This Player ACTUALLY CHEATED in D&D!! | Reading D&D Reddit Stories

[@OneShotQuips]

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[@gman1515]

That ad read was inspired

[@Gatorboy5678]

@@gman1515By what?

[@sonicdml4175]

​@@Gatorboy5678 Bad anime dubs

[@FaustoPego]

When people say "you can't win an RPG" they mean that the objective of the game is to create a story cooperatively. So if everyone is creating the story, even if your character dies, you still are fulfilling the objective and fun of the game.

[@PancakeboiVR]

Trying to win dnd is like trying to win a book you don’t win you have fun

[@slashandbones13]

I guess you "win" by making it to the final boss, if there is one. But thinking like that is completely missing the point.

[@Pizzaetertje]

There is only one way to lose dnd, and that’s by creating a heterosexual bard

[@realdragon]

Yeah, for example I remember game where everyone but 1 person died. It was awesome because my character was using others as a tool, other PC was spying on us and the rest was trying to survive. It was awesome

[@ГрафМакдакула]

​@@Pizzaetertjebut gay barbarian sounds also fun

[@marcusdire8057]

Story about bad dice rolls responding to first story: A person I was aying with wanted to try to climb up a wall. Third athletics check or so - Nat 1. Darnit but it happens. DM calls for a DEX check to reduce or negate falling damage. Nat 1. DM, trying to be nice and not kill the character straight away before we even see the boss, calls for a CON save. Nat 1. Player is getting frustrated at her dice now, rolls for nothing, just to check the dice. Nat 1. Player, now angry at her traitor dice, throws it across the room. Apologies for her outburst, and goes to retrieve her die. It had landed on Nat 1. FIVE Natural 1s in a row!! The DM gave her a rewind (one of only two the DM has ever offered in 10 years) "Ok, lets say you DIDN'T try to climb that wall?" So the Character lived, but the Player was scared to try anything that would require a roll for the rest of the session.

[@ShadowReignhart]

I feel like I would react the same if all my rolls were nat 1 from the get-go.

[@byronsmothers8064]

1 in 3.2M odds there, I would hope they got most of their bad luck out of their system & had good things happen after.

[@DaTimmeh]

​@@byronsmothers8064Ain't math fun? Such a rare chance, and yet absolutely believable, and more likely for it to have happened to someone than not. In fact, it probably happens on a yearly or even monthly basis.

[@marcusdire8057]

@@byronsmothers8064 Yeah, I remember the GM calculated the odds, but I couldn't remember what they were. Those incredible long odds were the reason the Player got one of the rare Rewinds. (If I recall correctly she had high side of average rolls for the next several months?)

[@ceilinh6004]

That's when you put your d20 in dice jail. 😂

[@DMofBriseras]

In regards to “bad dice days”, some of the best advice I ever heard was from Matthew Colville who said to “Let players fail forward.” As in, if they roll poorly, that doesn’t necessarily mean they need to face the harshest consequences. Instead, up the stakes or challenge of the situation, and allow them to have another go. I tend to let my players “fail forward” 3x in a row before I give in and allow them to face the final consequence. This has been a godsend to my games. Makes everything so much more dynamic and dramatic. Plus, happy players = happy gm!

[@kc5997]

on my current campaign as a newbie to DND , rolled a 1 after a big fight while looting a pool of blood the boss was using for her magic or whatver. DM used it as a "palantir" and i basically saw all the tortures and death but also was able to see which deity was protecting this mf necromancer/assassin. and thats how i learned about Nerull . by having a deeply traumatized bard tiefling. it was both horrifying but totally worth it storywise. And it's gonna spur character growth.

[@franceskoz]

As a DM, I sometimes love when my players roll low, not because I want them to fail, but because of the narrative opportunity. My favourite are Nat 1's on Perception, because then I can say things that are totally wrong, like they see things in the opposite direction as the threat or are very confident nothing is around, etc. One time, I asked them to roll Perception because there was like a fire demon horse creature on the edge of the nearby woods, and two of them rolled high and the other rolled super low, and for the low one I said she saw a swallowtail butterfly (in the opposite direction), while the other two saw the horse, and the player who rolled low was great at roleplay and ran with it, and the three of them then preceded to have a conversation where they all thought they were talking about the same thing but they weren't. Like the two who saw the horse were like, "should we be worried?" and the person who saw the butterfly was like "no, I think it's just pretty". 🤣

[@bexfisch80]

That's awesome! 😂

[@keit99]

You think you See dolphins flying above the forest 😂

[@obsidianofblades]

We had a similar one in our Pathfinder game! We're stansing outside of a room that has caught fire because of a fight, and 3 of the 4 of us are not yet in the room. 2 of us (my divine sorc and our inventor) rolled absolute crap on perception initiative, so for both our first turns we had a conversation about the mechanics of the lock on the secret door we found. What made it better is both characters have some fire resistance, so we could actually legitimately "not notice" when the fire spread into our room and we were caught in the area of effect. "Monet, you seem to be on fire." "So I am. Oh, so's your cloak. That's not coming from the party budget." (Still unaware of the fight). "*Mending.*"

[@kinagrill]

I had a character that just repeat-rolled shit rolls... in the end the DM allowed a cool death moment (freebie boss kill before own death cuz both was in the singles-HP). My character then was allowed to reincarnate as a Monk character that remembered the Karma of their last life and as such sought to do good deeds that would balance out the karma or even tip into a positive. It was a nice monk character iirc that rolled fairly well... so something good came out of it at least.

[@itap8880]

When you mentioned a demon, I was fully expecting the low roll to be like "you hear a bird chirping from a tree here, you see a horse near the forest edge, there's some pretty flowers there...". Not to say I was dissapointed.

