Dealing with players rolling terribly in combat?
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Everyone has bad dice days. Everyone has that one time you get a Nat 1 at a critical moment.
But guys, my party is in trouble.
They’re consistently rolling terribly in combat across multiple sessions, classes, and dice types. And I mean terribly. Over time, you’d think their d20 rolls would average out to about unmodified 10, right? Plus or minus a bit. Hah. No. They’re averaging about 7. Other rolls (damage, healing, etc) also often suffer from this. It’s turning combat into a slog; anything with an AC of above 12-14 or so is proving awful to fight, and when attacks do hit they often do little damage.
We’re all experienced players, and it’s a digital platform - so I can both know they’re not missing modifications to the raw d20 roll, and know it’s not “bad dice”. Unfortunately, they’re also experienced enough to figure out ACs from misses/hits, so it’s not like I can even give them “free passes” on attacks as anti-frustration measures.
It’s at the point where I’m thinking the honest only way to “fix” this is to artificially nerf NPCs or vastly reduce the CR I’m used to them being able to handle. Is that really it, folks?
I’m partial to semi-narrative combat. My baddies rarely fight to the death, so they’ll disengage and run away when they take too much damage or we start to get bored. Could you try something like that?
Nerfing the CR doesn’t seem terrible, so long as you have a backup plan in case they roll well.
Another option might be using Inspiration or another meta-currency to allow the PCs to push a near miss up to a hit. I’m playing Cyberpunk RED right now, and it has Luck, which kinda does that.
Alternatively, you could try to design fights with non-murder win conditions. Like the PCs are just trying to get across a bridge, etc.
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Use digital dice?
Narrative solution would be to reveal the party has been cursed somehow this entire time. You can then give them a trinket/spell that mitigates low rolls. They get the best of 2 rolls once per combat or something like that.
I like the in-world solution.
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Everyone has bad dice days. Everyone has that one time you get a Nat 1 at a critical moment.
But guys, my party is in trouble.
They’re consistently rolling terribly in combat across multiple sessions, classes, and dice types. And I mean terribly. Over time, you’d think their d20 rolls would average out to about unmodified 10, right? Plus or minus a bit. Hah. No. They’re averaging about 7. Other rolls (damage, healing, etc) also often suffer from this. It’s turning combat into a slog; anything with an AC of above 12-14 or so is proving awful to fight, and when attacks do hit they often do little damage.
We’re all experienced players, and it’s a digital platform - so I can both know they’re not missing modifications to the raw d20 roll, and know it’s not “bad dice”. Unfortunately, they’re also experienced enough to figure out ACs from misses/hits, so it’s not like I can even give them “free passes” on attacks as anti-frustration measures.
It’s at the point where I’m thinking the honest only way to “fix” this is to artificially nerf NPCs or vastly reduce the CR I’m used to them being able to handle. Is that really it, folks?
Go for a tpk.
Then, once they die, have them wake up with slave bonds and have to complete 3 trials for their subdemon overlord in order to be freed.
During that time, get a DM screen and hide your rolls from them so you can fudge a little to make the game more fun.
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Everyone has bad dice days. Everyone has that one time you get a Nat 1 at a critical moment.
But guys, my party is in trouble.
They’re consistently rolling terribly in combat across multiple sessions, classes, and dice types. And I mean terribly. Over time, you’d think their d20 rolls would average out to about unmodified 10, right? Plus or minus a bit. Hah. No. They’re averaging about 7. Other rolls (damage, healing, etc) also often suffer from this. It’s turning combat into a slog; anything with an AC of above 12-14 or so is proving awful to fight, and when attacks do hit they often do little damage.
We’re all experienced players, and it’s a digital platform - so I can both know they’re not missing modifications to the raw d20 roll, and know it’s not “bad dice”. Unfortunately, they’re also experienced enough to figure out ACs from misses/hits, so it’s not like I can even give them “free passes” on attacks as anti-frustration measures.
It’s at the point where I’m thinking the honest only way to “fix” this is to artificially nerf NPCs or vastly reduce the CR I’m used to them being able to handle. Is that really it, folks?
