Heroes cursed by the dice...

[Mayday]

I've known several of these. The first was mine, an elven fighter, (her highest stat a 14 and average of 9) who could NOT fire a bow into melee that included teammates without hitting the teammate, or worse, his special paladin warhorse.... She also never once made her 90% elven resistance to Enc/Charm/Sleep spells. However she also could not be hit in melee combat.

 

The DM of the time had a capture scenario once, hordes of rats that gradually whitled down the team to unconsciousness fairly quickly, all but me. After several hours of this the rats are almost all dead, hundreds of them and he grabs some robed miniatures and has me save versus Sleep... Always wondered what took him so long. :-)

 

Her teammate was a hulking barbarian who had the inability to make a successful attack roll against a female. We two fell into a trap pit together, directly into the empty main chamber of the tomb of an evil high priest. Unable to locate a door he picks up this oily looking glowing black mace a statue of the priest is holding and gets Possessed. Did I mention my character was female?

 

Out of respect I won't bring up the enraged-housewife-with-the-frying-pan incident....

 

Happens in Champions too... Mayday has a horrible time rolling damage with her Ego Attack.

 

Bat Girl (as in baseball) never missed an attack roll and generally did extreme damage when she hit.

 

SteelFront was invulnerable from the front and X2 everything in the back. Guess where he was always hit at.

[Vondy]

had you considered an exorcism for the character?

 

you see, your entire group puts on these silly bison fur hats with horns on them, turns out the lights in lieu of candles and then dances around the character sheet in the buff chanting the following...

[lemming]

My character Blazer had that problem early in her career. If I rolled above three per die on damage, it was a good night.

 

My current curse seems to be very specific. None of my NPCs can make a PER roll. Doesn't matter what the roll is, I'll then miss the roll.

[TheEmerged]

If you've ever seen my writeup for myself, you know I always include a "Bastard Child of Fate" setup -- equal amounts of Luck and Unluck, usually on the high end for the campaign. For example, my 350-point writeup has 10d6 of each.

 

The reason for this is that, in general, that's barely an exaggeration even in real life. I joke that were I to ever buy a lottery ticket one of two things would happen -- I'd win, or lose my job.

 

Think I'm kidding? The following is not an exaggeration. Ever play Risk? One particular game came down to me attacking the last player -- Greenland to Iceland, my 43 attacking armies (44 on the territory) versus his 2. Iceland is the only territory in the game I don't control. We begin rolling; first turn is my 3 dice versus his 2. We split, resulting in my 42 attackers versus his 1, and from here on out it is going to be my 3 dice against his one. All I have to do is get one of those 3 dice higher than the defender's result (defender wins ties), and I win the game.

 

I proceed to lose the next 42 rolls. Yeah, technically the last two were my 2 dice against his 1 and single dice vs single dice, but still...

 

See what I mean? I'm the GM who rolls an 11d6 and tends to come up with 5 6's and 6 1's (don't laugh, I've seen that exact result too many times).

 

When I say the large number of dice involved are one of the things that drew me to HERO, I'm not joking. Large # of dice means my bipolar dice tendencies tend to even out.

[Jayde Tiger]

When I say the large number of dice involved are one of the things that drew me to HERO, I'm not joking. Large # of dice means my bipolar dice tendencies tend to even out.

 

I feel for you Emerged, I really do!!

 

We had a player in a number of campaigns that was NEVER allowed to even touch anyone elses dice, lest the curse be spread. It got to be the cruelest display of superstition I ever saw.

 

At one point, he was playing a character who could create weapons "out of thin air" by reworking the unique energy that he held within his body. The hero was called Flintlock. (VPP with Energy Reserve).

 

To the best of my memory, he managed to hit each and every one of his fellow heroes, except for one, at least once in the game. I used to make up these incredibly ludicrious rolls for him to hit his fellows who where engaged in melee with his target, after he missed his initial roll (i.e. roll anything but "3" and your shot misses completely). He struck his team mates more times than not, and rarely hit his opponents unless someone else managed to lower their DCV's to pitiful levels.

 

I can still remember the chorus of "I abort to dodge!" from my PLAYERS the day that Flintlock announced he was conjuring a Flamethrower!!!

 

Thanks for listening

J

[Morningstar]

Mayday,

 

I'm curious, did you tell your Dm that Elves are immune to sleep?