[@Drako999x]

What I like mostly about low dice rolls is when a player and a NPC both roll low. They technically miss both their attacks, but you can so easily make an epic sword fight out of this. Like imagining them both are so good at swordfighting, they both don't cut each other, but their weapons swing at each others weapon epicly.

[@ahealthkit2745]

My personal favourite is when one stalemate of blows turns into two, then three. An epic battle turned into a repeated sword clashing and no success on either side. Contemplate the meaning of life as you and your opponent fail to hit each other for the fifth turn in a row. By the ninth turn, you've decided to put down your weapons and start a tavern together.

[@KaiHung-wv3ul]

Or a comical fight where both sides swing at each other and can't seem to hit.

[@AmeisenQueen]

We had a session where our rolls were so bad, that 3 PCs died and I mean dead dead. It was the party's unluckiest day, but we never blamed our DM. But oh boy, did we blame our dice and put them in jail.

[@athenaraines]

I had a day as a DM where I rolled 9 natural ones and only one crit. The crit was on initiative. The enemy rolled a crit fail, missed another attack, and then died. That was not a very challenging encounter for the party.

[@ahealthkit2745]

My personal favourite thing that's happened to me in DND is a session where I critically failed or rolled below 7 consistently across the entire session, but ONLY when it was important. Ie; I have to fight a guy? Nat 1s and below 7 across the board. I roll an investigation check on a mysterious barrel? Nat 20, baby! That sucker contains Dwarvish ale brought up from one of the old dwarven kingdoms and aged in earth-caked Rupidorph casks, made to cask strength! Gotta stop an old man from swindling my money? Nat 1 baby! he takes my coin and dashes away with surprising speed. I try to find his tracks. rolled a 5. Can't seem to make them out. What's that noise down the road? 17+3, 20! It's a crow. Eating some fruit stand's leftovers. Okay. Thanks.

[@hyzmarie]

Fun dice jail story: In our last session, a good friend of mine could NOT stop rolling 1s! She plays an edgy tabaxi rogue and she was very amused (though her character was not) by the way that the poor edgy kitty kept getting her pride wounded. First, she got dragged into the water while fishing (in the Icewind dales) and we pooped her fur out in drying her off. Then, she attempted to find the bad guy we were chasing and ran face-first into a lamppost XD

[@mordiHarbinger]

We had something similar, but with nat20s. Unfortunately we were trying Dungeon world(or something like that. 20 is bad is the point). Turned out the die was actually manipulated by default, because it was one of those fancy transluscent ones with little metal glitter in it, which wasnt balanced out. Since then, whenever a series of 1s are rolled, we all are like "wanna use the cheat die?" And its completely accepted.

[@hyzmarie]

@@mordiHarbingerlol I have a die that is just poorly shaped (like it’s pretty obviously lopsided if you really look at it) and it rolls badly. I like to joke that I’ll give it to the DM for monsters or to any problem players ;J

[@ahealthkit2745]

Call that "Karmic Dice" xD@@mordiHarbinger

[@duskgaming18]

​@@hyzmarieDon't do that. By the laws of the universe, those die will betray you and roll Crits against you

[@hyzmarie]

@@duskgaming18nobody accepts it because I have a terrible poker face

[@remingtonryder]

You could say that the guy with the magnetic dice tray got a bit stuck. Things went south and he hasn't been able to attract a group to play D&D after that.

[@OneShotQuips]

Listen, you won the KZbin comment of the day.

[@Captaincory1]

​@@OneShotQuipsand, perhaps, dad joke of the year

[@tskophield9230]

As a dad, I second that!

[@oofyeetmcgee]

My question is, if you know people are watching, and you went to all this tricky to cheat, why even use the dice tray when all the eyes are on you?? Just roll on the table!

[@itap8880]

@@oofyeetmcgee I guess the player forgot they can do that. You know, if all you've ever used was a hammer...

[@LambsEyesPNG]

The "forgetting to mention stuff to the DM" thing reminded me about this one time where my party ran into these marsh creatures that only spoke primordial. My air genasi bard was the only one that could understand them, but I forgot to tell my DM about translating this to my party. So essentially what happened was my party heard gibberish as my bard walked in, found the NPC we were looking for who was unconscious, get given an unknown glowing plant, then leave

[@Klyxtor97]

Fun story about statistics and probability going out the window in dnd: Just finished running a 3yr long campaign. It was epic. The party fought the BBEG and kicked his ass. Why? Well, I did hit on nearly every single attack, but no damage di landed above a 3. Even the weakest character didn't get to half health. It was still a good time and we all enjoyed it. Now, fast forward to the next session when the party goes to finish the last character story. They went to kill a creature that killed a character a year ago (real time). They went in and almost died. I rolled 3 nat20s IN A ROW and consistently above half damage on the damage dice, hitting on almost every attack. It proved to be the end-game fight everyone expected and wanted, just not out of the boss we expected and wanted. Nobody was miffed, and we start a new campaign this week. Good times.

[@ryanhunter2042]

One thing I always keep in mind about combat is that hitting/missing isn't always about MISSING the target. It's called Armor Class, meaning you can dodge or simply take the hit without taking dmg. So when you swing a weapon, there's a chance of hitting the target but in a place or way that can be shrugged off. It makes the role play scene better in my mind. 😁

[@ahealthkit2745]

Hit points aren't an accurate portrayal of damage in DND anyway. I tend to think of hit points more as a sort of 'moxie-meter', representing how much courage you or other things have, before they gas out and can't keep fighting anymore (hence why they get incapacitated when you knock them down. At that point, when they are rolling death throws, that's when they're REALLY hurt)

[@whome9842]

@@ahealthkit2745the official description is “Hit points represent a combination of physical and mental durability, the will to live, and luck.” So when the barbarian was stabbed on his sleep and survived doesn’t means that he shrugged off a knife on the heart, just that at the right moment he woke up and fought back like in many movie scenes. He lost hit points but didn’t really got stabbed in the heart. Probably only got some superficial cuts during the event as he reacted fast enough to avoid certain death.

