Ok, so I GM for my group. The other night, they faced TSM from the carrion crown : haunting of harrowstone.
To be honest, the fight was an exercise in tedium. This is absolutely not the fault of the AP, which I feel has been fantastic and the group has enjoyed it. Indeed, reading the fight, I was looking forward to running it, it was set to be epic.
The reason why it went so bad is that my group had an outbreak of bad rolls. I mean seriously bad. After TSM's initial appearance, they were set for an epic fight and managed to heal whilst fighting. They had good tactical ideas so they weren't really in any danger of a TPK.
Their rolling however was frustrating for all at the table. The spiders spawned aren't exactly all that and are meant to serve as a distraction. The bad rolls meant that they barely even hit them and when they did, it was chip damage! It was the same with TSM. This dragged the fight out, the music ran out as well as people's initial excitement at fighting the boss. Even me having used jelly babies did not over come this!
I get that a bout of bad rolls can and do happen. This just happened to be the worst time for it. So my question is, what do you guys do to keep the "epicness" of fights in the face of bad rolls, to stop it feeling like a slog, and keep the people engaged even if it's going badly?
I accept good and bad rolls as a part of the game. Barely getting by does not devalue the fights for my players. I am curious to see if my group is not the norm in this situation though.
Ok so I don't know the setting, but I do have a few ideas for the situation...
Detailing out the fight can a thematics to it, "you just missed as he threw his sholder up at the last second to block your attack, he laughs at you as he asks 'how is it that someone who is this terrible made it this far?'" Ofcourse that kindof stuff will only work for a little while and will just get more agrivating if they can't seem to turn things around.
You could make the boss retreat, further up the dungeon by throwing a vile of vanish down and laughing as he leaves the party to fight a summoned creature he leaves to 'finish them off'. Or go the opposite rout and he activates a glyph on the floor that teleports them further back in the dungeon or completely out of it altogether. Give a break in the battle for them to heal up and get their second wind.
You could just take a time out, out of game, if there are any smokers in ur group let them go catch a cig., if not get up stretch a little, as dm you could enact this ooc break simply by getting up yourself and going to the bathroom or getting something to drink just long enough to break the tension.
Lastly as gm you could hamstring the boss, I completely recommend not doing this because it will cheapen the win for the players who know they're rolling bad and will just generally leave a bad taste in everyones mouths afterwards.
Its been my experience that bad rolls are contagious and when everyone except the gm gets them it can change a great game into a tedious game real quick but interjecting a breaking point yourself can work miracles.
Hope I've helped
As a player on our last session I faced an incredible bad luck fight, rolling ten (!) times in a row either a 2, a 4 or a 5. The eleventh roll was a 1.
The others were just shocked at first, then simply laughing/encouraging me on every roll.
The GM reaction was simple: the monsters facing me (a 4th level combat druid) simply stopped focusing on me and viewing me as a threat.
I guess if the whole group had the same outbreak of unluck, he would have decided that our opponents would have considered us as a poor opposition, and therefore maybe lower their defenses and get lousy on tactics as if facing mooks.
My group had our first "real" fight last night (an NPC guard crit hard on the 'boss' thug in our real first fight and ended the fight early, so I'm not counting that ^_^).
Anyway, it was myself the Paladin, a Rogue, a Monk, and the NPC wizard buff-bot against 2 Lemures. Our GM likes to have us drop our weapons if we roll a nat 1 (or fall prone in the monk's case)... Well, my very first attack saw my falchion on the ground, followed by the monk on his ass, and by the end of the fight (which took almost 45 minutes... ridiculous for lemures!) the rogue had 4-5 daggers laying around in various spots.
If it wasn't for Smite Evil and a lucky crit, who knows how long that fight would have gone?! Lol
But all we could do is just laugh at how awful our characters were doing. Ya gotta remember it's a game, and even it's not fun, it's usually funny. ;)
Cheers!
I'd advocate offering them a devils deal. Offer them a 20 on one roll in exchange for allowing you to turn any two rolls you wish into a 1 or give an enemy a 20 against them. The limitations being that you won't force a 1 this encounter and won't force more than a single 1 or 20 for an enemy on against each character in any given future encounter.
Pocket the 1s and save them for when you wish to up the stakes when they do particularly well on encounters or you want to make things extra deadly. In the face of a possible TPK some players might take the deal.
I wouldn't suggest making such an offer at the drop of a hat, but if they have dire bad luck it's a decent enough idea.
I usually chalk up a bad string of rolls to the dice Gods telling me to switch dice. I do and if that one is bad I switch again. I think most people I know have multiple sets and switch them out in situations like that. I also remember a documentary about a guy who had a bad session with one of his dice and he froze it... then lined up all the other dice and made them watch as he explained... "This is what happens when you F..." wait no different movie... he took the dice out of the freezer and smashed it with a hammer and it exploded. A little extreme? Yes, but at the tyme it was quite hilarious.