Why would a fix be required? It seems like you expect the bad rolls to continue.
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Everyone has bad dice days. Everyone has that one time you get a Nat 1 at a critical moment.
But guys, my party is in trouble.
They’re consistently rolling terribly in combat across multiple sessions, classes, and dice types. And I mean terribly. Over time, you’d think their d20 rolls would average out to about unmodified 10, right? Plus or minus a bit. Hah. No. They’re averaging about 7. Other rolls (damage, healing, etc) also often suffer from this. It’s turning combat into a slog; anything with an AC of above 12-14 or so is proving awful to fight, and when attacks do hit they often do little damage.
We’re all experienced players, and it’s a digital platform - so I can both know they’re not missing modifications to the raw d20 roll, and know it’s not “bad dice”. Unfortunately, they’re also experienced enough to figure out ACs from misses/hits, so it’s not like I can even give them “free passes” on attacks as anti-frustration measures.
It’s at the point where I’m thinking the honest only way to “fix” this is to artificially nerf NPCs or vastly reduce the CR I’m used to them being able to handle. Is that really it, folks?
The luck system might be something to look into. It can help mitigate consecutive failures while maintaining balance.
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Everyone has bad dice days. Everyone has that one time you get a Nat 1 at a critical moment.
But guys, my party is in trouble.
They’re consistently rolling terribly in combat across multiple sessions, classes, and dice types. And I mean terribly. Over time, you’d think their d20 rolls would average out to about unmodified 10, right? Plus or minus a bit. Hah. No. They’re averaging about 7. Other rolls (damage, healing, etc) also often suffer from this. It’s turning combat into a slog; anything with an AC of above 12-14 or so is proving awful to fight, and when attacks do hit they often do little damage.
We’re all experienced players, and it’s a digital platform - so I can both know they’re not missing modifications to the raw d20 roll, and know it’s not “bad dice”. Unfortunately, they’re also experienced enough to figure out ACs from misses/hits, so it’s not like I can even give them “free passes” on attacks as anti-frustration measures.
It’s at the point where I’m thinking the honest only way to “fix” this is to artificially nerf NPCs or vastly reduce the CR I’m used to them being able to handle. Is that really it, folks?
Altering the CR is my answer.
Not figuring out CR is why I was not a good DM, among other things. That you mention it at all tells me you probably have some semblance of a handle on it.
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Why would a fix be required? It seems like you expect the bad rolls to continue.
some of us have terrible rng… I roll poorly like 70-80% of the time. Out of 20 attack rolls the other day, 14 were misses, like 5 nat 1’s. This is normal for me, every damn session.
This is across multiple systems, and 8+ years of ttrpgs. My rng is dogshit and has been the entire time, I expect the bad rolls to continue.
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Everyone has bad dice days. Everyone has that one time you get a Nat 1 at a critical moment.
But guys, my party is in trouble.
They’re consistently rolling terribly in combat across multiple sessions, classes, and dice types. And I mean terribly. Over time, you’d think their d20 rolls would average out to about unmodified 10, right? Plus or minus a bit. Hah. No. They’re averaging about 7. Other rolls (damage, healing, etc) also often suffer from this. It’s turning combat into a slog; anything with an AC of above 12-14 or so is proving awful to fight, and when attacks do hit they often do little damage.
We’re all experienced players, and it’s a digital platform - so I can both know they’re not missing modifications to the raw d20 roll, and know it’s not “bad dice”. Unfortunately, they’re also experienced enough to figure out ACs from misses/hits, so it’s not like I can even give them “free passes” on attacks as anti-frustration measures.
It’s at the point where I’m thinking the honest only way to “fix” this is to artificially nerf NPCs or vastly reduce the CR I’m used to them being able to handle. Is that really it, folks?
Give them custom weapons or spells that are most effective when you roll low.
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Everyone has bad dice days. Everyone has that one time you get a Nat 1 at a critical moment.
But guys, my party is in trouble.
