Roleplayers are a superstitious lot.
We all have our little curse or black beast that rationally shouldn't affect anything statistically speaking, but yet it does. Some players cannot roll a character with a stat above 12 even if they roll 10 in a row, or other seem to throw a number of '1' that defies the laws of probability...
As for me, mine is a DMing curse: the stronger my BBEG, the quicker it falls. It doesn't seem to matter how unbalanced the CR is, the players suddenly get super lucky on their rolls. Save this, critical that, max damage here, spell penetration there... I swear, I have a lot more success with roaming bands of goblins!
Roleplayers are a superstitious lot.
We all have our little curse or black beast that rationally shouldn't affect anything statistically speaking, but yet it does. Some players cannot roll a character with a stat above 12 even if they roll 10 in a row, or other seem to throw a number of '1' that defies the laws of probability...
As for me, mine is a DMing curse: the stronger my BBEG, the quicker it falls. It doesn't seem to matter how unbalanced the CR is, the players suddenly get super lucky on their rolls. Save this, critical that, max damage here, spell penetration there... I swear, I have a lot more success with roaming bands of goblins!
One of my players has a Vulnerability to Petrification. If i ever use a monster that turns to stone and his PC needs to make a save, he WILL fail the roll no matter what his bonus is. Basilisk, beholder, medusa .....stoned.
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I once played a Hobbit warrior in MERP, and our GM used a quite complex method (from some Rolemaster supplement) to decide where a missing arrow/bolt was striking.
Another player, a ranger was probably one of the best bowmen of middle earth, he hit the mark every time, scoring critical after critical (and rolling very deadly crits) - exept when my warrior was somewhere in front of him (which happened quite often, since he was a swordshobbit). He missed AND hit my hobbit EVERY time (no, not sometimes, not often, literally every time). The poor little fellow started to wear a shield on his back almost as big as he was...
Since that, in D&D, I remind bowman every time to avoid shooting into melee, regardless of their skills with the bow...
My blessing: When I need to make a high roll such as a 19 or 20 or the entire party might die I get it
My curse: If the DM is having a nat 20 night they most of them seem to pop up when my character is being attacked.
I guess I have a love/hate relationship with the dice gods.
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We simply can't get through Shackled City, it is our gaming group's cursed bane. We are constantly losing characters to things out of our control and solely in the hands of the dice gods.
We've tried more hit points, making obscene characters, leadership feats, etc. By the time we hit like chapter 3 we've gotten such fatigue from losing characters that we just can't keep going on. No one is invested in anything since we're on character number 5 or 8.
Rogue crited from full by a hammer construct under 3x normal hit points and takes enough damage to be dead, dead. Save of die spells are constantly met with a natural 1.
We gave it one last try to get a single group through it and didn't even get downstairs even with using Pathfinder rules. -.-
In our current campaign, my cleric can't seem to roll an initiative roll in the double-digits. When she does, bad things tend to happen to the party. We joke about the natural order of the world: the shadowdancer 1st in initiative, then the arcane archer, then the eldritch knight, and I bat clean-up.
I cannot play a rogue. My thieves in previous editions of the game couldn't make successful saving throws. Ever. One of them I joked about was out to get hit with every single status effect once. He'd been charmed, petrified, killed, energy-drained, fireballed by his own ally the wizard...all of them. I had a fighter/mage/thief who couldn't successfully find traps when his skill was set at 95%. My dice liked to roll 96, 97, 98, or 99. Even if I reversed them, they'd still pull up those numbers. Even now, editions later, I refuse to try to play one. I have no desire to get another sneaky trapfinder killed. Someone else can be the trap-fodder.
Blessing? I can usually make saves when they matter. I can also hit with the impossible shot. I've managed to successfully score critical hits with slay living and harm spells at different points, much to the enemies' dismay. And I'm good at pulling out the very spell needed to save the day, but that's more skill than luck.
My dice are alive, and apparently love killing players and playing Star Wars...
As a player, I'll have entire game sessions where I can't roll higher than 5 on the d20. I have to power-game and min/max just to stay alive.
As a DM, my dice are on fire. Most nights I can't roll below 15 on 20's. If it's a BBEG, it's a crit every round.
For some reason, these situations are reverse when I play Star Wars Saga Edition. As a player, I'm rolling in the high-teens all night. As a GM, nothing over a 5.
Mr. Fishy is a gaming curse.
Mr. Fishy got some Call of Chulthu dice...they eat PC's Mr. Fishy only uses them as a DM's dice set. With glee!
