AS someone who also has spiteful and hateful dice, I feel for ya.
Unfortuntely, Ive only found a mage to be a good answer. Though my preferred cup'o'mage is a Sorc.
Get to cast spells, look like a rock star, and never go home alone. What's not to love?
I don't mean physically, I mean in the last few years my d20 rolls have consistently averaged about a 5 when rolling to hit in combat. Wizard is an obvious choice, so I played one in a long running campaign and not sure I'm ready for another one. I don't really like playing clerics.
Any advice or character builds that would minimize extraordinarily bad luck in combat rolls?
Buy a spin down d20 (made popular by MtG) and spend a few hours practicing.
And get a bunch of no-SR spells. SR is d20. Conjuration is full of these.
Also focus on buffs in the heavily SR'ed encounters. Helps your friends murder stuff.
Bardic buffer? Alchemist bomber (touch ACs are low)?
Use digital dice instead?
Can't speak for the OP, but I know it wouldn't work for me. I've been recently playing NWN 2 and I kept missing, on my super-optimized fighter build, in a cRPG!
Some people believe luck is "magical thinking". I know for a fact luck exists, and it hates my guts :(
Use digital dice instead?
The title caught my eye because there is a player in a game I run that has consistent bad dice. He has tried different dice sets by different companies, a dice cup, a rolling box, extra dice for more action, you name it. Someone else at the table has a smart phone with a rolling app on it and he asked if he could use that instead of dice one night. So even with that phone app, he rolled horribly.
Its fun too because if it is a meaningless roll, he rolls great, but when a decent roll is needed or else something bad happens, nothing above a 5.
As another player blessed with suck rolls, I shall tell you the secret that turns misfortune into dice kissed by the gods.
Make him the GM, and he'll never roll below a 15 again. It's still disaster for the party, but his roll average has increased ;)
I'm serious. When I took over as the DM for the local game store's D&D encounters, I went from "praying for double-digits" to "Can't Miss".
I second the idea for witch but that may be similar to a wizard.
As someone who never rolls above a 5 on any saving throw, ever, I feel your pain. The closest thing to a way I've figured out to get it to work was to consider the character in question, then find a dice set that corresponds to that character's personality.
Somehow, that always works for me. I spend too much on dice, though.
Ahhhh my kindred spirit.
A concept i never got around to playing for this contingency was the save or suck sorcerer with heighten spell. Take a Fort, reflex, and will save or suck spell, and use heighten spell and spell focus to max out the DC. You don't touch the dice, just make sure to target the creatures bad save.
Try inverting the # rolled. Example: declare "this throw is inverted" /rolls a 3, invert the # into a 17. Now you are god mode. If you only roll high #s now, then you know god hates you.
As a side note, my buddy Chris has d6 that roll a 1-2 90% of the time. Sometimes it is good to have awful dice. Total concealment? I hit on a roll of 10 or below [or 1-3 on a d6]. You'll always hit :P
When it comes to dice, each one has a personality. First, you need to find out how to roll this dice. Different dice like to be rolled in different way. Some (like my DnD 4e dice) like the craps shoot, but your mileage may indeed vary. Try new ways to roll your dice until there is one that overall has the better results. Some dice like to be held a bit before rolling, while others (like my dice) just want you to pick them up and hurry and roll.
Now dice are like girlfriends. You can't go around and using other people's dice, even when they are rolling poorly. Stay loyal to your dice and in the end, they will come through for you when it counts. Also, get your dice a good dice bag. I don't mean a Crown Royal bag. I mean a proper dice bag. Trust me, giving them this luxury goes a long way. Keep them in, or on the bag and they'll love you!
I am of the opinion that dice respect a strong will and a firm hand, so you need to be confident in your rolls. Don't go "We'll I guess I'll try and hit *sigh*" or "Please roll good for me! :(". No. That is wrong. Don't beg or plead with the dice. You need to stand up with your dice firm in your hand like you have a pair and say "This dice will succeed and we will win the day!!" and roll.
Now, sometimes your dice will continue to roll poorly despite your effort. This is where you need to discipline your dice. Take the offending dice and play it in a microwave for 5-10 seconds. The heat won't melt or warp it (trust me I know) but it will get the point across that you are unamused by its failure.
Following these steps, I guarantee that you will have great rolls more often than not. And despite the silliness of what I've said, this really works. Then again, I'm pretty superstitious when it comes to my dice. But it works for me, so I am doing something right. :)
Next time on the Dice Whisperer, I'll show you how to find the right dice for you! ;)
I have a player that is cursed with bad dice and thus far Clerics, Wizards and the Oracle have been winners for him.
That being said sometimes you have to let the forces of chance know you aren't going to be triffled with.
Once I had a night of rolling more 1's than any of my associate game-pals had seen before or since. It is referenced as "Hamemr Night." It got so bad that I was rolling multiple 1's in a combat as a player. My character and one other ended up dying unheroicly as a result. We mostly joked about it but after our game session I took my dice out in the driveway and pulverized them with a hammer. We then took the bits, put them in a coffee tin, filled the tin with dice bits and scrap bits of lead fishing weights. Then we burried the tin. Extremely odd I know. But I've never had that bad of a night of luck with dice since then.
