So, there's another houserule our gaming group has included specifically for me, involving the hero point reroll. You see I have horrid luck when rolling dice. Plus, frequently that misfortune will hit me for long spells when I can't roll anything above a 10 on a d20 for ages. I was finding myself in a few really frustrating situations where I'd fail a saving throw so obviously I don't even need to tell the game master my result, spend my hero point for a reroll, and then roll so poorly once more that I felt as though I wasted this precious asset. Especially because I would horde these hero points until it was a "make this saving throw or have some condition that removes you from the combat" situations. This happened to me perhaps five times straight when the game master came up with an idea.
We put in place a rule inspired by the Mutants & Masterminds game in which the reroll result was calculated so that any roll of 1 through 10 had 10 added to the result. This was the show the proper heroic effort put behind any reroll. Let's face it... if you were in a situation where you needed to roll a 17 or better on d20, you might not feel that's worth the chance. That's only 20%, not good odds. However, if instead you could roll a 7-10 or a 17-20 and succeed, you've doubled your chances to 40%. And really, no one likes to feel like their best effort has been wasted.
Now, because different game masters play with different styles, their input into rewarding hero points plays a big role in this houserule. My game masters like to keep us on our heels all through the campaign, we're always just a couple of bad rolls from a TPK. In our case, these hero points are vital. We need them to continue playing. However, if you're in a game a bit more lax of threat and your players start using them on attack rolls against the big boss... I suggest one of two things.
Firstly, you should perhaps be a bit more moderate in your hero point rewarding. That way, it truly feels like a close call - skin of your teeth situation.
The other suggestion is to start making large booming sounds with your mouth before slamming down a Demogorgon figurine onto the board in the vein of 'Stranger Things'. Yeah, I know Pathfinder is a different game system, but it'll straighten out those cocky players faster than anything. :D
That's a bit of an odd change to hero points. It seems like you're tilting the odds toward auto success. There still needs to be a possibility of failure. Are you using the +8 to hero point rolls called before the roll and +4 if called after the roll?
Its your house rule, so do as you see fit, but handing players auto success has never been a good thing in my book.
As for your crappy dice rolling prowess, it sounds like you need new dice. This is always the answer.
As for your note to other GMs a out rewarding hero points, I will say that my players have to earn them by actually behaving in an heroic manner. That doesn't mean just killing everything so the bodies can be looted, butthrough acts of compassion or self sacrifice. There as times that this seems to be a lost concept.
I will not disagree, this houserule (not even suggested by me, but rather by our current game master) favors success, but does not guarantee it. That was sort of the idea. Too many times there would be a key roll that was failed in which failure meant character death... I'm side-eyeing every class that has to find traps specifically here. We did try the +8 to the called before roll and the +4 on the reroll, and there were still too many failures. Mostly by myself, but not exclusively. It frustrated the players and made the experience unpleasant rather than challenging. Plus, it lends well towards the more cinematic heroic themes. It's down to the wire, everything hinges on this one moment or everything falls apart. I will accept that it's very possible the two standard game masters we play with in our group may simply be more ruthless and taking our group to the verge of what they can accomplish in every single encounter than most.
As for your crappy dice rolling prowess, it sounds like you need new dice. This is always the answer.
I actually posted a different thread not that long ago concerning just HOW bad my luck is... there hasn't been a set of dice made that are both balanced and can counter this jinx.
As for your note to other GMs a out rewarding hero points, I will say that my players have to earn them by actually behaving in an heroic manner. That doesn't mean just killing everything so the bodies can be looted, butthrough acts of compassion or self sacrifice. There as times that this seems to be a lost concept.
We do much the same in our group. Heroic action, innovative thinking, and behaving strongly in character despite the "smart" choice seeming to lay in another direction.
I have played/GMed for ~25 years and I don't believe in luck, only statistics. Everyone can have a bad game session with few, if any successes, but in the long run these will balance out will good game sessions, with many successes. If you characters are consistently under performing then you may want to consult some character creation guides like Treantmonk's Guide or Professor Q's Guide and think through your combat tactics more carefully to see if you are putting you character is harms way too often. You can succeed when you take luck into your own hands.
I like Hero Points and think they work really well especially in campaigns where the DM wants to run tough encounters but hopes to avoid a TPK. While I find Hero Points pretty effective "as is" I guess some other house rules folks could try might be:
1 - If you fail on the re-roll you get to keep your Hero Point for future use.
2 - If you fail on the re-roll but ultimately survive you get some other kind of point, maybe a "destiny point" that you can use for other purposes, maybe auto success on an out of combat roll or a giant bonus on a roll in combat (say double the normal Hero Point bonuses) - I guess the idea might be that if you survived the failed use of a Hero Point you must be "destined" for great things.
3 - Hero Points aside, I'd prefer to see more "once per round" chances to make a new save against disabling spells and effects. If you're lax about your Will save or just have some bad d20 rolls you'll probably still suffer plenty.
The Fear spell is something I've gotten most DMs I play with to agree to use a house rule for. Once per round you can make a save to reduce the condition to shaken. This might sound like it would make Fear too weak, but even if somebody runs away for just a a round or two it can have a big impact on the encounter, especially if they don't have a quick way of getting back (like D Door or something)
1 - If you fail on the re-roll you get to keep your Hero Point for future use.
