Cursed dice

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Cursed dice

 

I remember having a very Madmartigan moment during one Hawkmoon game. Martin, my character, was arguably one of the best swordsmen in the land. Around 115% with a longsword, on a percentile system.

 

From the start of this one game, I could NOT keep a sword. I broke 17 swords in the course of the game, assaulting a Granbretanian prison to rescue an important political prisoner. It got to the point where we were looping back around looking for swords we'd left on dead guys to keep me armed.

 

That wasn't so much cursed dice on my part tho, because IIRC most of those breaks came from parrying incoming critical hits.

[Gnaskar]

Re: Cursed dice

 

Red Dice:

My first pack of dice were red. I had had them for two years before ever playing a RPG. I learned to recognize a d12 from a d20 with those dice. And they always rolled normally, not too many good rolls, not too many bad. Until I actually started role-playing with them. After a year or so of consistently rolling low I bought new dice, and put the old ones in a box labeled "warning, for use as GM only! Keep out of reach of players." I use them when the players have done something stupid and need a lot of luck relative to the NPCs to survive.

 

Green dice:

I got a green d20 for christmas once. It has the unual quality of criting a third of the time. Eigher with a natrual 1 or a natrual 20...

 

Blue and Yellow dice:

My best set so far; bought because Orks in Warhammer 40k lore consider blue to mean lucky and yellow to mean rich. they have good days and they have bad days. But at least they have good days...

 

Conclusion:

My gaming group has houseruled "cursed dice". whenever someone has rolled consistantly bad with a given set of dice, they may declare them cursed and reroll with a different set. They may then not use the cursed dice for the rest of the day.

[teh bunneh]

Re: Cursed dice

 

I have a set of d6 known as "The Dice of Shame." Whenever someone forgets their dice, they are required to use the Dice of Shame. The Dice of Shame are hideous to look upon -- bright schoolbus yellow with these sort of dark blue, not quite black pips. Also, they tend not to roll very well, regardless of who is using them. Once you use the Dice of Shame, you never forget your dice at home again.

[D. Guss Tibus]

Re: Cursed dice

 

Conclusion:

My gaming group has houseruled "cursed dice". whenever someone has rolled consistantly bad with a given set of dice, they may declare them cursed and reroll with a different set. They may then not use the cursed dice for the rest of the day.

That's a good idea!

 

I don't think I ever been in a campain that wouldn't be a good idea.

[ParagonAlpha]

Re: Cursed dice

 

I have a friend named Ringo who has the best dice luck in the world. I believe he has absorbed the collective good dice rolls of the universe.

 

We were playing a game of L5R and Ringo was playing a Crab Bushi, and playing to the sterotype, big jovial and strong as 10 oxes (shouldn't that be oxi?)?

 

Anyway Ringo knew his dice luck was always good so took a ton of raises on a roll making his target number something like 45 (in L5R this is just plain ridiculous).

 

Ringo gathers his dice (8d10's) and sets them in front of him, closes his eyes, bows his head and takes a deep breath then exhales. He picks up all his dice and rolls them. The results were staggering.

 

He rolled 6 10's and 2 9's. In the L5R system they have a roll x number of dice, keep x number of dice and add them together to reach a target number.

Ringo's character got to keep 5 dice. The GM allowed players who rolled 10's to re-roll them to add to the total. So Ringo re-rolls the 5 10's and rolls 4 10's and 1 9. Re-rolling the 4 10's resulted in 3 8's and 1 7. His total Target Number rolled was 130.

 

One player sat in awe and then simply asked:

 

"Ringo, did you just channel your dice fu?"

 

From that day on we refer to good dice rolls as "Ringo's Dice Fu".

 

He also played a mage in Shadowrun and was always found of summoning really, really, really big spirits. Incredibly high target numbers to succeed and lots of hurt in return. He'd always succeed in summoning them but take so much damage from doing so we started referring to his character by pointing out he was succesful but was bleeding out of his butt.