They’re consistently rolling terribly in combat across multiple sessions, classes, and dice types. And I mean terribly. Over time, you’d think their d20 rolls would average out to about unmodified 10, right? Plus or minus a bit. Hah. No. They’re averaging about 7. Other rolls (damage, healing, etc) also often suffer from this. It’s turning combat into a slog; anything with an AC of above 12-14 or so is proving awful to fight, and when attacks do hit they often do little damage.
We’re all experienced players, and it’s a digital platform - so I can both know they’re not missing modifications to the raw d20 roll, and know it’s not “bad dice”. Unfortunately, they’re also experienced enough to figure out ACs from misses/hits, so it’s not like I can even give them “free passes” on attacks as anti-frustration measures.
It’s at the point where I’m thinking the honest only way to “fix” this is to artificially nerf NPCs or vastly reduce the CR I’m used to them being able to handle. Is that really it, folks?
You could try attacking with hordes of low CR enemies instead of a few high CR ones.
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Everyone has bad dice days. Everyone has that one time you get a Nat 1 at a critical moment.
But guys, my party is in trouble.
They’re consistently rolling terribly in combat across multiple sessions, classes, and dice types. And I mean terribly. Over time, you’d think their d20 rolls would average out to about unmodified 10, right? Plus or minus a bit. Hah. No. They’re averaging about 7. Other rolls (damage, healing, etc) also often suffer from this. It’s turning combat into a slog; anything with an AC of above 12-14 or so is proving awful to fight, and when attacks do hit they often do little damage.
We’re all experienced players, and it’s a digital platform - so I can both know they’re not missing modifications to the raw d20 roll, and know it’s not “bad dice”. Unfortunately, they’re also experienced enough to figure out ACs from misses/hits, so it’s not like I can even give them “free passes” on attacks as anti-frustration measures.
It’s at the point where I’m thinking the honest only way to “fix” this is to artificially nerf NPCs or vastly reduce the CR I’m used to them being able to handle. Is that really it, folks?
Combat is always situational. Make their bad rolls have environmental consequences.
From a narrative standpoint, a bad roll doesn’t have to be a miss. They can hit a barrel of oil, or fish, and cause it to break open. Now everyone who isn’t a fishmonger within the spill area has disadvantage on all attack and save rolls.
Also, as dm, you never have to make your roles public.
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some of us have terrible rng… I roll poorly like 70-80% of the time. Out of 20 attack rolls the other day, 14 were misses, like 5 nat 1’s. This is normal for me, every damn session.
This is across multiple systems, and 8+ years of ttrpgs. My rng is dogshit and has been the entire time, I expect the bad rolls to continue.
Don’t you have several sets of dice, and don’t you ‘dog walk’ your d20s at the beginning of a session to see which one(s) are the lucky ones for the night? Asking for a friend…
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Everyone has bad dice days. Everyone has that one time you get a Nat 1 at a critical moment.
But guys, my party is in trouble.
They’re consistently rolling terribly in combat across multiple sessions, classes, and dice types. And I mean terribly. Over time, you’d think their d20 rolls would average out to about unmodified 10, right? Plus or minus a bit. Hah. No. They’re averaging about 7. Other rolls (damage, healing, etc) also often suffer from this. It’s turning combat into a slog; anything with an AC of above 12-14 or so is proving awful to fight, and when attacks do hit they often do little damage.
We’re all experienced players, and it’s a digital platform - so I can both know they’re not missing modifications to the raw d20 roll, and know it’s not “bad dice”. Unfortunately, they’re also experienced enough to figure out ACs from misses/hits, so it’s not like I can even give them “free passes” on attacks as anti-frustration measures.
It’s at the point where I’m thinking the honest only way to “fix” this is to artificially nerf NPCs or vastly reduce the CR I’m used to them being able to handle. Is that really it, folks?
Another suggestion for an in-universe way to tip the scales in your players’ favor would be to invent circumstances where your players’ “quick thinking” (read as: heavily signposted narrative elements) could lead to their enemies fighting with some form of disadvantage, without necessarily requiring a good roll.