[BoloOfEarth]

Hard-luck Thief

 

I played in a Fantasy Hero game long ago, and drew up a half-elven thief. On paper, the character was pretty good. Too bad that I couldn't roll worth beans whenever I played that character.

 

We were exploring a dungeon with numerous traps. All of the other characters, including those without Stealth and Concealment, managed to avoid every trap. My character got his foot chopped off by a floor trap, a crossbow bolt in the forehead (luckily he wore a helmet), and an arrow in the shoulder. We had to make two trips back to town, each time visiting a priest with healing spells, just to keep my character alive.

 

In a later game, my character was grabbed and taken before the top guys in the Thieves Guild because we had found the Master Thief (already dead) in the aforementioned dungeon, and my character had taken his (magical) lockpicks and thieving tools.

 

When the guild accused me of killing the Master Thief, I showed them my wounds and scars, then said, "Do you really think I'm competant enough to kill anybody, let alone the Master Thief?!"

 

They let me go.

[Agent X]

Ummm, maybe you should buy skill levels that are conditional: only after failing two or more rolls you statistically should have made?

[BoloOfEarth]

Originally posted by Agent X

Ummm, maybe you should buy skill levels that are conditional: only after failing two or more rolls you statistically should have made?

 

I ran a game where one player would roll his dice individually, and after the first two would say "only a 6 can hurt me now." And of course, he then rolled a 6 almost every time.

 

Eventually, as a freebie I gave him an Overall Level with Incantations ("Only a six can hurt me now").

[Alibear]

Ah my eyes, my poor eyeses.

 

Turn off the spotlight writing NOW or feel my wrath! (at half ocv)

["V"]

Back in the heady days of my student life during the 1980s, Games Workshop had just released the "Judge Dredd" roleplaying game. Pretty basic stuff, but Dredd had quite a following back then so we played it quite a lot.

 

One of the characters, Judge Grendel, semed to be jinxed. Almost every time she rolled (percentile based skill system) she fumbled.

 

For some reason she ended up as a "floating character" that new players could pick up and use, and the jinx followed her regardless of who was playing her. It became a running joke in the group.

 

Two particular incidents stand out.

 

In the first Judge Grendel had to shoot out the massive plate glass windows of a city block about thirty feet from her. The referee ruled that she could only possibly miss on a fumble since she was effectively shooting point blank at a tower block (I think a roll was only called for since it was Grendel and everyone knew what could happen...).

 

Roll... 00 (naturally). Grendel sneezes as she fires and sprays the immediate area with bullets. Colleagues dive for cover as was their habit whenever Grendel was on patrol.

 

Second incident... skirmish gone wrong, Judges end up behind cover pinned down by bad guys. Grendel decides to get some heavy backup, gets on her radio and calls her Bike Computer "Bike, to me!". Straight line between bike and Grendel runs right over two comrades lying prone behind cover. Referee allows Grendel's player to roll for the intelligence of her bike computer... You can guess the rest.

[Mayday]

Morningstar. Not immune to sleep, just 90% Immune. Which is why I was always rolling 94s and 98s.

[Klytus]

One Wee Lass in our Saturday D&D games once pulled off the statistically bewildering feat of rolling eight (8) 1's in a row! And this wasn't counting all the 1's she rolled while doing practice rolls to get the unluck ot of her dice!

 

And then there was a half-eld character I once played in a Rolemaster game. I only got to play him once because while he had awesome stats, he must have been cursed with 10d6 of unluck - combat only. When playing this guy, I couldn't even run into a WALL on purspose. No matter how solid my defesnes, I was always getting hit and taking criticals, too.

 

He met his ignoble death when I was using a pair of magic boot to fly up after a wizard. I got my leg cut off, and since boots only work in pairs, I plummeted about 30', adding further injury to injury. The icing on the cake was the fireball the wizard cast - which I, a recent unwilling ampute, was unable to dodge. The spell killed me. But on the plus side, the fireball cauterized that nasty leg wound

[Adventus]

This thread makes me think of a character I had in a d6 Star Wars campaign. He was a merc in power armor, Krail210 to be exact. He had it modified to have full blown sensor package, 7d6 Per and repulsorlift installed. When ever I went to make a Per roll with the sensors off I would make the roll no problem. When I turned on my sensors , all ones. It got to the point I started calling it a sensor glitch and spent a huge amount of money to get it fixed. It didn't help.

