I've been DMing for my friends for three sessions now (We're all new!), and my players are a Barbarian, Warlock, and Bard. All three are having a blast, except there's a problem with the Warlock's dice. They hate him in a way I've never seen before. His spell bonus is +5, but he still manages to miss nearly every attack (He's landed 2 hits ever since the campaign started) and every single time an enemy attacks him, they land all their hits and nearly maximum damage. The literal and actual math is that ~50% of the fights we've had in the campaign so far have ended with him making Dying saving throws. (I'm using the brutal Starter Kit story of Lost Mine of Phandelver) He insists he's okay, but I'm worried that constantly dying will take his toll.

Can anyone suggest some ways I can help him out and keep the game fun?

Some ideas:

• Wait it out. Statistically, it can't last.
• Using the privacy of the DM screen, lie about how hard and how accurately the enemies are hitting him when they attack so he lives longer.
• Quietly lower the Armor Class of the things they are hitting. (A long-shot, since he's been rolling 3's and 5's)
• Have the enemies all target just the Barbarian, which will make things much harder for her but maybe she can handle it easier.
• Help him reroll his character to be even more accurate and durable.

He says he likes his character the way it is, but I'm confident this is going to take its toll if he keeps dying and failing. Any thoughts?

Thanks!

Wait it out or ask him what he thinks. 

Quote from firehawk2324 >>

Quote from MarcianTobay >>

 

• Wait it out. Statistically, it can't last.

 I mean, statistics are a funny thing. I've been playing since 3.5 and it doesn't matter how I roll (physical dice, virtual dice, Roll20, or the dice roller here) I can beat the odds and roll out more 1's than should seem possible. I feel for him in a way nobody can imagine. But if it doesn't bother him, let him keep going. If you ever find a solution, please, let me know.

Quote from firehawk2324 >>

Quote from Matthias_von_Schwarzwald >>

Quote from firehawk2324 >>

Quote from MarcianTobay >>

 

• Wait it out. Statistically, it can't last.

 I mean, statistics are a funny thing. I've been playing since 3.5 and it doesn't matter how I roll (physical dice, virtual dice, Roll20, or the dice roller here) I can beat the odds and roll out more 1's than should seem possible. I feel for him in a way nobody can imagine. But if it doesn't bother him, let him keep going. If you ever find a solution, please, let me know.

 Have you tried threatening to use a different set of dice?  It worked for a friend of mine.

 Between my husband and myself, we own 4 pounds of dice. I will pull out every die I can find, and by the end of the night, have very few left. I know players who will throw away dice that fail them, but I cannot afford to do that lol

Maybe check his dice to see if they are weighted wrong?

 

Quote from MarcianTobay >>

 

• Wait it out. Statistically, it can't last. Yeah. And get him to use different dice till he finds his lucky ones!
• Using the privacy of the DM screen, lie about how hard and how accurately the enemies are hitting him when they attack so he lives longer. Isn't that the primary purpose of the screen? I always fudge my rolls if it is going to mean a character death that negatively affects the fun/flow of the game.
• Quietly lower the Armor Class of the things they are hitting. (A long-shot, since he's been rolling 3's and 5's). No, that will make things too easy for everyone.
• Have the enemies all target just the Barbarian, which will make things much harder for her but maybe she can handle it easier. Why not? If he's not a threat and the barbarian is, he would not be the primary target for most intelligent creatures.
• Help him reroll his character to be even more accurate and durable. Not fair to other players.

 

I have a pre-game ritual of rolling all of my sets of each type of die, picking out the 2-3 best rolls and exiling the rest... hasn't failed me yet. :-P

Quote from MarcianTobay >>

Wait it out. Statistically, it can't last.[/quote]

Actually, statistically, a person can always manage to miss the right numbers on the right rolls, while still rolling statistically normal. I've got a mind for tracking these things, and I will manage to roll most of my 20s of the night when rolling an attack against a PC, while one of my players will manage to roll most of his 20s when it doesn't have much impact (i.e. initiative, or a skill check he only needed a 5+ on the die to succeed at).

Some things can influence the randomness (or lack thereof) in a rolled die, however, and a lot of those influences can be altered to produce different results.