As an example, say the party have found the bad guys’ base in an industrial area of town. They’re at the Moston Molasses Market, and it’s an unseasonably warm day in the middle of winter (I don’t know, let’s call it January 15th or equivalent). When the players arrive, they immediately notice that there are these enormous liquid storage silos lining the courtyard, where several mooks are milling. Additionally, without rolling because it’s obvious, one tank is literally bursting at the seams, with these long, dark brown streaks oozing out of the rivet joints. Maybe they need to make a skill check to determine this for sure, but it’s a reasonable assumption that striking that tank will cause it to burst. Given the size of the object and the foregone conclusion that this thing is gonna burst at some point with or without getting whacked, I would not ask the players for an attack roll if they chose to utilize my signposting. Instead, auto-success, the tank bursts, a wave of molasses escapes, and now the baddies that aren’t engulfed in a semi-solid wave of sticky goop at a minimum find themselves fighting in difficult terrain.
Obviously, that’s a hyper specific example born out of reading a certain Wikipedia article earlier today, but I hope it illustrates my point. As the architect of the world, the only limit is your creativity when it comes to what challenges your party face. Maybe, before their terrible stealth roll reveals them to the trio of trolls hunting them in the woods, the party overheard two of the trolls discussing how their companion isn’t allowed to cook their meals anymore, cause they’ve both got indigestion. Uh-oh, party gets found, but two of the three enemies have a level of exhaustion (or whatever other nerf you want to slap on that simulates having bubble guts) and their heart isn’t really in this fight, so they’ll bail at the first sign of resistance. Or, if a player is attentive to your narration, they might describe how their character aims a blow right in the belly of the troll that mentioned their stomach issues. If it hits (and, honestly, if it were me, I’d grant auto-success for the player’s listening skills), the troll’s eyes go wide, and he flees on his next turn. Depending on the tone of your story, more scatological narration may be included in that action.
In short, if you’re concerned the experience of your players prevents you from just tweaking numbers from behind the screen, all you have to do is bend the world to justify your tweaks. Hell, you don’t even have to have this ready to go ahead of time. Maybe you planned to have a super easy encounter with a couple of feral wolves on the way to the next village. Nothing challenging, just a reminder that the players are in with wilderness. But, uh-oh, the dice are turning Lassie and friends into Hellhounds with a taste for PC spleen. Rather than letting the campaign end with a whimper, as the heroes of Wherever wind up as puppy chow on a random stretch of dirt track, all of a sudden, the animals cease their attack and perk up their ears. In the distance, between their ragged breaths and the sound of their heartbeat pulsing in their ears, the party hear a howl. The wolves respond in kind and melt into the woods. Maybe with a roll, maybe without, your call, the players realize that the direction of the first howl just so happened to be exactly in the direction of the village they were travelling to. DUN DUN DUNNNNN!
From the your perspective, it was a random encounter gone sideways due to poor luck, and you had to invent a deus ex machina on the fly to prevent an anti-climax. However, from the player’s perspective, you have seeded a new narrative hook without relying on dry exposition, and it’s one that they might have some personal investment in. You’re under no obligation to dissuade them of the error in their assumption. Heck, in spit-balling what could have caused the situation, they may even give you ideas for how you’re going to incorporate this new dynamic into whatever you originally had planned for them at the new village.
Idk if any of that is of any use to you, but I hope it at least gives you some ideas for levers you can pull which affect difficulty that are a little more nuanced then, “oh shit, uhhhh I guess this monster’s AC is going to be 12 for the rest of this fight”.
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Everyone has bad dice days. Everyone has that one time you get a Nat 1 at a critical moment.
But guys, my party is in trouble.
They’re consistently rolling terribly in combat across multiple sessions, classes, and dice types. And I mean terribly. Over time, you’d think their d20 rolls would average out to about unmodified 10, right? Plus or minus a bit. Hah. No. They’re averaging about 7. Other rolls (damage, healing, etc) also often suffer from this. It’s turning combat into a slog; anything with an AC of above 12-14 or so is proving awful to fight, and when attacks do hit they often do little damage.