[johnflang]

In Wildcat's Champion's game, I had a character named CyberKnight whose powers were based on an activation roll of 14- with side effects. I have never rolled so many 15's on 3d6 in my life. I took my self out of more fights than the enemy ever did.

[Klytus]

Ack! This is all reminding me of mey VERY first Champs character, way back in the days of Champs II & III. This guy was so lame, I have apparantly blotted his name from my memory! I remeber he was a martial artist with a magical talisman that gave him enchanced senses and flight. I also remember that I didn't invest too many points in defenses or STUN, because I had such a high DEX and SPD, the whole idea was not to get hit.

 

I trust you all see where this is going? No matter how much I dodged, aborted to dodge/dove for cover, this dude kept getting wasted! One shot would STUN me, then I'd get knocked into la-la land by someone else. I think this dude even lost to the Geodesics!

 

But somehow, I can't help but feel even if I knew more about how to make a good character, this dude would STILL have been a failure - just like my poor Rolemaster half-elf in my previous post.

[Vondy]

I haven't ever had a character with cold dice, but I did have one with notably hot dice.

 

With that said I do have a player who is cursed when making perception rolls, and another who has lost every dex contest for initiative they've been in for 13 years running.

[DocSubtlety]

I've had some bad nights, but no cursed characters. I *have* noticed that rolling hot seems to go with game mastering, in my group, though.

 

The worst case of it I can remember happened when afriend and I were co-GMing Sorcerer (which involves tons of 10 sided dice). The players got into an introductory fight that they should've won: 1 bad guy of PC level against 3 fully prepared PCs. No surprises, no tricks.

 

The monster critted the first two guys in about nothing flat, and the third player *barely* took it out before also needing serious medical help. After the fight, my friend and I just started rolling hits, to see how long the streak would last. The players watched us taking turns rolling the dice. We got twenty or thirty hits in a row - not a single miss, and most of them were also criticals.

 

We never played another session of Sorcerer.

 

(I've also had some characters that always rolled hot, but nothing like that.)

[JohnOSpencer]

I am personally quite lucky with dice. My dice only tend to go south when it doesn't really matter. But a friend of mine had horrible luck. We were playing MSH and during character creation he made the biggest piece of poo ever. Finally I asked him if he wanted to use a premade character. He decided to use longshot so his tens die was always the high one. Our first session he had no roll over 66. Next session he came in with a little toy clapper thing, and brand new dice he had never touched. This did the trick, he managed to roll average.

 

John Spencer

[Killer Shrike]

I have ok to good luck in RPGs, but my luck in wargames was always abyssmal. Playing WH4k for example, Id roll maybe 5 or 6 6s per game, and several dozen 1's, without fail.

 

In rpg's my luck seems to run with characters. Some characters can literally do no wrong, and others were mediocre on the die effects. One character in particular, Jeff Chen, from a Section M campaign (DEMON HUNTER: FBI), was king of 3's. At least one per session, and in one session no fewer than 5. He never rolled a fumble. His 3's werent just fortuitous, they were all cinematically appropriate; he'd pull them off at key times; he came off as this insanely talented guy, because he'd pull off Jackie Chan-like acrobatics and Jet Li-esque martial arts moves on 3's. Most of his rolls that werent 3's were sub-6. The guy was impossible. By comparison his partner Jarred Cole was an 18 rolling fool. He was a Suppresor, meaning he was a powerful psychic who subconsciously Suppressed anything supernatural (including other psychics) because his conscious mind refused to believe in anything not part of the natural order of the world, so we explained away his "point deficiency" caused by paying for the expensive Suppressor package as him being a rookie, where as the skill and martial arts heavy Jeff Chen was a veteran agent. As it played out, he had survived 4 other partners over the course of a year, because they would get killed but Jeff Chen would fight his way out of trouble. It was great; Chen would constantly call Kole "The Wookie" (I played him with a chino-american accent similar to the guy from Fistful of Yen") and berate him for his incompetence; "You know what the best thing about loosing a pahtnah in the field is, Wookie? All the fwee basket leave! No stop #$#@ing awound and get up here!", after Kole slipped off a high wire and hung suspended, struggling to hold on, due to an 18- rolled crossing a high wire between buildings at 5 stories up to sneak into a club suspected of harboring a vampiric cult attempting to summon Shiva -- Jeff Chen of course had acrobatics and rolled a 3, so he just walked across it like he was on the ground. At one point Kole and Chen were holed up in an elevator by some cultists with automatic weapons, with three supernats in custody in various states of battering. The elevator opens on the ground floor and the cultists open fire, killing one of the subjects in custody. Chen and Kole take cover beside the doors, Kole has the suspect we really want over his shoulder due to the culprits leg accidentally getting shot to hell while resisting arrest, and meta-game wise to keep his powers Suppressed. Chen snap-shots a PER check around the corner to take stock of the situation and sees the 3 SMG-packing assailants for sure and there might be more out his view. He glances across the open elevator doors and says to Kole, "I'm pwetty shuh I can get out of this, but I think youw might be scwewd" , then dives out through the door, breakfalls to his feet while Fast Drawing his gun, shoots one enemy in the head from across the hall, goes first next phase, Nerve Strikes the one he rolled up next to last phase into a stupor, gets completely missed by the third opening fire on him from further down the hall the next Phase, drops to a knee (brace IIRC) and pops the third cultist in the chest. Kole by this time has drawn his weapon after failing a Dex check (because the guy he was carrying was drapped over his shoulder, blocking his access to his weapon, and rounded the corner of the elevator with his gun out looking for a target. Chen looks around and says "Thanks pahtnah. FOR NOTHING. #$@^ing Wookie. Gwab that othah collah and go wait in the cah." while shaking his head in disgust.