[@ahealthkit2745]

Aha, just as I described! Very cool. @@whome9842

[@billbishop6109]

Had a few sessions with a new group, playing on Foundry, but the DM was rolling physically. Battle with a few goblins took forever because no one could roll over a 10 to save our lives. Fortunately the DM was having the same problem with her physical dice. A battle that should have taken a half hour took almost and hour and a half because of it. We just laughed at the absurdity of it all. Unfortunately this dice curse lasted like 3 sessions.

[@ahealthkit2745]

Gotta love it when the heart of the die just ain't in anyone. It's like a comedy of errors at that point. The heroes are slipping on mud and falling on the ground, the goblins are critically failing shooting prone targets and the arrows bounce off the castle walls and hit one in the knee. By the end of the battle, both sides have called a truce because nobody can actually kill each other anyway.

[@smokedbeefandcheese4144]

I’m going to be honest it’s pretty much a tie for me between going to the DMV and playing a game like that. Like I am not here for three hour Long Combat

[@witchcitywitch]

I never understood cheating in DND, not just because there's no winning and all that jazz, but because some of the most memorable sessions I've ever played were from failures. My PC's have been swept up after a dangerous fall by an aasimar flying for the first time or getting critically wounded and relying on the other characters to save them. Failures lead to fun and complicated role play, and I find myself wishing for failures more than I wish for successes out of curiosity for how it will go and what solution arises.

[@dreamwanderer5791]

Imagine getting a cheat board just to flex on random strangers. That is just INSANE to me.

[@FightingFurball]

the player was also dumb as hell. if the player had 2 sets of dice (maybe slightly different color) one loaded, one normal no one would have gotten it.

[@ahealthkit2745]

Even if it was just a dumb joke, there's no explaining that when you get called out!

[@FightingFurball]

I just wanted to point out that the player wasn't the brightest bulb in the refuse pile @@ahealthkit2745

[@xRussianbishop]

Some want to be that power gamer mary/gary sue. how far they go to achieve that is something. some of my best moments are nat 1's.

[@juliusnebulus7303]

Cheaters are the worst. How to speedrun getting kicked. And then complain. Well, no matter what their stroy, illness or trauma is, if they cheat, they're out. For good. No exeptions. No second chances. The only one allowed to ignore dice rolls is the dm, and that for good reasons (and no, for one single faked dice rolls i won't kick them. If they do it multible times despite me telling them to stop though, no mercy, no hesitation. I will first kill their character in the most humiliating way possible (whilst not overstepping ethical boundaries and limits. No SA. ). And then kick them. In that order so they can hear how their beloved character dies a cruel and useless death to make it hurt more. Morale of the story: don't cheat 😂 And yes, i know that my examples don't apply for this story. I just don't care😂

[@hiro4344]

Speaking of cheating with dice, I saw something pop on my pinterest telling me how to create cheating dice and I was so affronted I hid the pin immediately. Like "YOU INSULT MY HONOR *PINTEREST!?!* YOU THINK *I* AM A CHEATER!?!?!"

[@AzraelThanatos]

The magnetic dice tray thing is something I've seen, mainly for situations where things were unstable and a fully metal dice with a shake and roll on it so it was still random there...that was mainly due to having a longer train transit time for a summer and we could game on the way to and back because it was a rougher track and the use of it was the DMs idea

[@lumunusgetsuei7763]

Love the audio dubbing on the ad read! 😂 Made me laugh so hard

[@theholydemonofficial8165]

14:00 one of my best moments as a DM was something exactly like this. There was a rogue and a cleric in a room looking for some loot in a sunken pirate ship, and the rogue has a significantly higher investigation. Well they rolled like a nat 2, meanwhile the cleric rolls something way higher, 20+ iirc. So I described the rogue looking behind paintings, in little drawers, looking for little compartments but just not finding anything worth a dang. Meanwhile, the cleric with a rather sheltered background, does what anyone like themselves would do and pops a look under the bed. Boom, loot. I got to bring in their background details, while also making the rogue feel like they were still helping and doing great with a low roll. Been playing with them for almost 2 years on this single campaign, absolutely love it.

[@majinsole8554]

“Dance of the Wererat” sounds like a great one shot module 🙂 ~_~

[@wildraptor4638]

In my first ever DND game, we were in a dungeon. We knew their was a pit in front of us so one of my friends rolled perception. He rolled a nat one. This caused us to spend twenty comical minutes trying to save him from his perch on a spike sticking out of a pool of acid. This bad roll on his part allowed us all to have a fun time and me and another friend to have good rolls to save him.

[@commanderboom2626]

The second story reminded me of this really awesome d20 I used to have that usually either rolled above a 16 or hit a nat 1. I would use it for really pivotal roles, and it managed to save/kill our party numerous times (the party and DM were aware of its properties and I often passed it around). We were never able to determine if it was actually weighted, or if some of its sides were slightly misshapen, but unfortunately I eventually misplaced it at the game store and now it’s gone forever.

[@TheMeanbean37]

I am absolutely loving this series, keep it up!

[@clairemack2750]

GASP. Duke's gonna be Daddy Duke? My goodness. Congrats on your bundle, Duke and Wife!

[@SoraPierce]

My first ever dnd combat since getting into dnd this year. And boy was it one where the wrong person would have exploded and turned the DM into swiss cheese. The highest PC roll the entire combat was 11. Lowest DM rolled was a 16 Only 2 PCs from the 6 that entered went onto the next session. 1 died, 1 ran, 2 were too traumatized to go on. There were other factors that would have pissed the wrong person off but it turned into a pleasant memory to never let the DM live down.

