How do I deal with a player who always rolls great?


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Undone wrote:
A reasonable solution but the person I was referring to has maintained his percentage of going first wins of 55% for over 4000 professional matches of magic.

Sure, and like you say this is perfectly reasonable in the realm of statistics.

However, assuming a causal link from past randomly generated data is, while very human, a statistical fallacy. It's certainly possible to be 'lucky' -- the man who wins the lottery is 'lucky', but his odds of winning the lottery in the future do not change because of that past 'luck'.

Similarly, the player may have a fantastic streak of dice rolls and that is perfectly resonable, but that does not predict how he will continue to roll in the future.


Kazaan wrote:
It seems weird if you discount synchronicity. Our scientific base is built on a few essential foundations and one of those foundations is conventional Cause/Effect relationships. In order for the dice to consistently give the results you're seeing, by our standard thinking, lends strongly to the notion that some unknown cause (subtle hand manipulation, unbalanced dice, etc.) is generating the observed effect (disproportionately good rolls). But if you take into consideration non-physical interactions through synchronicity, it opens up the possibility that he is rolling good not by a direct interaction with the dice but by non-physical means. In other words, the dice respond directly to his mental state, rather than through the proxy of "the real world". In esoteric studies, this is sometimes referred to as "affirmation"; creating a mental image of eventual success phrased in the present tense (affirming the result) causes the desired result to manifest itself.

Wow. Essentially mind-control. Just wow. It reminds me of the beginning of Ghostbusters when Venkman is testing the hot girl and nerdy guy for psychic power. 1) there is not enough of a real sample size to presume that there's a causal factor as opposed to random, but eventually inevitable run of good dice; 2) even if it were, physical explanations, such the player is capable of physically manipulating the dice, no matter how incredibly unlikely, are more likely than mental state based explanations.


Skeld wrote:

I have saying, "Never attribute to synchronicity that which is actually confirmation bias."

It's surprising applicable to this thread.

-Skeld

I also have a saying. More of a quote, actually.

New York Times wrote:
"That Professor Goddard with his 'chair' in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react--to say that would be absurd. Of course, he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools." -- 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work. The remark was retracted in the July 17, 1969 issue.

Scarab Sages

All I know is i have a low level ranger (lvl 3) Who has yet to roll les than a 14 on an attack roll, skill rolls however im lucky if he breaks a 7. I have switched dice, switched dice rolling hands, done it with eyes closed, eyes open, drunk, sober.... Sometimes a roll is a roll. Just go with it. AS long as your players arent starting to count on his good rolls let it go.

There is a webseries called Critical Role where one of the players has been nicknamed "No mercy Percy" Because his attack rolls are consistant doom and dismemberment for the badguys.

It happens.


Your options are deal with it, (assuming he's not cheating) or stop using dice altogether, because making any change or weird random penalty to just his rolls defeats the purpose of dice as an impartial arbiter of success. May as well play a diceless RP then.


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Bring him to my house. I need someone to roll for me.

The Exchange

I know I have slightly better then average rolls when on Roll20(except when it comes to channel energy), but nothing so phenomenal as to end up causing a thread to be started. The ironic thing is I usually play casters so I don't really roll dice that much.

A suggestion: How about every session, he helps a different person roll their dice, and that person takes over his dice. Spread the goodness around? And if there's superstition involved, all that swopping over should ruin it thoroughly so it shouldn't give any problems =)


Hmm, luck is unbalanced, and Paizo needs to release some errata that tells Goddess Fortuna to calm her ti*message interrupted, user spontaneously burst into flames—what luck!*


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We have a fellow like this in our group. He has rolled consistently well for more than decade of weekly games. Chances are good that we only remember the times it seems remarkable but those times feel remarkably numerous LOL.

The only thing we've done is switch to points buy instead of rolling for stats. His good luck was horrendously unbalancing when it was character creation time because those lucky rolls have such a long-term effect in the game. Other than that, we just keep an eye on him to ensure he's not cheating.

Funny enough though, he's legendary in our group for having died twice to the same pack of Yeth Hounds by being the only one who succeeded on a saving throw. Everyone else who failed ran off in terror leaving him as easy pickings. It's not always advantageous to be that guy who rolls high.