 

As a side note, and perhaps the funniest moment Ive ever been party to in a RPG, was on thier next case file Chen and Kole were teamed up with another pair of agents for a case in San Fran (2 new players). One of the 2 new agents insists that Chen and Kole have to try an In & Out Burger (its a California thing), so they go thru the drive thru. Both of the new agents are also fairly hard core, and they all pick up the cue from Chen and start dumping on the Rookie Kole, making him carry the luggage, drive, and otherwise keeping him down. Kole gets so agitated he takes it out on the drive thru kid (picked up and played out by one of the other players), getting real pushy and lippy with the guy. One of the Milkshakes was forgotten on the order, so he gets real nasty with the poor kid behind the window about the "Gawd-@#*% shake!" so the kid snaps and pitches it at him; the GM requires a DEX roll, and of course Kole rolls another 18. The shake spills all over him, of course, and the rest of the agents laugh at him. Kole snaps and goes thru the window of the car, and the drive thru, throttling the fast food kid and cursing Christmas Story style. The rest of us are so shocked we cant do anything but laugh in RL, falling out of our chairs and shooting soda thru the nose. The other In & Out employees jump into the fray, dog piling Kole, hitting him with a french fry basket, etc, and some food was inadvertantly spilled into the mix to add to the shake. Finally, I get control of my laughter both in real life and in character, and Chen gets out of the SUV and goes into the In & Out, flashing his badge and saying something to the effect of "Fedewal Agent! Up against the wall! Do you know the penalty foh assaulting an Fedewal Agent? I should put you all in cuffs!" and basically bs'd through it. As Kole and Chen are going back to the SUV, Chen says "What the $^#$, Wookie? If you wanted moh fwench fwies, you could have just asked.", as he pulled a mashed french fry out of his ear.

 

 

 

 

When Im the GM however, my dice get real hot. When I was running a 3e campaign a couple of years ago, a bought some of those Chessex oversized d20s, and I used those for major NPCs/Monsters. One in particular was a 20 rolling monster; as it was purple, the group took to calling it

"The Purple Widow Maker"

; I could always tell when they were feeling the pressure when they would start insisting I use another die.

[Wyrm Ouroboros]

Well, I've never had such horrid luck, but one of my fellow players had absolutely abysmal luck with his dice -- but only when he was trying to kill other PCs, which was generally at a 'once every other game' frequency. And the thing of it was, he was always so close -- in Battlelords of the 23rd Century, for example, a %-based system, he tried a headshot at my character and missed by a lousy 2%. (It may have been the fact that he adored trying for headshots that caused him such grief, but that's Otis for ya...)

 

Of course, at that point I quickdrew my two hubba-hubba money-money-money weapons and blew the 2-million-credit weapon he'd been using away. The expression on his face was priceless...

[Tech]

Thank You, All!