• Get the person new dice - that will account for any manufacturing flaws of their current dice influencing their rolls.
• Have them use a new rolling method; I suggest a dice cup (I took one out of a Yahtzee game for my low-rolling friend), or a dice tower if you can afford it, but just making sure they cup their hands together loosely and really give a good shake will help lower this kind of influence - I've seen people manage to unintentionally train their hand to trick-roll low numbers by doing stuff like setting all their dice to show maximum value, picking them up to roll in a single-handed swirl the die around the palm motion, then tilt their hand so the die drops to the table. It seems like a fine way to roll, but it is actually increasing the odds that the high-side of the die ends up on the underside of the die.
• Make sure there is room on a relatively flat and level surface for the dice to move. Not having room for a die to travel makes people subconsciously decrease how much oomph they put into a roll - they want to not send the die crashing into things or falling off the surface, but a side effect is that the randomization of the die result is reduced because it's directly tied to the amount of movement the die makes.

Using the privacy of the DM screen, lie about how hard and how accurately the enemies are hitting him when they attack so he lives longer.

I urge against you doing this. Part of the enjoyment of the game comes from the uncertainty of the dice - the stakes at hand - and taking away those stakes while letting the player believe they are still there can have undesired results. Especially considering that most people aren't going to be able to lie and not get caught. I encourage all DMs to find ways to achieve desired results that don't rely upon some other person never realizing what you are doing. So I say don't roll dice if you aren't going to accept the results they produce - you can still avoid unwanted outcomes, but you could do so in an open and honest manner rather than via deception (i.e. "The enemy offers you a chance to surrender, holding off on attacking for now" accompanied by a dodge action or a readied action to attack if the character makes hostile actions, or similar things, rather than "The enemy attacks you again... (roll a hit, but decide you don't want to hit) and misses" ).

Quietly lower the Armor Class of the things they are hitting. (A long-shot, since he's been rolling 3's and 5's)

This is another thing I urge against. Setting up your campaign and deciding on a particular difficulty is fine, but once you've communicated to the players what the difficult is meant to be (which you should do, since the surprise of the difficulty not matching what you expected doesn't enhance the fun, but knowing the difficulty and being able to build/play to it does), alterations shouldn't be made except in the case of genuine mistakes - and even then, I encourage open and honest, rather than hidden and hopefully not noticed, corrections.

Have the enemies all target just the Barbarian, which will make things much harder for her but maybe she can handle it easier.

You should pick actions for monsters based on the style/personality of the monster, whatever goals it has in the given scenario, and what kind of things your group find fun - but that could mean anything. There is a natural tendency, I've found, in DMs deliberately spreading attacks around as much as possible, which isn't necessarily fun for everyone because characters have naturally differing ability to withstand attacks, or to pile attacks on only the "tank" sort of characters.

I encourage somewhere between the two - attack whoever seems "toughest" to the enemies, or whoever got in range first, and toss an attack here or there at anyone being "irritating" to the enemy, and then in another encounter have the enemies go after whoever seems most frail, but turn to attack whoever is dealing the most damage or using healing, and then in another encounter have an enemy that it makes sense for pick targets as "stupidly" as you can (i.e. the highest AC or hit points, or someone who is a nuisance but has cover, or requires provoking an opportunity attack to get in range to attack). Mix things up as much as you can figure out how to without doing something that you or your players don't enjoy.

Help him reroll his character to be even more accurate and durable

I caution against this. You could create or encourage a mindset that everything has to be the best possible, or fail to be good enough, which is not actually the case with 5th edition (though it was with some prior editions). That mindset can end up having the player focusing on the wrong detail (i.e. "If I had a higher ability score, I'd have made that roll" when the reality is that no matter what some rolls will fail, and their ability score is already high enough to give them solidly more-often-than-not chances at success), and can even lead to the DM seeing the opposite problem you are currently having (the player not seeming even slightly challenged by most encounters) to which the typically chosen solution (make encounters harder) is not a solution at all and will just keep the player trying to squeeze more advantages out of their character (the solution, however counter-intuitive, being to leave encounters exactly where you want them to be difficulty-wise, and the player will eventually match their character build to that difficulty if they aren't actually having more fun by feeling a little under-challenged).

He says he likes his character the way it is, but I'm confident this is going to take its toll if he keeps dying and failing. Any thoughts?