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Kazaan wrote:
It seems weird if you discount synchronicity. Our scientific base is built on a few essential foundations and one of those foundations is conventional Cause/Effect relationships. In order for the dice to consistently give the results you're seeing, by our standard thinking, lends strongly to the notion that some unknown cause (subtle hand manipulation, unbalanced dice, etc.) is generating the observed effect (disproportionately good rolls). But if you take into consideration non-physical interactions through synchronicity, it opens up the possibility that he is rolling good not by a direct interaction with the dice but by non-physical means. In other words, the dice respond directly to his mental state, rather than through the proxy of "the real world". In esoteric studies, this is sometimes referred to as "affirmation"; creating a mental image of eventual success phrased in the present tense (affirming the result) causes the desired result to manifest itself.

You're just joking about this, right? Esoteric Studies? Seriously?


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captain yesterday wrote:

Take this person to a Casino ASAP.

{. . .}

No, no -- take this person to the STOCK MARKET.

DonDuckie wrote:

Check him for horizontal spin, if he keeps his dice lying top side up (like I and many other gamers do). He might be picking up with finger tips and it only spins around a vertical axis and 'locking' the top side in the up position. With practice you can gain very good control with a d20 (harder) and lower dice (easier). Physically bigger dice make this technique easier to learn.

{. . .}

Assuming you mean spin about a vertical axis, yes -- I learned how to do this with d6 through d12 (never could get it to work with d4 or d20, the former due to awkward tetrahedral shape that required being too obvious about putting the spin on, and the latter due to many sides and probably the fact that these tended to be worn and chipped so as to have actually more than 20 sides). I even managed to make it look not terribly obvious, although I'm sure that someone who suspected something and knew what to look for would recognize what was going on right away. Funny thing is: If I DIDN'T do this, I got such bad rolls that one DM (to whom I had explained and demonstrated the technique) told me that I should do it . . . .

Theoretically, if one knew the exact physical properties of the dice and all relevant surfaces (including dice cup, if applicable), it should be possible to get the dice roll you want without spin stabilization. But this probably would require truly massive computational resources -- not sure if even today's fastest supercomputers would be up to doing this in real-time (if not, maybe quantum computing could do it? . . . If anybody could ever get a quantum computer to work beyond the simplest quantum operations, that is).

Gisher wrote:
Kazaan wrote:
It seems weird if you discount synchronicity. {. . .} In esoteric studies, this is sometimes referred to as "affirmation"; creating a mental image of eventual success phrased in the present tense (affirming the result) causes the desired result to manifest itself.
You're just joking about this, right? Esoteric Studies? Seriously?

Sssshhhhhhhhhhh . . . We've got a visitor from another world . . . Their Paradigm and Tradition must be different.


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

We've got a guy in our usual gaming group who's notorious for rolling terribly. No matter the game, the character, or the rolling method. We now just call it "rolling [his name]" when someone gets a bad roll.

One time we played Mansions of Madness, where rolling low is good and rolling high is bad, and we joked that he'd be great at that. He never got so many high rolls in his life.

If the player himself is annoyed by it, maybe he can try switching up his dice rolling technique? As long as it's not a cheating issue, I wouldn't worry too much about it. It's most likely just a run of luck and will average out eventually.

Grand Lodge

Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Kazaan wrote:
Skeld wrote:

I have saying, "Never attribute to synchronicity that which is actually confirmation bias."

It's surprising applicable to this thread.

-Skeld

I also have a saying. More of a quote, actually.

New York Times wrote:
"That Professor Goddard with his 'chair' in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react--to say that would be absurd. Of course, he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools." -- 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work. The remark was retracted in the July 17, 1969 issue.

The quote about Goddard is a good example of how the father of rocket science knew more about physics than the guy who wrote an editorial critiquing Goddard's work. Physics teaches us new things all the time (like the ion engine design that shouldn't work, but totally does!). The big lesson we've learned over the years is that anything that looks like mind control or magic is either misunderstood physics or not accounting for all the variables.

-Skeld


I have the same problem.
However instead of high rolls, they are low rolls.

And instead of it being a PC, it's the DM. the DM is getting kind of demoralized that anything she throws at us is not even remotely challenging because of all the Attacks of Opportunity they provoke by tripping, bumping, falling or straight out murdering their own through all the 1's.

This however is done with a randomized roller so there's not much to do about it... All PC's use the exact same roller and get average to high rolls....