I forgot about my other blessing. When I used to run Marvel Superheroes, my dice only rolled from 91-99. I knocked more PCs down the street, through buildings, or ten stories up into the air than I can count. The guys loved the game but HATED those dice. I, on the other hand, grinned like a madman every time I rolled them. *sigh* I miss my Slams and Stuns....
One of my players constantly gets the "Lean Into the Blow" (triple damage, but drop your weapon) critical card. Being that she's a dual-keen-scimitar-wielding Blood in the Water stance crit-machine Barbarian/Warblade, though, she generally gets 75% of the crits in one session anyway, but that one card has a nasty tendency to keep popping up for her. (At least it's not the Decap or Throat Slash cards....)
The running gag in my groups overall is twofold. If someone's having an exceptionally good night on skills, they'll do terrible in combat, and vice versa. There's only one exception, and it's the guy we refer to as "Dice Jesus".
The other is me. I play my Crusader/Paladin on Friday nights in our Age of Worms game, and DM Savage Tide on Saturday. If Zhaorae does well on Friday, I will roll absolutely horridly on Saturday as DM; if I have trouble on Friday with bad rolls, Saturday's game will go very roughly for my players. It's like I can't win as a DM and a player in the same week. :P
my curses
any character of mine always dies to a critical hit at level 7.
my blessing
i am extremely (but conveniently and suspiciously) lucky when playing an underage girl with a ludicrously high dexterity score and weapon finesse.
The deck of many things is anathema to me. No PC I have ever had has messed with that item and not been hosed.
Whenever I roll for stat it seems I always get a 3 or a 4 to one stat. I don't really mind, it's fun to play a character that's incredibly bad at one single thing as long as it's not everything he's bad at.
I have a character that always rolls bad for saving throws versus werewolves. And my players have never been able to get a cure for him in time. He's been a werewolf, werebear, weregoat and at one time a werebaboon :)
Curse:
One of my players has a yellow D20. I do not think I ever saw him rolling higher than a 4 with it. He keeps using it, even if everybody shouts: "not the yellow one!".
Blessing:
My monsters usually save against the spells cast by the PCs. They save extremely often ...
Curse:
... except when it is one huge monster, or the BBEG!
Curse/Blessing: My skill checks are almost always successful, even when I make them untrained. Conversely, I'm lucky if I hit an enemy's touch AC. I've learned to embrace spells that don't call for attack rolls and just ask for a save.
Another blessing is that I always have an 'ace-in-the-hole' spell prepared, which I never plan on actually using since it's one of those spells that seems pointless at first blush, but ends up being crucial to the party's survival somehow.
I've finally realized what my curse is. Whenever I DM, I tend to kill my wife's characters before anyone else's character. This leaves the illusion that I am always gunning for my wife's character.
Still haven't come up with a blessing.
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Curse: my dice rolls aren't very great; stats are usually in the 7-12 range, initiative is rarely in the double-digits
Blessing: as a DM, my attack rolls aren't very good either; as a player, being creative with what I have has made some very "poor" characters last longer than high-powered ones (I have a DM who I joined for a one-shot night who apparently still talks about a druid I had who wiped his opponents out, after I refused to reroll my stats and had him try to talk me out of being a druid because they were "too weak")
I've finally realized what my curse is. Whenever I DM, I tend to kill my wife's characters before anyone else's character. This leaves the illusion that I am always gunning for my wife's character.
Still haven't come up with a blessing.
She's still your wife?;)
I've been blessed with decades of great friends to play with!
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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My blessing is my 'DM dice' I have a set of Crystal Caste dice with all the ones replaced by 'd'oh!' Those dice are lethal when I DM. When I'm a player, not so much.
My curse is any other dice that aren't Koplow. I don't know why, but Chessex, Game Science, etc hate me. The 'official' D&D dice from 3.x like me though.
I've not tried any of Donna's dice, to see if she's looking out for me. She had the devil's own luck with her Steiner Dice in Battletech though.
She's still your wife?;)I've finally realized what my curse is. Whenever I DM, I tend to kill my wife's characters before anyone else's character. This leaves the illusion that I am always gunning for my wife's character.
Still haven't come up with a blessing.
Yes, that's definitely my blessing. I have a wife who never played an RPG before two years ago. Now, she is playing in four games. I'm trying to convince her to DM the Free RPG day module so she can experience that.
Although she has recently come into the possession of this item, which may kill one of her PCs again:
A runecurse that when she fails three DC 22 Will saves manifests with a Bone Devil coming to collect her level 4 summoner.