Let the player know their enjoyment of the game is important to you. Let them know that if anything isn't going well enough for them that you'd be glad to talk solutions. And most importantly, don't change anything until/unless the player says it isn't working for them anymore - if you adjust for problems that you think might eventually happen, you risk making other problems happen more immediately (as an example, you might make the player think your game is going to be easier than they want it to if you change things to make it easier while they are saying they are liking things as-is, or worse make them think you aren't actually listening to their opinion about the game).

this is just a thing. one day, he'll be rolling average, but until then, you could play with it in game.

"ah, behold, the warlock. what's your patron, the demon Lord of incompetence?! MWA hahahaha. what are you going to do, eldritch blast me? hahaha"

I'm now 8 sessions deep on my warlock and have not done more than maybe 40 points of damage in these games due to bad dice rolls. We play via roll20 so no hope of a dice change. Now I'm trying to get the character killed. But guess what. I keep on making the dam death saves. 

But I really hate my character now because he does not feel heroic at all.

 

My group uses Fantasy Grounds. Bad dice rolls happen there as well. Its just part of the game. I think getting another set of dice may or may not matter. It is a game of chance with the rolls. 

Quote from Mothdust77 >>

I'm now 8 sessions deep on my warlock and have not done more than maybe 40 points of damage in these games due to bad dice rolls. We play via roll20 so no hope of a dice change. Now I'm trying to get the character killed. But guess what. I keep on making the dam death saves. 

But I really hate my character now because he does not feel heroic at all.

 So I'm guessing you are max level 4 since you only have a +5 to hit? What you should remember then is that you aren't necessarily a heroic character yet. Especially if you play a squishy class like a warlock. Don't charge head on into danger, stay back and blast stuff with Eldritch blasts and let the barbarian take the damage. I mean, why would you even go toe to toe with things while being a low level character? That more or less will guarantee that you will end up getting smashed.

You could allow him to roll 2d10 instead of 1d20. That changes the probability distribution from the d20's equal distribution to a very crude gaussian curve with an expected value of 10.5.

It will effectively increase the chances to roll something between a 8 and a 12 and lower the chances to roll higher or lower values, while still sticking to the number range of a d20 (except for the 1, obviously).

If you want critical hits and critical fails to be about as often as with a d20, simply change the range: 18-20 critical success, 2-4 critical failure. Ok, with those ranges the chances are 6% instead of 5%, but close enough. :D

 

1. Line all the dice up on the top of a concrete step, with the bad die on the step below.

2. Bring out a hammer.

3. Lecture the dice. "You know I don't want to do this. It hurts me mnore than it hurts you. But you've given me no choice."

4. Smash the everloving daylights out of the bad die. Don't stop until the step is covered with small coloured plastic shreds.

5. Look directly at the other dice. "You have all been warned. You know what you have to do."

Quote from Greenstone_Walker >>

1. Line all the dice up on the top of a concrete step, with the bad die on the step below.

2. Bring out a hammer.

3. Lecture the dice. "You know I don't want to do this. It hurts me mnore than it hurts you. But you've given me no choice."

4. Smash the everloving daylights out of the bad die. Don't stop until the step is covered with small coloured plastic shreds.

5. Look directly at the other dice. "You have all been warned. You know what you have to do."

 

This! But then roll one of the warned die and if it's under a 10, KAPOWEE!! They'll eventually get the idea.

Quote from Greenstone_Walker >>

1. Line all the dice up on the top of a concrete step, with the bad die on the step below.

2. Bring out a hammer.

3. Lecture the dice. "You know I don't want to do this. It hurts me mnore than it hurts you. But you've given me no choice."

4. Smash the everloving daylights out of the bad die. Don't stop until the step is covered with small coloured plastic shreds.

5. Look directly at the other dice. "You have all been warned. You know what you have to do."

 That's beautiful and is going to cause many broken dice for me. How do you do this with metal dice?

Quote from ThalaiDawncaller >>

Quote from Greenstone_Walker >>

1. Line all the dice up on the top of a concrete step, with the bad die on the step below.

2. Bring out a hammer.

3. Lecture the dice. "You know I don't want to do this. It hurts me mnore than it hurts you. But you've given me no choice."

4. Smash the everloving daylights out of the bad die. Don't stop until the step is covered with small coloured plastic shreds.

5. Look directly at the other dice. "You have all been warned. You know what you have to do."

 That's beautiful and is going to cause many broken dice for me. How do you do this with metal dice?

 get out the lava

Has nobody mentioned discretely melting the side opposite the 20?  😁