It's all just within the luck of the draw.

If it truly becomes annoying just Intervene it with your DM powers, you are the god of the world you created.

Or you could give every great roll a nasty/comical/deadly side effect (if s/he agrees with it).

Example:
s/he rolls a natural 20, s/he hits the enemy so ridiculously hard with his/her hammer that the hammer breaks in two and hits a second target for a quarter of the original damage.

However... the Hammer is now broken and its handle alone is treated as an improvised weapon.

I'm not saying this is the best option, just a funny one that allows for alot of side-tracking and more RP elements.


Skeld wrote:

The quote about Goddard is a good example of how the father of rocket science knew more about physics than the guy who wrote an editorial critiquing Goddard's work. Physics teaches us new things all the time (like the ion engine design that shouldn't work, but totally does!). The big lesson we've learned over the years is that anything that looks like mind control or magic is either misunderstood physics or not accounting for all the variables.

-Skeld

It also demonstrates how, quite frequently, people criticize and condemn without fully understanding the subject at hand. Science is an important tool, but it isn't the only one there is. "When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail." There are aspects of reality for which science is the improper tool to understand them. I have spiritual pursuits that coexist alongside scientific understanding; the two aren't mutually exclusive.

"There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy" -Hamlet


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"Synchronicity"... XD

Someone is actually using the hammer ane nail quote to describe science... SMH...


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Specifically, you believe there is some sort of property of certain people that changes the odds of random dice probabilities? Please distinguish this from midichlorians.

RPG Superstar 2009 Top 16

I'm like that with physical dice. Not so much with online rollers but yeah, some people genuinely have insane luck with dice.

And it doesn't matter whose dice or whether I'm a player of GM. I actually once grabbed up a handful of dice to make a hasted full attack in a higher level game , just threw them bouncing across the table and came up 5 nat 20's. After which one of my players bought me the "That's how I roll" shirt.

It happens, let him or her have it. Life's full of enough crap. They don't need someone killing the little glory moment of the week at the thing they do for fun or to de-stress.


Guys, come on, don't dump on the guy for his beliefs. Have some class! An open mind wouldn't hurt you either. There are actual scientific studies going on in the field of quantumphysics trying to determine the effects our perceptions have on our reality and, while they're not conclusive yet one way or the other, so far it does seem to suggest it is quite possible. Alchemy was determined to be bunk but it did have some validity and lead into the legitimate field of chemistry, after all. This could be the same.


Either wait for his luck to change, or find a casino with dice based gambling so he can get rich.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Ten'shun the Tengu wrote:

No matter what set of dice we give this guy, he's rolling on the high side. I watch him. It's gotten so bad that even he wants it to stop, because he knows he's stealing the spot light during combat.

He's tried an online dice roller, which he claims seems to be more fair (and I believe he's honest, for the most part. I can never tell.) and asks to use it instead. (can't provide link, don't ask, I don't have it.)

But I need to cover my bases! What if the dice roller app thing likes him too?

What I need is advice on downplaying his impact when he's getting rolls +5 higher than everyone else, every time. Anyone have any tips on how to do this effectively, without kneecapping him?

I have the exact opposite problem. One time my animal companion was fighting a snake familiar and just needed to hit the darn thing, and I simultaneously rolled three 1s and missed every natural attack. Another session I didn't roll higher than a 10 more than once. My bad luck is legendary. I don't doubt that this person is telling the truth. I'd just try the online dice roller and see if that helps.


Want me as a player? Every d20's face I touch becomes 3. It's so frustrating I started building stuff that deals close to no dmg but at least hits with a 2


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Make it a theme of the campaign. Have the PCs notice this guy's luck being rather excessive compared to everyone else's. Turn the table frustrations into those of the fictional characters (which should relieve any real-life angst that your players may have). Have a wizened old crone appear and tell them that this guy is destined to either ascend to greatness, or to fall spectacularly when his luck runs out.

You can't do much about someone's luck, so you might as well have fun with it. :)


Ashram wrote:

Either every set of dice you give him are jacked/cooked, he has a secret way of rolling dice to get the result he wants, you guys have some massive confirmation bias and are ignoring his poor rolls, or this dude has magic powers.

In any case, I smell BS.

Some people just roll high/low.

I am on the opposite side of the spectrum, I consistently low roll.