We’re all experienced players, and it’s a digital platform - so I can both know they’re not missing modifications to the raw d20 roll, and know it’s not “bad dice”. Unfortunately, they’re also experienced enough to figure out ACs from misses/hits, so it’s not like I can even give them “free passes” on attacks as anti-frustration measures.
It’s at the point where I’m thinking the honest only way to “fix” this is to artificially nerf NPCs or vastly reduce the CR I’m used to them being able to handle. Is that really it, folks?
I have a rule as DM that I will never fudge rolls against the players, but I will fudge rolls in their favor if it fits the narrative. Three players consecutively miss an enemy? Oh no, next turn it got a critical fail and then failed a Dex save, slipping and landing prone. I guess the players get advantage on melee attacks! Don’t do this often, but I’m the right spot it’s fine.
Monsters can just be dumb, too. INT of 6 means those Blobby Blobs are gonna fight poorly, attacking the tank and splitting up attacks. Also, the players don’t know your monsters’ stats, so you can make an attack that would get it to 1 HP instead kill an enemy. I also don’t do this often, but sometimes they just get unlucky, and no reason to TPK.
Speaking of TPK, you can let them fail forward. Monsters rarely have reason to attack downed/unconscious PCs, so let them roll death saves, but it usually takes a while to die. Everyone’s unconscious? Stop combat, no more death saves. Instead, they wake up as prisoners and have to escape. I had a particularly fun one where my players would have died to a trio of night hags (if you’ve played Curse of Strahd, you know the ones). Instead, they woke up and were given a mission, but the bags also stole parts of their “souls,” taking Max HP from one player, speed from another, giving one a trait that they would lose all hope, stealing another’s eye (disadvantage on Perception), etc. Then they had to fulfill the mission, but later came back at a higher level and beat the hags, gaining their souls back. Everyone loved getting revenge!
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Use digital dice?
Narrative solution would be to reveal the party has been cursed somehow this entire time. You can then give them a trinket/spell that mitigates low rolls. They get the best of 2 rolls once per combat or something like that.
We’re all experienced players, and it’s a digital platform
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Everyone has bad dice days. Everyone has that one time you get a Nat 1 at a critical moment.
But guys, my party is in trouble.
They’re consistently rolling terribly in combat across multiple sessions, classes, and dice types. And I mean terribly. Over time, you’d think their d20 rolls would average out to about unmodified 10, right? Plus or minus a bit. Hah. No. They’re averaging about 7. Other rolls (damage, healing, etc) also often suffer from this. It’s turning combat into a slog; anything with an AC of above 12-14 or so is proving awful to fight, and when attacks do hit they often do little damage.
We’re all experienced players, and it’s a digital platform - so I can both know they’re not missing modifications to the raw d20 roll, and know it’s not “bad dice”. Unfortunately, they’re also experienced enough to figure out ACs from misses/hits, so it’s not like I can even give them “free passes” on attacks as anti-frustration measures.
It’s at the point where I’m thinking the honest only way to “fix” this is to artificially nerf NPCs or vastly reduce the CR I’m used to them being able to handle. Is that really it, folks?
My recent game has been similar. Not because I roll badly, but because the GM is incapable of rolling below a 16.
And I say: if they die, they die. You’re playing digital, you’re not going to run out of character sheets.
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Everyone has bad dice days. Everyone has that one time you get a Nat 1 at a critical moment.
But guys, my party is in trouble.
They’re consistently rolling terribly in combat across multiple sessions, classes, and dice types. And I mean terribly. Over time, you’d think their d20 rolls would average out to about unmodified 10, right? Plus or minus a bit. Hah. No. They’re averaging about 7. Other rolls (damage, healing, etc) also often suffer from this. It’s turning combat into a slog; anything with an AC of above 12-14 or so is proving awful to fight, and when attacks do hit they often do little damage.
We’re all experienced players, and it’s a digital platform - so I can both know they’re not missing modifications to the raw d20 roll, and know it’s not “bad dice”. Unfortunately, they’re also experienced enough to figure out ACs from misses/hits, so it’s not like I can even give them “free passes” on attacks as anti-frustration measures.