 

My many thanks to all of you! I'm not alone with horrible dice rolls. Here's some of me and my group's experiences (and by the way, I'm not superstitious but ya gotta wonder sometimes...):

 

My older brother has a martial arts character called Hawk. He picked up the nick-name "Mister 4.0 average". It was only with the character, too. It wasn't the dice because we all used them. He's got close to 300 6-sided dice, I think.

 

My twin brother had a character, now retired, called Prism. Whenever he attacked, we all waited for "the Prism touch." I have no idea what happened but whenever he got into this groove, there was simply no way he could do wrong with his dice rolls. More than once, he needed a perfect 3 to hit and he rolled it easily. Eventually, it seemed it started to rub off on the group.

 

Our current group, on the other hand, seems cursed when it comes to hitting that dreaded DCV of 7. Now, DCV 7 is on the low-side of DCV's in our campaign but still a nice DCV. The players still groan when a GM pulls out a villain with a DCV 7. Why? We miss... frequently... very frequently! Happened a few days ago. Five misses in a roll with a OCV 8 vs DCV 7 for one character and a couple other characters missed as well.

 

In a different game, three characters ran across martial artists hitting DCV's of 10 or higher. *whack smack* They're hit. We switch to someone of DCV 7 and we miss. The martial artist gets back up at DCV 13 and *pow* he's hit. Go figure!

 

Now, for my all-time worse 'luck'. My character Angel, is OCV 8. I missed so many times, I actually started disliking the character but I hung in there. Now, that's not so bad except everytime I missed, I rolled a 14 on the dice. I mean, the odds against me consistently missing and rolling a 14 is nothing short of incredible. Whenever I missed, my friends said, "What'd you roll?" I frowned and said, "Guess!" They understood. The GM at the time felt so bad that he let me hit once, even though I rolled another 14 and missed. Now for those who think it was just the dice, the moment I bought one Overall level, things just started going like it should for the character. I don't know what to think sometimes. Ya gotta wonder, is all I can say.

[Tom McCarthy]

I have met my match...

 

One of the players wanted an animalistic close combat brawler (Arctic Cat) and wanted him fast. So I whipped out Fenris, tweaked a couple of numbers, and voila. Instant hero.

 

It's a few months later, the player has wracked up some XP, added a point of DEX, some nifty attack powers, and is quite happy with his character.

 

And he runs into Fenris. And loses dramatically. We're talking 2 BODY and 4 STUN on one hit from his 2D6 APx2 HKA (Claws). He switched to his 3D6 HKA (bite) and got 4 BODY and 12 STUN. He pushed the 2D6 HKA (Claws) for 2D6+1 and did another 4 BODY and 8 STUN.

 

Meanwhile, Fenris hits him for 10 BODY (4 BODY after defences) in the Vitals. And 3 BODY is enough to sever a limb...

 

With the Cat down, he got to run the NPC Kinetik, though he was warned that if he 'lost' another hero, they wouldn't give him a third one to run that night.

 

===================

 

Prior to running the Cat, this player ran an electrical EP with a forcefield, Vandegraff. vandegraff was overly worried about his secret ID, to the extent that when VIPER attacked and he was among the crowd, he picked up a folding chair and attacked the agent in Minotaur Exoskeleton armour without activating his forcefield. A turn later he regained consciousness under the stage, and realizing he had just 4 STUN and 4 END, elected not to activate his forcefield when he emerged and fired his EB. The agents returned fire, hit him (8D6 EB vs. 5 ED), and he 'retired' beneath the stage for the remainder of the fight.

 

=============

 

The dice know who's at the plate. - quote inside the cover of the APBA baseball game rulebook

[Tim]

When I play a character my rolls are usually average (or slightly on the low side). When I GM orget about me hitting.

 

It doesn't matter the system either. If there is a fight and I GM I can't hit. In D&D it also applied to rolling HPs. I've literally rolled a 10HD monster's hp and came up with 14!

 

I'm also the only person I know who has rolled a natural 3 on 3d6 weighted to roll 18.

 

TimS.

[Pogo]

I'm bipolar with dice, in that it depends on the game. I started with Torg in one group, and was the worlds worst roller -- 1d20, higher is better. In one adventure I had 13 rolls, 12 below 10. The one over 10 was to do something really, really stupid

 

Then I began running and playing Champions. Apparently I sold my soul for this game. I think the 54 stun on a 10d6 (no that's not a typo) EB frightened the other players.

 

There was one player to whom we gave the 1 point disad, "must roll own dice."