[@PlayerZeroStart]

Oh boy the dice not working out on you is so relatable. I play a Sorcerer who's multiclassed into Fighter, one time I used Action Surge and Quickened spell to throw 5 attacks out on an enemy, and only ONE of them hit. The dice just hate you sometimes. On another note about that other story, there's a guy in our D&D group who rolls insanely well all the time. Like, to the point it was a bit suspicious. But then he started rolling on Roll20, and he still managed to get high rolls just constantly. Like, I'm fairly certain he's gotten the most Nat 20's out of anybody else in the group. But unless he hacked into Roll20 to rig it or something, he's just genuinely insanely lucky.

[@Hamster_Princess3]

Its possible, a player in my campaign did it (hacked into roll20 for high rolls)

[@ezracohen6020]

“Because you called him Ong” killed me

[@sambonbon755]

Grats, and good luck on adding a party member to the team. If you ever see this, remember this : the golden rule of being a parent is "there is only tomorrow and today, and nothing else".

[@Daktangle]

The wererat bit is actually really cool, as wererats actively try to spread the curse, so it seemed the DM used the players success as the excuse to do so.

[@sinfulreapinggaming8353]

I love what DM Rob has done for Ben in viva la dirt league and home brewed him a patron for his rouge/warlock sub that feeds off of his bad rolls and gives him tokens that when he has enough of he can choose to take a natural critical, Everyone has one person in the session who really is just absolutely hated by the dice and sometimes there’s just quite literally no helping them I’m glad Rob threw Ben a bone because that guy had some of the absolute worst luck I’ve ever seen.

[@juliusnebulus7303]

I mean, it's viva la dirt league, if they had an alignment they all would be chaotic- chaotic (pure chaos to the limits of imagination and beyond). Even though i'm surprised it's ben. I always thought either adam or rowan are the unlucky ones. No wait. Just adam. Rowan is usually just the cause for it😂 And adam the one who always falls for rowans bullshit😂

[@German-md1xc]

If my players fail a lot I reward them by describing their failure in a cool way like "your fist flies straight to your target's eyes, they manage to parry it but you can feel their arms shacking and see horror in their eyes". Is not a guaranteed success, but it works more often than not. In some cases the L even feels like W if the pieces fall in the right place.

[@ChronoBolt]

I think the reason that statistics and probability go out the window for dnd is because you're not looking at the results in a clinical environment, you're expecting them to have certain results in specific situations

[@ahealthkit2745]

There's also various scores that *should* theoretically balance things out or give you better odds, but most of the time you roll low on something you *feel* your character *should* be good at, but in practise, you've rolled below a 10 every time you've tried to use that cool skill you have expertise with.

[@shadowdragon6271]

With the right DM, the Nat 1 can be astoundingly more epic than a Nat 20. Sometimes you can "fail successfully" in a glorious or hilarious fashion. During one campaign years ago, my husband was playing a crossbow user and rolled a Nat 1 in the middle of a battle where i think we were outnumbered. Our DM, being very chill and quite funny, basically decided to go "ok so somehow you managed to aim so badly that you hit the guy BEHIND YOU instead of your actual target."

[@davidclevenger6323]

One of my favorite dnd moments was a battle where I cast a fireball into a blind corner and hit for massive damage. The creatures who didn’t like fire but could teleport proceeded to teleport around me and beat me down. Due to the creatures coming down, the rest of my team could kill them all then revive me. It turned out that if I hadn’t done that, no one could reach them.

[@arcanepriest]

Keep those big plushies around! They're *amazing* for the weeks following birth, if you need to sneeze or cough, hugging a pillow or plush helps it not hurt nearly as much.

[@buffalohunter241]

Love these videos Duke and Amy! It was super fun seeing you in person at fan x!

[@AngelStickman]

Who is this “Amy”? That is WIFE.

[@hjglockner]

In your next episode, hold a big unicorn squish mellow.

[@tekre6473]

I'm playing a campaign with some online friends. We use DnD Beyond but I use my physical dice anyway because physical dice are so much better than digital ones, but the disadvantage is that of course no one can see what I (or others who use physical dice) am rolling - we don't use camera during the calls. Sometimes when i roll "too good" (like 18+ multiple times in a row) I get so scared they think I'm cheating xD

[@NekoCrazi]

Talking about dice rolls being high or better, reminds me of a great time of when a 'winning' roll made it funny later on and harder on the player to use a magic item. For info: a player playing a paladin was purchasing a magical armor from a shop. When the paladin put on the armor, DM had them make a Con Save. They pass on a high number like a 17 (i forget the exact number) and everything was fine. After the group was traveling through a dungeon facing some goblins, a goblin took a swing at the Paladin. DM said they had to make an extra save roll. After a low save roll, the armor just started to crawl off the Paladin. Come to find out the armor was cursed with a spirit that doesn't like being hit with damage. The Con Save was for the spirit trying to the Paladin but the roll too high and ingore the magical mind link. I come to love just letting die decide even if it a low roll

[@kurtoogle4576]

Infectious enthusiasm! The dice cheater conversation made me twitch a bit. I ran a game where I let some of my players know my suspicion of another player cheating, and then correctly predicted the exact number to be rolled over and over. I called it out in private and that player had a tantrum, but we worked it out and it never happened again.

[@baconbagels5475]

5:25 maaaaan I use that to my advantage. I have SOOOOOO many dice, so when one isn't rolling well I swap it out 😅

[@eggdude-n5q]

one of my party members in a campaign that i have been a part of for about 2 months and we run a sesion every sunday for 2 hours, in that campaign we have a barbarian with a CON modifier of +7 who can't succeed a CON save to save his life (literally he is the tank and got put down to 0 hp from a banshee cuz he failed the save) and we just generally think that his dice dont like as he can't roll higher than a 3 at anything ever. recently he got double advantage and still only got a 9. at this point its just humorous

[@Maninawig]

Ok, that plushy convo was the pinicle of nerdy cute! Wait, ADbarian is a half-orc?