Anyways... as the GM you can do whatever to try to help them. If you aren't going for a TPK have the BBEG shout insults instead of attack or turn and attack someone else provoking attacks of opportunity. He can not optimize his strategy and do little things that are more in line for a real fight than a PF fight. I never saw Gandolf in the middle of melee take a 5 ft. step back to not provoke an attack of opportunity. Like others suggested have him lessen his guard since he sees them as no threat... maybe for fun have him start laughing at them and not attack. Attempt things that you normally wouldnt just so you likely will fail and they see it as you still trying and not giving them the victory. Maybe toss down a shield and pull out an extra weapon it looks like you are trying to attack even harder but you just lowered your BAB if you don't have two weapon fighting. Little things... or maybe they surround him and instead of getting stronger he gets nervous and takes a full defensive so his attacks are less powerful. The dice Gods are never that brutal for that long so just buy the group some tyme until they get back in the groove.
Some good ideas here people :)
1) pull a Satan vs Jesus: the boss is wiffed for the 5th time then suddenly cries out "OW!" and falls over seemingly defeated; turns out HIS unholy master/boss/whatever had money on the fight and he took a dive.
2) One I've actually used is allowing a character, once a game, to step out of a fight and study their opponent for 2 rounds; on the third they can take either a single +4 to their roll or take a 10 on their attack roll; whatever they think'll do the trick. I had one player do this on a dragon, hasted, flying in mid air to save his dying father. He took the +4 and after a night of 1's and 2's rolled a natural 20. Since he didn't need the bonus I threw him an auto-crit and the battle ended quite organically.
3) Have the villain lower his guard. Think about it: how many times have you seen it in a movie where the main character can't land a punch or is playing possum. Either way the villain in some cases stops fighting, if only just for a second, to marvel at how incompetent the...WHAM! Uppercut for the win!
4) do you use Hero Points? Its a great mechanic for just this occasion. Other little mechanics like that would be divine intervention, arcane reverberations in the space-time continuum or just plain shaky gaming table syndrome. I've done this thing w/my daughters where I have them ONLY roll on their character sheets. Inevitably when the boss fight comes up they get so amped the die flies off the paper. If it does and starts a string of bad rolls, I just tell them to re-roll ON the paper... that's how my younger one went from falling into a pit her rogue missed to double-flipping not only the pit but the monk on the other side (turned a 5 into a 20 this past weekend) so the next round she got her SA.
5) and finally... steal a device from a LOT of console/computer RPG's. If the party's having an off run of luck have one of them hit the wall sconce by mistake which in turn activates a glyph that, in turn, creates one fourth of a wall of fire. A quick Knowledge: Arcane/Religion/History/whatever as a free action at an obscenely low DC reveals that the 4 sconces are part of an elaborate trap the party can use to harm the BBEG, just like hitting levers in a video game that, over the course of the fight, lower a portcullis down on the "invincible" boss.
A simple "whiff control" system like Hero Points works wonders for this problem. The APG's Hero Points are a little too complex for my taste*, but a depletable resource that lets players choose a few key rolls to push through for their own sake is cool, and strategic.
I award a very small number of "Luck Points" that simply add 1d6 to any roll after the result is known but before you move on to any other rolls. You can roll as many as you like, one at a time until you get the roll you want. But I give them out very rarely, so the players are very careful to use them. They're a great and effective reward for not metagaming, actually.
In a big, obvious, dramatic fight like the on you describe, a player would almost definitely have spent the points to turn a whiff into a hit — or to boost the damage on the chip shots. The players get to push the important moment through, but they earned it and paid for it fairly.
If you include too many functions for hero points, players will always hoard them for whatever the best application is — usually "not dying" if that's an option. If you really want multiple applications, you're almost better off having multiple pools of points... For example "Luck" which can help you defend and "Fate" which can help you attack, or something like that.
Even me having used jelly babies did not over come this!
Please explain this in more detail? TIA
Two words: Hero Points.
Give them 5, and let them use one to add a d6 to any d20 roll. Have them renew everytime they level.
Please explain this in more detail? TIA
Ah, sorry, missed a bit when typing :P. I thought it would be cool to use Jelly babies as monsters instead of minis on the mat. Whoever gets the kill gets the jelly baby :D. You watch the players round the table go for it :P.
Hmm, Hero points sound a good idea. As it's our first game, I restricted things just to the core book to avoid us getting confused and not worrying about extra detail. I might look into adding a point system though!!
Awesome ideas here! :D