I won't lie, I actually really like this idea as an alternative.
I have played/GMed for ~25 years and I don't believe in luck, only statistics.
You brought up "I've played X amount of years" comment, so I'll respond that I've played for 38 years myself. Used to have 1st Editions of all the original AD&D books, I'm no wet behind the ears new to the game guy here. I make strong characters (if not always compulsively optimized) and my tactics are solid. You say you believe in statistics, so look at it this way... the "average" roll makes the assumption that there's an infinite number of rolls being made. Since I've lived a finite lifetime (So Far! Mwuh-ha-ha-ha!) the number of rolls that I've made are limited. It's well within the realm of probability that the average of my rolls is far below what one might expect without being "impossible"... just simply unlikely. You can say you don't believe in luck, but just because you dress it up in a different hat and call it by a different name doesn't mean it doesn't add up to the same thing.
Do your rolls even out closer to that perfect 10.5 on a d20? Then I'm very happy for you, you're fortunate. (See, it works it way into our language even there... fortunate, relating to one's fortune.) However, there are still people such as myself who manage such feats as my infamous start to a gaming session in which I had the following results for my first five d20 rolls: 1, 1, 1, 3, and 1. I considered taking that d20 and seeing how long it could survive in a microwave.
Let's put aside your past life as a Mississippi riverboat gambler (or whatever it was you did to get the RNG so mad at you), Llyr. I had to go looking for it (having dumped my bookmark for some reason), but I found AnyDice again. And yes, it confirmed that 1d10+10 does produce a better average than 1d20+4. So I'm working with 1d12+8, which theoretically produces the same average, 14.5.
But if we stare defeat and a "1" in the face after we've rolled, and we could choose between the RAW 1d20+4 and 1d12+8 for our HP, we will theoretically get an equal average of 14.5. But the wide-ranging RAW roll makes 9 all the way to 20 fairly likely, which is the full range on 1d12+8. That variant makes only the middle 11 to 18 results most likely.
Of course, someone who makes a career of rolling 1's definitely prefers a floor of 9 to one of 5, and will happily live with never getting better than a 20 total. While someone who's fed his dice and petted them and coaxed them like my husband has some people seem to successfully do will prefer the chance to soar up to 24 on a rarely needed reroll. So in the interests of player fun, I think it should be player choice.
Now, I am confused by your example, Llyr. If I need a total of 17, on a d20+4, I have a 40% chance to succeed. If instead I roll a d12+8, I've dropped to a 33% chance. And if I need 17+4 for a total of 21, the d12+8 option dooms me. This is a case where I have to gamble on a wider range. But 14 is close to break-even: 1d12+8 gives a 58% chance of success, while 1d20+4 gives only 55%. Any success threshold lower than 14 increases the benefits for using the variant roll. The extreme case, of course, is 9 and under: guaranteed for a 1d12+8 roll. Given that saves are usually no better for high degrees of success, maybe GMs need to be careful about telling PCs what they need before they've rerolled.
TL;DR: Obviously, 1d20+8 is best. But if they're spending their Hero Pt after rolling, players should get a choice of what to reduce. People who roll well or want to roll very high would prefer 1d20+4; people who roll poorly or just think the middle ground is safest would prefer 1d12+8. The two average out the same, so the GM shouldn't care. {1d10+10 is a gift from the GM.}
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Obviously, a nat 12 is at least theoretically a lot more likely on 1d12 than a nat 20 on 1d20. Maybe the poor souls huddling together under the tiny 1d12+8 blanket need a boost, and should get an auto-success on a nat 12 save anyway. Maybe they shouldn't. I open the floor...
Hi, it's the
someone who's fed his dice and petted them and coaxed them likemy husband has
above-referenced husband here. And I do not feed my dice! At least not deliberately....
Although I am more than a bit of an animist, and I make sure to praise them after a particularly good showing (like recently, when my 3rd-level magus took a cyclops that was threatening her girlfriend from 3/4 to disemboweled with one SG-enhanced crit from her katana!). I freely admit that I have dice-fu. I've never tried quantifying it, on the theory that trying to would kill it off.
So I understand your pain, and wish I had a solution for you.
I was, OTOH, amused at having to explain the idea behind slamming the Demogorgon figure down on the table to bitter lily - she started with D&D in 3.5, and had never heard of him. She asked me "Is a demogorgon as nasty as a balor?" "Oh, no," I said. "THE Demogorgon has balors for lackeys! That's not his type, that's his Name!"
Switch dice.
I had another Hero Point related idea recently, the "Loser Point". If in a game where you're forced to roll ability scores rather than use point buy and you roll a low score you could re-roll by granting the DM a Loser Point. Later on the DM could use the Loser Point against you by saying something like, "Wrong, loser!" to retry a critical roll (or force you to do so). I suppose you could also petition the DM once per session to let you re-roll something in exchange for granting him or her a Loser Point (a proper DM response might be "Alright, you loser go ahead and re-roll, but you know it's going to cost you later!")
For groups with different sensibilities maybe it could be a "Karma Point" or something...