No this is not confirmation bias. I once got pissed enough to track thousands of d6 rolls over a period of several years while playing 40K.

Sovereign Court

Wolfsnap wrote:

Let me offer an alternative suggestion to everyone else:

Let it go.

...

Anyone else half expecting him to break into song here? :P


KahnyaGnorc wrote:
Have you tried multiple dice? A Nat 20 is harder to get on 2d10 than on 1d20, and much harder on 5d4.

And amazingly those low rolls go away, too! I know I've only rolled a 1 on 2d10 once ... (don't ask)

Seriously, though, as mentioned, it could be just remembering the notable trends. Although this reminds me of my own luck with dice which can turn south for quite a while. Not fun when you're the BSF of the party, but amusing another time. Another group I was with had seen this luck and needed a crappy roll. Earlier they were trying to tell the dice they were not me, with success. I needed the crappy roll, and reminded the dice that it was me. Crappy roll achieved!


Qaianna wrote:
(...) I know I've only rolled a 1 on 2d10 once ... (don't ask) (...)

Wait... Isn't that mathematically impossible? How the hell did you manage to roll lower than 2? oO


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Lemmy wrote:
Qaianna wrote:
(...) I know I've only rolled a 1 on 2d10 once ... (don't ask) (...)
Wait... Isn't that mathematically impossible? How the hell did you manage to roll lower than 2? oO

In the split second he looked away, a ghost appeared, drew a 0 on the face of one of the dice, and dissapeared.

*spooky noises*
XD


I feel an overwhelming urge to point out to everyone saying that it's mathematically or scientifically impossible to roll good consistently that it is possible, just unlikely. While it tends to average out over the long term, it doesn't have to.

However, if we look at it from that point of view there isn't a method to fix his rolls.


Seems like the consensus is that the player is psychic. Either that or ALIENS! And therefore he's cheating, kick him from the group! No extraterrestrial mathemagic defying at our table!

Charon's Little Helper wrote:
Wolfsnap wrote:

Let me offer an alternative suggestion to everyone else:

Let it go.

...

Anyone else half expecting him to break into song here? :P

And I'm disappointed that he didn't. Even more so in you for not doing so in his stead. I would do it myself, but I don't know the lyrics.

Grand Lodge

Charon's Little Helper wrote:
Wolfsnap wrote:

Let me offer an alternative suggestion to everyone else:

Let it go.

...

Anyone else half expecting him to break into song here? :P

I'm visualizing him pressing a knife to the OP's throat.


Goddity wrote:

I feel an overwhelming urge to point out to everyone saying that it's mathematically or scientifically impossible to roll good consistently that it is possible, just unlikely. While it tends to average out over the long term, it doesn't have to.

However, if we look at it from that point of view there isn't a method to fix his rolls.

I don't think anyone is saying it's totally impossible for this player to have had a string of amazing rolls, just incredibly unlikely. And this unlikely strike could continue. I could roll 20s for the remainder of my life, but none of this would relate to luck or another mystic force; it's just what has happened.


Alas, I have this problem rolling up, and vastly prefer point buys. In a friend's wife's game (3.5), I volunteered to take the average of the other players' rolls or even equivalent points. Twelve 3D6, keep the best six results, if I remember correctly: 18/17/17/16/15/13! All encounters had to challenge my monster or we blew through them, usually with one or two near or in negatives. I got 'held' in one encounter, -2 CR, that nearly wiped the party. The running joke is I make every save except the ONE I have got to make!

As GM, I am also REQUIRED to roll behind the screen, usually after someone insists I 'roll out where I can see it'. Lasts no more than one session. The last time I ran, the party dodged a -1CR TPK where I passed on about 10 criticals. I missed once in the first 25-30 attacks!


If the dice decide the party is fated to die, let them die. Perhaps their next characters will be more favored by the gods.


Lemmy wrote:
Qaianna wrote:
(...) I know I've only rolled a 1 on 2d10 once ... (don't ask) (...)
Wait... Isn't that mathematically impossible? How the hell did you manage to roll lower than 2? oO

I was more poking fun at the idea presented. Especially replacing a d20 with 5d4. While I sometimes worry about how much swing there can be on a d20, with the system I don't think going with 2d10 (or 5d4) would really improve things. Unless you like bell curves.

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