It’s at the point where I’m thinking the honest only way to “fix” this is to artificially nerf NPCs or vastly reduce the CR I’m used to them being able to handle. Is that really it, folks?
You might consider adding a puzzle element to encounters that can lower the effective difficulty with clever maneuvers or strategies.
As an example, fighting in a room with a big chandelier overhead. A player can cut the chandelier at the opportune moment to pin a major adversary, allowing them to coup de grace or simply flaunt their victory to the villain’s face.
Or perhaps fighting in a room full of mirrors that allow a clever player to reflect a gaze attack. Or doing Battleship style combat, where you have to pick the square of a hidden enemy, but you guarantee a hit if you guess correctly.
In general, try introducing non-dice resolutions to the scene - guessing a magic word that disables a key piece of enemy tech, baiting enemies into an area or formation before springing a trap, completing a ritual that can summon a powerful ally by solving a rubric cube.
If all else fails, you can drop some nice loot them. Awand of fireballs or Staff of the Sun or similar high powered magic item, for instance. Doesn’t matter how you roll with these, you’re going to have some fun.
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Everyone has bad dice days. Everyone has that one time you get a Nat 1 at a critical moment.
But guys, my party is in trouble.
They’re consistently rolling terribly in combat across multiple sessions, classes, and dice types. And I mean terribly. Over time, you’d think their d20 rolls would average out to about unmodified 10, right? Plus or minus a bit. Hah. No. They’re averaging about 7. Other rolls (damage, healing, etc) also often suffer from this. It’s turning combat into a slog; anything with an AC of above 12-14 or so is proving awful to fight, and when attacks do hit they often do little damage.
We’re all experienced players, and it’s a digital platform - so I can both know they’re not missing modifications to the raw d20 roll, and know it’s not “bad dice”. Unfortunately, they’re also experienced enough to figure out ACs from misses/hits, so it’s not like I can even give them “free passes” on attacks as anti-frustration measures.
It’s at the point where I’m thinking the honest only way to “fix” this is to artificially nerf NPCs or vastly reduce the CR I’m used to them being able to handle. Is that really it, folks?
If its me and I need them to push through something like this they befriend an NPC that is either powerful enough to carry them through combat or gives them an artificial buff to hit rolls or something, like a baby dragon they gain focus from because they have yo protect him or a mischievous imp that sings silly ballads that inspire them. And when theyre out of that slump said imp or baby dragon dies tragically.
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Everyone has bad dice days. Everyone has that one time you get a Nat 1 at a critical moment.
But guys, my party is in trouble.
They’re consistently rolling terribly in combat across multiple sessions, classes, and dice types. And I mean terribly. Over time, you’d think their d20 rolls would average out to about unmodified 10, right? Plus or minus a bit. Hah. No. They’re averaging about 7. Other rolls (damage, healing, etc) also often suffer from this. It’s turning combat into a slog; anything with an AC of above 12-14 or so is proving awful to fight, and when attacks do hit they often do little damage.
We’re all experienced players, and it’s a digital platform - so I can both know they’re not missing modifications to the raw d20 roll, and know it’s not “bad dice”. Unfortunately, they’re also experienced enough to figure out ACs from misses/hits, so it’s not like I can even give them “free passes” on attacks as anti-frustration measures.
It’s at the point where I’m thinking the honest only way to “fix” this is to artificially nerf NPCs or vastly reduce the CR I’m used to them being able to handle. Is that really it, folks?
dice lack finesse. they are simple and portable and functional. You, as the DM, must provide the missing finesse
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Everyone has bad dice days. Everyone has that one time you get a Nat 1 at a critical moment.
But guys, my party is in trouble.
They’re consistently rolling terribly in combat across multiple sessions, classes, and dice types. And I mean terribly. Over time, you’d think their d20 rolls would average out to about unmodified 10, right? Plus or minus a bit. Hah. No. They’re averaging about 7. Other rolls (damage, healing, etc) also often suffer from this. It’s turning combat into a slog; anything with an AC of above 12-14 or so is proving awful to fight, and when attacks do hit they often do little damage.
