hit with both attacks (one of them critted) and happily grabbed and rolled 4d8 ..... and then I wasn't so happy anymore for I rolled 1,2,2,3 (4d8+8=16 :smallmad: )

malcolm
2007-09-27, 01:48 AM
I'm pretty good with HP rolls. Character creation is very average, and initiative tends to be below average. Totalled throughout my entire career, I'd say my dice rolls are exactly what one would expect from an adequate sample size. I roll 20s about 5% of the time, and get those pesky 1s about as often (sometimes threatening a crit and then rolling a 1 to confirm). All in all, the dice seem like a sufficiently random tool to produce a large variance in success/failure rates.

lesserarchangel
2007-09-27, 01:55 AM
In my last campaign, we had half the party competing to see who would get the lowest Initiative. The player running the druid had gotten to the point of rolling specific dice: he had one for low values, one for high values, and a bunch that were relatively fair. Mind you, if that druid had ever once won initiative, he would have immediately plane-shifted us all to the elemental plane of Fire, so it was probably for the best.

LemonSkye
2007-09-27, 02:54 AM
I am awesome at rolling for ability scores. I've had at least two characters with three 18s--before adding racial ability mods.

What I seem to routinely suck at, however, are confirmations on critical hits, damage rolls, rolling for HP, and initiative rolls. It's a good thing that I tend to be support in melee rather than on the front lines.

PlatinumJester
2007-09-27, 03:48 AM
I suck at intiative rolls getting in the 4-6 range.
I also suck at rolling to see how much HP I have regained from a potion. Last session I rolled 1 when using a potion of Cure Light Wounds when I had 1 HP left and the I drank a potion of cure moderate wounds and rolled a 1 and a 2. Stupid d8s.

Overlard
2007-09-27, 05:11 AM
My primary function. Seriously. No matter what my character type, I'll suck at whatever my role is. I played a half-dragon barbarian, having rolled an 18 for Str, being mid-level, decent magic weapons and stat boosts etc., and I still could barely hit things most of the time - 10 was a fantastic roll for me. I've played rogues who never managed above 8 on a Move Silently roll. My ray-specialist wizard with Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, a great Dex and so on, who fired her spells wildly into the ceiling well over half the time. And the less said about my bard with his foot stuck firmly in his mouth, the better.

And yet they've done well in roles I never meant for them - the barbarian became the party face due to his constant high rolls in Diplomacy, Bluff and Sense Motive checks. The rogue ended up being a frontliner who managed to nearly never be hit despite his crappy AC, and with me rolling nothing but 5s and 6s for his hitpoints, he had more HP than the fighter.

In one group I'm in, that's pretty much how they expect me to end up.

Me: "What's the party lacking?"
Them: "Well, we really need someone to sneak around unseen and unheard."
Me: "Cool. I'll roll up a fighter then."