Skaz's page

The situation:

Level 1 Human Fighter
Combat Expertise
Improved Disarm
Improved Unarmed Strike

The unarmed Fighter declares he is readying an action and will attempt to disarm his opponent if he charges.

The opponent charges. According to the rules of Readying, his action is interrupted so the Fighter can attempt his disarm.

Improved Unarmed Strike means the fighter is considered armed, preventing the -4 penalty for disarming without a weapon. Improved Disarm prevents the opponent from getting an attack of opportunity. Being unarmed allows the Fighter to hold the weapon taken from the opponent, martial and simple weapon proficiency likely makes it easy wield whatever it is.

Readying rules state that if the opponent is still capable, he continues his action. Since he's absolutely capable of attacking unarmed, but the attack will not be as originally intended, does he:

a) Lose his attack against the Fighter?
b) Have to attack unarmed, provoking an attack of opportunity from his own weapon?
c) Have the option to decide the best course of action?

In other news, we'll try the dice tower, see what happens.

http://www.dicecoach.com/dicesets.asp

Yeah, we've looked into that sort of thing. I can't imagine the time it would take to learn that with six different shaped dice and finding the sweet spot on every surface he rolls on. Thick stacks of paper, hard back books, hardwood tables, plastic tables, metal tables, tables with a playmat on it. If he consistently rolled on only one surface type, I'd be concerned, but every different surface will affect the die roll differently. And when he's throwing the dice and they bounce from tabletop to paper stack to playmat, it would take Rain Man to have that figured out.

Hmmm...either physics and probability do not work the way scientists and casinos have relied on for centuries, or your observation and/or reporting of your friend’s luck is flawed.

No advice needed.

Determine how he is cheating and make him stop. Contrary to popular belief playing Pathfinder does not confer any magical ability.

What you're describing is extremely unlikely.

I'm sorry, I didn't fully explain what I'm asking.

This gaming group is aged 30+ with decades of gaming experience and we've been gaming together for the last 5 years on a fairly consistent basis.

I appreciate the constructive feedback, but I'm not asking if he's cheating. That theory has been run into the ground with thousands of rolls and no proof of any foul play has ever arisen. I'm aware it's statistically unlikely, that is quite obvious and that's why we're having a hard time compensating for it over the course of an entire campaign. I'm asking for ideas on how to compensate for this statistical anomoly.

I just wanted to clear that up a little bit. So far the other suggestions have been helpful. Thank you all for that.

If he was cheating we would have caught him by now. We have set the game aside and made him roll a variety of dice while watching everything he does. There's nothing special about the way he grabs the dice or throws them. They hit the table and roll and he keeps critting most of the time. It even happens when he DMs.

It's not just a problem for us. It's gotten to the point that he feels bad about critting and apologizes every time it happens now. Not a happy, laughing apology, but a *sigh* and a genuinely disappointed "I'm sorry." After 5 years of gaming with him, he sounds like he's on the verge of quitting because his lucky rolling is causing problems.

Yeah, he gambles. Always walks out of the riverboat with more money than he went in with. I have no idea why he doesn't do it more often. With his luck he could probably go pro.

I play with a group where the DMing duties get passed around every now and then, but no matter who has the job they always face the problem of our one player who almost always rolls crits, no matter what d20 he uses.

What ends up happening is that in order to create an encounter that he doesn't blow through a monster in one hit every round (doesn't matter if it's level 1 or 15+) the monsters have to be beefed up to the point where they can easily kill everyone else in the group. Boss fights have ended in three rounds or less. Everyone else in the group feels pretty much useless most of the time, like we're just there to keep things busy until he can vaporize them. There's generally not much challenge, so not much drama.

He's played a dwarf ranger, and the two weapon fighting style with a dwarven waraxe only made it worse. He played a half-orc inquisitor and I had to change the racial proficiency with greataxes and falchions for the sake of balance, convinced him to go ranged but heads still exploded. Now he's playing a dwarf gunslinger and oh-dear-gods-the-musket-does-how-much?

Once we gave him a cursed weapon where every crit he rolled would be a fumble. He had no way of knowing it was cursed. Only two people knew what the weapon did, me and the DM. The topic was never discussed while he was in the same building, yet when he equipped the "badass" new axe, it was his worst night of rolls ever, never came close to rolling a crit. The force is strong with this one.

We've watched him. He rattles the die around in his hand, he tosses it into the air, it rolls, and 9 times out of 10 it's a 19 or 20. And if it's not that, it's not too far off the mark. We've made him use a different die. We've made him use our own d20s that have never given up a 20 to save our lives. Same result. We made him use a dice rolling app I have on my ipod and that brought his rolls back down to a normal level. He still hit, but he wasn't doing 4x damage. It made our DM happy, but our high roller wasn't pleased with not being able to use real dice.

Any tips on how to deal with a player with unreal dice rolling luck that will keep him and any DM happy?