[@OneShotQuips]

*appears behind you* always had been

[@jarvisebon3273]

Great a video! As a dm I appreciate what you said about players getting openly heated about stressful in game situations that don’t go their way lol. We’re just doing our job and making a challenge 😂

[@ryadinstormblessed8308]

Sensei Adonk? As in Grand Master Badunk Adonk? Heard he was the inspiration behind the Oath of Throwing It Back!

[@lisaroper421]

I sure hope you are right!! I haven't been able to find the beginning of the Oath of Throwing it Back, but I sure do love them!

[@OneShotQuips]

Oh my goodness…..I might have to make this official 😂😂

[@ryadinstormblessed8308]

@@OneShotQuips Duke, this pun I bequeath to thee!

[@RainyLS]

I loved that sponsorship part. It was funny.

[@100dfrost]

I am a forever dm and I never cheat rolling my dice, really .. never. Also I have only had one tpk, and that was years ago. If you look behind my screen, by the way, you may get sent home, even though I never cheat! Seriously, players don't have fun with a tpk, sometimes in the past my dmnpcs have gone "suicidal" covering a party's retreat, but mostly I try to keep up with all my players current status, and moderate my bad guys accordingly. Good video, thanks. PS: I NEVER CHEAT on dice rolls, (player has 3 hps remaining) "Nope the bbeg missed you, you might consider your next action."

[@EagleScout2019]

So, I recently started playing dnd. My first session I got 2 nat 1s as my first 2 rolls, and I loved it. I started on my first roll, trying to sneak around a group of enemies that didn't see us yet, and I step on every branch and knock over a tree in the process. Instantly from there is when I knew I would enjoy this game, and I've been enjoying it so far.

[@christophermenard2155]

To be fair, that pillar was probably pretty rigid. And I mean, they knocked it down so OBVIOUSLY it was erect. A common mistake 😂

[@maineventmark]

About the dice part. I was running a game for some friends. During the BBEG combat, I rolled 6 straight nat 20s on attack rolls. I was so sad when one character just dropped.

[@ArchieNox]

I had a day as a dm where I was consistently rolling 20's...and I was doing it online so couldn't fudge and felt soooo guilty...luckily no one full died.

[@catherinecrawford3058]

I remember games where my rolls were sooo bad, but the descriptions were soooo good we laughed and my tiny gnome acrobat became known as the mudmaster - for constantly falling into messy puddles of goo.

[@jamesmachuta2010]

My dnd group runs on the saying "the dice tell their own story" We roll and use the map on foundry and chat over discord, We've had feast and famine on our rolls and the most fun we always have is when nothing goes according to plan. Our barbarian insults the crabs that we were fighting and the crabs respond by critting the barbarian And our int dump stat bard somehow big all the lorecheck in the underdark crypt.

[@orbracha25]

One of my favorite experiences involving bad dice rolls: So we were playing a game of LMoP a few months back with me, the DM, a rogue and an artificer. They were going through Neverwinter Woods (the location is important) when I decided to spice up the journey with the random encounter table given by the module a bit prior, and got a band of orcs. Initiative was rolled and a fight ensued, the artificer was out of spell slots due to a few previous fights with his only damaging cantrip being Fire Bolt and so, he wasnt doing as much damage as usual due to being better with spells than weapons. At some point he decided he's sick of that and threatend the orcs, saying he was going to use Fire Bolt if they don't go away, remember, this was in a forest so using Fire Bolt could have dire consequences, burning down trees and whatnot, the orcs being orcs weren't intimidated by his meh roll for intimidation so he made good on his threat and used Fire Bolt. Of course he misses and hits a tree instead of an orc which starts a fire. The orcs run away and I have the players roll a dex save to see if they outrun the fire, the rogue with his +7 to dex saves rolls a 19, but the artificer rolls a nat 1. He asks if we could interpret the roll as him just staring at the flames fascinated by his creation's capabilities and not even trying to run away, I allow it as that would be very in character for him. The rogue asks if he can slap the artificer across the face before escaping, and I allow that as well because he rolled so high, so I have the artificer roll a wisdom save to see if the slap makes him realize that he should escape and he rolls a 6, which is a fail, and the rogue runs without him. The artificer's humunculon tries to drag him away from the fire, but with a low strength roll, he won't budge, I have him roll another wisdom save and he rolls another 6. At this point the fire catches up to him and he takes some damage, which triggers a third wisdom save and a third 6. I rule that he would, at some point, realize he should probably run away due to the fire damage, but I have him roll one last save, a dex save to see if he manages to outrun the flames before they kill him, and he of course fails. At this point we all understand that the dice just do not want this guy alive so he died in the fire. We still laugh about it to this day. TL;DR: artificer dies in a forest fire of his own creation due to extremely bad rolls on all his saves

[@orbracha25]

Btw, it's the artificer player's birthday today

[@laggybum3218]

I've had games where my dice, none of them, will roll well. I carry a large bag full of dice and have a dice app on my phone and NONE of them would roll well!! I don't see how anyone could blame their own bad dice rolls on the DM. Some of my groups best times were when we rolled low. 'I'm going to jump over this table', rolls a 1, and then people will start chiming in on what happens after the roll. We would get really big laughs from a lot of the failures.

[@KnicKnac]

Winning D&D is about finishing a campaign with the friends you've made along the way. That magnetic tray story is wild. First time I've heard about cheating that way.

[@JesseBrownA]

The campaign I was just in, our Alchemist got bit by a wererat, so when he takes larger amounts of damage he has to roll to 'hulk out' or not. Whenever he turns, my summoner will summon a half dozen dire rats and use Handle Animal on them to make them dance to calm him down. Works like a charm every time!