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As someone who has perplexed my mathematically-inclined friends with his ability to consistently roll 1st edition D&D characters that didn't qualify for *any* class (since they couldn't get a 9 in Str, Dex, Int *or* Wis, making them unable to qualify for fighter, thief, magic-user *or* cleric), I'm familiar with this affliction.
1) Ask the GM to roll for you. The GM always rolled awesome for me (out for everyone to see, even, no fudging!), when he agreed to do so.
2) Play classes that use as few dice rolls as possible (cleric focused on buffing with bless spells, prayer, recitation, etc., wizard focused on magic missile or lockdown spells like grease, glitterdust, stinking cloud, slow, etc.) as suggested above. Characters like bards or marshalls can provide bonuses to their allies, without having to make a bunch of rolls of their own, making it seem like they are contributing, despite not rolling dice.
3) If using a melee class, always try to focus on one that uses Vital Strike or huge sneak attack dice, or some other single powerful hit, as the more dice you roll, the greater the cavalcade of suck becomes (I learned this when playing in a game that had critical fumbles, and my character with six attacks critically failed three times in one attack sequence, hitting himself twice and an ally once). The more dice you roll, the faster that you inevitably cut your own head off.
4) Beg your GM to use some sort of Action Points or Hero Points system, allowing you to mitigate the worst of these problems with some action point expenditures. Giggle when someone mentions the rule about any left unspent go away when you level up, since you will never have to worry about that. (If a Feat is available to take more Action Points, take it. You'll use more than the average player, if your luck really does stink. At our table, everyone got a token (poker chip) at the beginning of a session, and could cash them in to cancel critical failures. It became a sub-house rule that we could spend tokens on each others rolls, when another player was out of tokens, and there were games where not only did I deplete my own tokens, but had three other players donating to my kitty.)
5) Play something the party can't live without, like the cleric. If your character isn't indispensible, the other players are less likely to put up with your craptacular rolls bringing down the party's effectiveness.
6) Hitting a d20 with a hammer can result in the die flinging off, ricocheting off of a wall, and hitting someone in the face. I'm not even kidding. It was hilarious. I apologized a lot, between the helpless spasms of laughter.
7) Don't play the lottery. Seriously. You're more likely to get hit by a car on the way back from the convenience store than to win anything. :)
Not an option any more, but I used to know a druid in 3.5 who'd grapple things. He still needed the touch attack to originally hit (and failed a lot) but once he made that, he'd roll a 1 and still grapple things to death. He was specifically built to mitigate bad rolls. (The player's previous character had been a Fireball-based sorcerer.)
Personally, I just roll like crap on fort saves and ability scores. Hello, 8-dex Fighter, oh how I love you.
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I'd go with the suggestion made previously, I'm playing a druid right now who focuses on conjuration spells and buffing. I love the druid for roleplaying and can contribute without rolling a single die. (Summoned monsters contribute by soaking damage, even if they don't score a single hit). Healing and buffing makes your party happy, no rolls needed.
If you're really averse to playing a wizard or cleric then I suggest that you do as the Cult of Vorg suggested and play a Buffing Bard or Bombing Alchemist.
Bard - As a buffing focused Bard you don't really need d20 rolls, but you might get bored stiff since most bards suffer from CKS and your sorry d20 rolls will make it even worse.
Alchemist - As a bomb focused Alchemist you don't often need to roll above a 5. Touch attacks are easy to hit. Choose a small race, max out Dex, and take a Dex boosting mutagen. In a few levels your average roll of 5 will hit the touch AC of most foes.
Summoner - Another option might be a Summoner. Sure, summoned monsters and eidolons need to roll d20s for attack rolls, but you can get A LOT of them. If you roll enough dice the "fact" that "there's no such thing as luck" should eventually overwhelm your dice with the mathematical improbability of their bad behavior. It has never worked for me, but I'm also the guy who rolled 8 damage on a 5d6 Lightning Bolt last week.
Another strategy you can adopt with the eidolon is to have it act as a combat helper giving you bonuses to hit. That's probably more appropriate to a Druid or Ranger's animal companion though. If you advance the companion's Int to 3 you can both take the Outflank feat for an extra +2 to hit while flanking. Equip the animal with a menacing amulet of mighty fists and you'll get another +2. If you still need more bonuses the animal or some summoned monsters can aid another. Keep on adding up bonuses like this and it eventually gets hard to miss. Even Weapon Focus helps a little.
I don't mean physically, I mean in the last few years my d20 rolls have consistently averaged about a 5 when rolling to hit in combat. Wizard is an obvious choice, so I played one in a long running campaign and not sure I'm ready for another one. I don't really like playing clerics.
Any advice or character builds that would minimize extraordinarily bad luck in combat rolls?
If OP doesn't mind some 3.5, then perhaps a Malconvoker?
http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19872758/Mastering_the_Ma lconvoker?pg=1
Or simply put, just a caster whos entire focus is on summoned monsters?
No rolling required except for the rolls to determine the number of critters or if you are dealing with the planar stuff, then the bluffing, but you get some heavy duty bonuses to that still.