We’re all experienced players, and it’s a digital platform - so I can both know they’re not missing modifications to the raw d20 roll, and know it’s not “bad dice”. Unfortunately, they’re also experienced enough to figure out ACs from misses/hits, so it’s not like I can even give them “free passes” on attacks as anti-frustration measures.
It’s at the point where I’m thinking the honest only way to “fix” this is to artificially nerf NPCs or vastly reduce the CR I’m used to them being able to handle. Is that really it, folks?
They need to roll the d20 and not the d12.
But seriously, the party can figure out AC, but not hit points. If something is dragging on, just have things die on the next hit. I know some people would complain about it, but it is the group’s game, if something isn’t fun, change it. You have the power.
Also, some things fight to the death, but it is also ok to have some things surrender or run away. Fighting a group of bandits? When one goes down, have someone scream “Bear! No!” and run away crying. Killed half the goblins? The rest turn tail and run.
There are many levers to pull, and don’t be afraid to use them.
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Everyone has bad dice days. Everyone has that one time you get a Nat 1 at a critical moment.
But guys, my party is in trouble.
They’re consistently rolling terribly in combat across multiple sessions, classes, and dice types. And I mean terribly. Over time, you’d think their d20 rolls would average out to about unmodified 10, right? Plus or minus a bit. Hah. No. They’re averaging about 7. Other rolls (damage, healing, etc) also often suffer from this. It’s turning combat into a slog; anything with an AC of above 12-14 or so is proving awful to fight, and when attacks do hit they often do little damage.
We’re all experienced players, and it’s a digital platform - so I can both know they’re not missing modifications to the raw d20 roll, and know it’s not “bad dice”. Unfortunately, they’re also experienced enough to figure out ACs from misses/hits, so it’s not like I can even give them “free passes” on attacks as anti-frustration measures.
It’s at the point where I’m thinking the honest only way to “fix” this is to artificially nerf NPCs or vastly reduce the CR I’m used to them being able to handle. Is that really it, folks?
Players not succeeding on rolls isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It can increase tension in your encounters and is ultimately something you can’t control directly. You can fudge dice on your end, but honestly this reduces tension and if you’re not decisive about it can be pretty noticable.
So what can you affect? First, the stats of the monsters you’re throwing against them or the DCs that you’re looking for can be adjusted. If they’re consistently struggling more than is enjoyable, you can always scale things back a bit when you’re prepping encounters. Inspiration can also be a great way to let the players swing things in their favor without feeling like they’re being handed a success. There are also times when you can throw in a “oh actually, roll that with advantage” with some reasonable excuse, which also doesn’t feel like a gimme. But aside from this you have a whole toolkit in your ability to shape the world around them.
Magic items can be really helpful here. A staff with silvery barbs or bless or something similar can be a great way to put some die manipulation into your players’ hands, especially if the party composition lacks things like this. But don’t forget that you can also use set pieces.
Maybe the ceiling above an enemy has a weak point, or they’re standing directly under a chandelier or some nets. Maybe an enemy prefers their own safety in a crowded fight over that of their allies and drops an AOE that brings some friendly fire. Maybe some magic item or wards on the monster are responsible for part of its AC and dispelling it might help. The options are only limited to what you can imagine.
For great tension in a game, though, you want there to be risk of failure. Resist the urge to just hand the win to your players. Your job isn’t to make sure they win every encounter, that’s their job. They’ll sort it out themselves. Maybe they don’t, though, and they’re taken alive. Maybe the entire party wipes and properly dies, but in 100 years someone enters their tomb and ressurrects them to perform some task that they’re uniquely suited for. Maybe some sketchy wizard who wants something from them and has been scrying on them for the past week teleports them away, only to back them into a corner and try to make them do something against their interests or beliefs. Maybe they’re captured and lose this particular fight, but are able to rest wherever they’re being held and find others to help them secure their belongings and fight back.
In general, don’t worry about how the dice are rolling. They’re meant to be out of your control, but you can do literally anything with the world.