[@ahealthkit2745]

My go-to DND stories channel outside of critcrab, love your stuff and you and your wife are great together!

[@Halvblodsprinsen100]

I have in the past cheered over getting a nat one, due to how funny it was in the situation.

[@beckybequette8212]

I'm really new to D&D, about 6 weeks of online games, 4 months of 2x per month in person. I LOVE doing my own roll play when I roll a Nat 1. Because it can be really, really funny Also just played a game Wednesday where everyone's rolls were terrible. The DM told us that if we wanted to use our own dice, that was fine - he knew the group well and we're not cheaters. Half the people left screen to get their own dice! So funny. I teased them the next day as I went fishing (we were in a fishing village in our campaign) and caught NOTHING so I told them "Yep bad rolling continuing into Thursday!"

[@kylebaryonyx9478]

My group play online, and we have a running joke about a fictitious guy named Juan who rolls the dice that Roll20 spits out. One of our players "hired" Juan to do this job, so whenever the dice aren't going our way we always tell that player to "Give Juan a raise so he rolls better!" Delightful inside joke, 10/10, excellent for deflecting frustrations that arise from the dice not cooperating.

[@masterbot1113]

In a game one time, I was playing a bard. The orcs were focusing on my friend, the fighter. I snuck past them and got to the treasure room. But I was around the back as the front was where the fight was. There was no way in, so I casted vicious mockery on the wall and rolled a nat 20, so the wall become a frown face and I could sneak through

[@hedgehogmorph7248]

- ADbarian, take this manuscript - Wow, it's a 350 page book... You had me at that 😆

[@bretgregersen9826]

So I doubt you look here for stories at all but I thought I would toss it out anyway. About 2 years ago in a campaign I was running (which just finished up about a month ago) my players managed to find their way into a cave system where some illithid controlled druids were corrupting jungle animals. Leading up to this our warlock player, with a fiend patron, had been occasionally going extra dark in combats, having a hard time controlling his anger and bloodlust. It had always been directed at enemies or NPCs so it was fine. We had even discussed on the side that I was planning a redemption arc for him that would be fun character and story wise and he liked it. In this particular battle though there was a pit surrounding the area where the druids were performing their magic. during the combat the party found out that the pit was fatally deep, giving them an option to throw druids or possessed creatures to their doom. The pit didn't come into play but as the last enemy was being killed by the warlock he sent one Eldritch Blast towards our party bard. Sure enough his blast hit the bard and he told he was going to push the bard 10 feet (thanks to one of his abilities) and that sent the bard into the pit. I gave the bard a chance to use a reaction and he tried but failed to save himself so he fell to his death. The party had no character that could resurrect the bard except a druid taking time and forcing a race change. This led to a massive fight at the table, especially as we had all agreed on no evil characters at the beginning. I told them all we could rewind to the last turn of the fight but by that point the damage was done. The bard player jumped off the call (we play online) and the other players go silent. The really hard part was that all of the players are either my brothers or their friends. Normally I would want to interfere more as the DM but my older brother was killed by his own friend and that gets tricky. My younger brother managed to get them talking again and patch things up but my older brother decided that he was done with his bard. In the next session when the druid tried to resurrect the bard its spirit said no thanks and stayed in the afterlife and my brother changed to playing a paladin. However, the group no longer trusted the warlock. In order to set things right I gave the warlock player a choice, he could either allow his character to be sent away and roll a new character or he, with the party, could go on a nearby side quest to purge his pact with the fiend leading to a pact with a celestial. He went with the second option and things got back on track but we almost lost the whole campaign. In the end they all had a great time in our 3+ year, 5-20 campaign and nothing like that happened again.

[@Trollsby_Trollin]

One thing to remember about the dice is that they help tell the story. I remember back in AD&D days, the first session I was DMing (and the reason I became my group's forever DM). It was only me and three other people (my wife, our roommate, and my best friend) and they were fighting bandits. Initiative for that round (2e had you rolling initiative every round) landed so that a bandit went after each party member. My roommate rolled a nat 1 but didn't "confirm" the critical miss so we just kept going. The bandit that came after him rolled a nat 20 and did confirm the critical hit (the rules for confirming crit hits and misses in our homebrew was a bit long to write down here). So I retroactively put in narration about how he overswung and got off balance and the bandit took advantage of it and shoved him, causing him (my roommate's character) to twist and sprain his ankle as the narative reason for the hit point damage. That caused him to move slower until he healed completely (again, 2e is different and you would only heal 1 hp per full day of bed rest according to the rules in one of the books we were using). Me coming up with that explanation caused everyone to start thinking about combat damage differently and they would start describing their hits and misses in the same way, and they started being excited about misses almost as much as they were about hits. But that level of improv wouldn't have happened if my roommate would have fudged his dice roll.

[@matthewlaird5235]

The dice do what dice do. Even flipping a coin, when the sample size is small, can result in some crazy statistical anomalies.

[@nathanides7584]

I love the format as it is established now, keep it up

[@FHBStudio]

Whenever I have bad rolls, I just flip the dice while still holding them and get opposite results thereafter. Don't know why, but somehow it works.

[@Synthatic]

In my group, our DM says "That miss/doesnt hit." We players are then encouraged to RP out how our attack didnt hit, or maybe it did hit but it was a glancing blow to armor. Our DM gives us agency to decide how our failures happen and affect our characters.

[@Rutanachan]

Regarding Dice Rolls and Melee Fighters... In our group we have a house rule that you can spend a Bonus Action to do an Unarmed Strike, which we count as a single D4, no boni attached. The amount of time our Berserker missed with her weapons, but then KILLED the enemy with an BA Unarmed Strike is baffling, often a few times in one battle. We love it. XD

[@Leshantra]

A, bad dice luck... Reminds me of my first campaign ever (that died after the first or second session). I played an halfelf rogue (Pathfinder 1e) who tried to make a heaven for halfelves. For that, she used... questionable methods. The rest of the group already found each other, and they were hinted to my rogue as a good addition for the party, so they waited for her at the inn she was staying at. As soon as my character opend the door to enter the inn herself, one of the partymembers pointed at her and yelled: "There she is!" My rogue, with her questionable methods, assumed, they were there to catch her and teach her lesson or throw her in jail. So she ran. She tried to hide in a crowd of people... Rolled low, so she was spotted. Then she tried to climb a roof. Natural one. She landed on her butt, and the party caught on to her. We still remember that moment, that was just so amusingly fitting for my character to get to join the party. Honestly, I don't know what I would have done, if she got away.

[@Nurichiri]

More often than not a bad dice roll is actually great for storyline. In the game I'm in you get to be creative and explain why you missed, or why your damage was so low.

[@ahealthkit2745]

It does suck when it *feels* like your character *should* be really talented at this one specific thing. (Ie; Barbarian with 20 strength somehow rolls below a 5 and... their muscles cramp up or take a break when they should be lifting something enormous) But, you know. The game is fantasy after all, and in fantasy there is room for mistakes and funny accidents. So long as they don't make fun of your character or punish them, failing is fine.

[@papman7849]

Just a story at my table, i am an Armoer artficers, and we needed to defeat the big evil boss a dragon. I made an arcana check to sense and rolled a 16 with modifers, then i shoot in the direction rollede a nat 20 with my weopons and rolled nearly maximum damage, and i was immune to the damage

[@papman7849]

Something i forget that we were riding a white dragon with the name Gilbert

[@danielrhouck]

So… that second story is literally a case of “rocks fall; everyone dies”

[@vanillaofesk]

The thing with the dancing reminded me of one time recently where my DM made the whole party dance the Macarena to escape a sealed-off room.

[@hiro4344]

I actually have a lovely set of metal dice that never rolled well for me, so I tried to sell them to the other players because they were a pretty penny. No one would take up the offer so I just kept them, then one day decided to use them again. I must have scared them because they proceeded to always roll well for quite some time. So, threaten to disown your dice and they will do anything to earn your love back.

[@commonviewer2488]

You win DnD when everyone has a good time

[@pwpresents5660]

I’ve only ever played one D&D game in my life (with my brother as the DM. It was just me, playing the stranger things starter game). And that experience was absolutely fun, because I was awful. Don’t curse the bad rolls, embrace them. They get some of the best results. My worst roll came during a fight with a skeleton, where I rolled a Nat 1 and had my sword fly out of my hand. Made better when he rolled just as bad and had the same thing happen to him. The result was me and this skeleton in the middle, looking at each others swords like we're in an action movie, and then I (because I thought it would be cool) decided to have a fist fight instead.

[@EelcoPeterzen]

That pillar story reminded me of Eric and the Gazebo. Classic.

[@garyasselstine9186]

Got me thinking about the warehouse/werehouse story.

[@gamersgamestorm8291]

Here’s a fun story and a tip to all fellow new or newer DMs Somewhat new DM here though not new to the game, just haven’t gotten the chance to play much My first real campaign, it took hours and 3 sessions (albeit only like 40 minute sessions) for my players to beat essentially slightly modified bandits. Wanna know why, ENVIRONMENTAL FEATURES. I have a homebrew naval combat system and two pirate ships, including the player’s, were fighting. Neither had cannons so you either shot arrows and spells across or jumped across the gap between the boats. It was only like 10-15ft, but 4/6 players ended up falling into the ocean because I have the players roll to jump across. One of them was thrown onto the side of the other boat(a team up attack two of my players planned), one of them fell in not when jumping over, but when fleeing from the enemy ship, one of them jumped in to save the first(and the savior failed to climb up by consistently rolling low, so I said fish kept landing in her hands as she climbed up), and lastly the cleric just missed the jump. So yeh, everyone had a good time, but DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE YOUR ENVIRONMENTS

[@shadowmaster335]

in regards to nat 1's, if the dm is in a good mood, and the player has been severely unlucky for most of the session, under the right circumstances, you could make it a "mission failed successfully" moment, to piggyback off of the barb thing, the dm says "your barb was in such a rage that they swung blindly, and didn't see a puddle so you slip, but due to the momentum managed to fly into the enemy, knocking them over, you take some dmg due to it" or something, think of it like "you are so unlucky that you managed to still pull something off"

[@lauraw2526]

Favorite moment in dnd came from the party failing many dice rolls… we went the wrong way in a dungeon, ran into one of the bosses. Two of the party(including me) were knocked unconscious, a third being attacked while negotiating for our lives. He gets knocked out while they’re thinking it over. We all wake up bound, no equipment, upside down in a meat freezer. Two of the party get free just as a guard comes to check on us. Still bound with no supplies, I check my spell list and say, well, lightning lure only has a verbal component and he’s exactly 15 feet away, so… Managed to roll so high I dragged his corpse over instead. Not bad for still being tied up.

[@rubenlamboo]

plushie of pickle rick

[@Wizardbeard91]

Literally had a couple lie about rolls in my friends old game they would blatantly put their hands over the roll until they said the number they got or theyd roll before their turn so they could put it on a high number before they took a turn they would also cobstabtly steal from other players in gane AND IRL i still have s9me dice sets that are half complete cause they stole from me and the dm they would also attack other players so i had to meta game a character that could 2v1 them just in case they thought the dm played favorites cause my characters were insane truth was i just know how to build a mean swordsinger

[@blacksheepwall79]

Some of my best Roleplay moments have been dice fails. In 3.5 I played a Halflng Ranger/Druid. I made my dice fails humorous. We were helping defend a Halfling Village from Goblin Raiders. I had skirmished with them on my war/dog and then I was running to try and jump and climb the rope up the wall into the town. Natural 1. In 3.5 Halflings didn't get the nat 1 reroll thing. I roleplayed it as smacking into the wall Wiley Coyote style and sliding down. My half-orc Barbarian buddy just yanked the rope up with me after. I was always doing silly stuff like that. You have to disconnect from your character. You need to look at the dice rolls as watching something happen on a movie. It's just what happens.

[@Spooglecraft]

i once had a character death purely due to bad rolls. details are a little hazy, as it was quite a while back, but i played a rogue, was about to open a door. i rolled perception to listen whether i could hear any sounds on the other side, rolled to pick the lock (twice, iirc, due to failure) and then a save because the door had a fire trap. those rolls were three nat-1s and a 2, don't remember which was which. the fire damage had knocked my character unconscious, but the door was open, at least (guess that was the two or i actually got a good enough roll). problem is, behind the door were two cyclops' who threw fire bombs. as i lacked the consciousness required to evade them, i took full damage, which killed my character. my group managed to kill the cyclops' and recover the corpse, so i got one last rebirth for that character, who, partly due to previous painful encounters with trapped doors, now was very wary of doors. later that campaign, we went into hell and sure enough, there was a big-ass door. luckily, we didn't need to go through it. the door-phobia is still a little inside joke in my group and, as i'm playing a rogue again, i'm looking forward to more encounters with trapped doors.

[@blueye95]

the thing with d20 probability is that it takes a lot of rolls for the numbers to tend to the average. Its more rolls than you would do in a single session, or even 10 sessions. Over a hole campaign you would see the rolls average out pretty well. I recall looking at Critical Roll stats and there the nat 1s/nat 20 rolls slowly converged to the statistical average as session count went up. So yeah, bad days and good days are very much part of the probability. Its kinda funny since as human beings we tend to see connections that arent there (bad luck days) and its a tool we can use for the story telling. So even the streaks help shape the narrative of dnd which i think is awesome

[@jasonyoung7705]

Many (about 30) years ago, in AD&D'2e, my GF at the time was a chronic cheater, but blatently, she would roll her dice over and over, and save up the high rolls to use later. So I gave her a solo session, which was almost entirely RP, and almost no dice rolling. Her druid character met a beast lord demigod (a giant humanoid cat), I pretended to roll him a charisma check, and said something like "he's giving you the eye, he's obviously attracted to you", and I then described his physique in a way I knew she would like. She asked if she could charm him, I said "nope he's a demigod", and then I added with a smirk "but you can try your animal handling skill". You have thought i'd cast TUHL on her, she was in stitches for half an hour. She didnt cheat as much after that.

[@aaronammann4236]

for the old catacombs story the only thing I can think of is that their mission failed successfully

[@CATS_IS_CUTE]

today i rolled like 6 or 5 nat 20. and all of them on saves

[@TheColonelKaijuVT]

What gets me, is that when I looked it up, I couldn't find a single entry for anything even slightly resembling that cheat tray, which leads me to believe that he either custom ordered it, or modified it himself.

[@soursylveon4784]

Sure you can’t “win” dnd, but you can sure as hell do better at it and be a better teammate. There’s no “learning experience” in being a fighter who cannot hit any enemies because they consistently roll low.

[@kittylover177]

🤣 We had a day where we went into a hard fight. Our fighter tank ran in like a madman, and then could NOT land a roll to save his life! This sadly included his saving throws… Came back next week with his twin brother with one letter changed! No longer ditches the party. Lol

[@thewolfstu]

6:40 Duke fr got Big Puppy Energy

[@seymourfields3613]

Seriously. We just started a Traveller campaign on Foundry last night. Foundry is privately hosted, so the whole game is hosted on my DM's computer. My rolls were sucking bad through character creation. Didn't get into school, failed to get a job, had to submit for draft, wasn't doing well in the Navy. The server glitched and my stats all got wiped. It was a DM side problem that he told me happened to another player when I stepped away from my computer to change my son. I joked about at least having an excuse to roll new stats. I rolled them and they were even worse. I asked if I could reroll the and he told me no. We then continued on my build based on our memory of how badly I failed in the Navy, and I of course didn't survive the Navy. At this point I'm just laughing about it and asking if we can try the original rules which mentioned dying in character creation. All of this and there was no yelling, no swearing, no blaming the DM. That's an adult getting bad rolls. Because I'm going to be stuck with a character with almost all negative stats, yeah, I asked not only if I could reroll the stats, but later I asked if we could just nix the character and reroll a new one. The answer is no so that's that. What's funny is he had us watch Seth's KZbin videos for Traveller and when prompted said no on the getting a boon on two stat rolls. In the end, throwing a fit isn't going to do anything so there's no reason to. If he becomes impossible to play with, I'll just leave his table. Yelling will never do any good, even if the DM is actually in the wrong.

[@AZRockslide42]

That story about the magnetic dice is why games like Monster of the Week have made failed rolls how you get experience. It makes failure more than just not doing what you tried to do.

[@Anddq]

Had a guy in my first session get caught loading his dice. He had a purple translucent die that had little black spheres in it. He had been practically running the game, it annoyed the players and Dm. At one point he accidentally rolled the dice into my lap. I picked it up and saw discoloration in the middle of the one and examining it saw something just behind it in the dice. I rolled it myself and it got a high number. He did not come back the next week.

[@edmg7]

Hey, wife is holding DeeDee today. 😊

[@Floraclaw]

I am told I'm the Wil Wheaton of my group, we play using Foundry and we were using roll 20. I never aim my frustrations of bad rolls at other people. I just either blame the program or myself for my awful luck. However, Im one of those who loves it when things go bad, I laugh almost every time when I get a bad roll.

[@BlackHoleForge]

It's kind of hard to cuddle him when he's in a pile of Deedee's.