[D. Guss Tibus]

Re: Cursed dice

 

I almost forgot about The Odd Ball. Guy owned a d20 he swore rolled an odd number more often it ought. Said hed sat down rolled in 250 times, got odd number 72%. He always said "72%".

 

He'd use it anytime he wanted to pretend to give someone a 50/50 chance. Every time I saw hiim do it, it would come up odd.

 

 

 

PA: oxen.

[Badger]

Re: Cursed dice

 

Any game where character generation has been by dice roll. I will most certainly get as worse a roll as you can get on EVERY roll. (which explains my hatred for such a way of doing character generation)

[Badger]

Re: Cursed dice

 

For years, my wife has claimed bad luck with dice.

 

So over a 3 month period (playing at least once a week), we tracked her dice rolls. She would switch dice through sessions sometimes, or borrowing dice from other players - she would make a point of using the same dice for attacks, skill rolls and damage...

 

In this three month stretch her average roll for damage was 3.01. Her average single die roll for all skill checks and attacks was 3.94 (or so I remember i being mid .90s).

 

So we had fairly solid proof with a decent statistical sample, with different dice (so we knew it wasn't a bad die) that she always rolled low on damage, and high on attacks and skills.

 

When she got a Palm, and started using an electronic dice program (with rolls in the open), it went away.

 

 

Yeah, since theoretically if you roll one of each number you have an average of 3.5. Half a point difference would be fairly significant. I'll have to track that for myself sometime.

 

Though, I would be loathe to try any electronic die roller thing for an actual game character. Because I am convinced electronic equipment absolutely without compromise hate me more than John Connor.

[Ian Mackinder]

Re: Cursed dice

 

'7th Sea' .

 

There was this one guy who was absolutely notorious in our group for ridiculously good rolls. I must emphasize that he did not cheat, it is just that 10-sided dice (the only dice used in '7th Sea') really really seemed to like him.

 

Except for this one time ...

 

The party was in the midst of a major shipboarding action. This guy made one of his customary ridiculous rolls to kill a Brute (base-level bad guy). Given what he rolled, I decided that the Brute had been killed outright (the usual fate for Brutes when facing Heroes in 7th Sea) and that the guy's rapier had gone completely through to become firmly stuck in the deck.

 

The PC was reluctant to leave his weapon, it being Dracheneisen and all, so he opted to try and extract it. Simple enough.

 

Trouble was, something very strange happened to him luck-wise. I don't know what, maybe the Gawds do occasionally grant wishes to GMs. Anyhow, no matter how hard the PC tried, he just could not make a low-level Brawn (Strength) roll. The Character had a good Brawn, and all he had to do was make a fairly routine die roll, but that simply Would Not Happen. About eight consecutive times. The scene was hilarious - here he was in the midst of a major battle, trying to yank his sword out of the deck, in between dodging bad guys and telling fellow partymembers, "Stop laughing and HELP me, damn it!" and demanding to know what voodoo I had done to his dice.

 

He might also have accused me of enjoying his discomfiture a little too much. That is possible - I was laughing pretty hard.

 

All this, mind you, despite my giving him a minor bonus after the first couple of tries, figuring he had to at least be loosening the damn thing. Alas, his troubles were far from over.

 

Things got worse, much worse. He fumbled twice in a row (rolled all 1's, a house rule of mine). I was kind enough to decree that (instead of the sword breaking or the Character getting a hernia) he slipped, smacked the pommel with his chest and actually drove the sword further into the timbers. Which, of course, made his task even harder.

 

Yeah, the Character did eventually extract the weapon. He gave the bad guys what for thereafter, but everybody will always remember that little "problem" he had. Him, especially.

[Greywind]

Re: Cursed dice

 

Every serious moment needs a bit of levity...

[Ian Mackinder]

Re: Cursed dice

 

Every serious moment needs a bit of levity...

 

Well, my credo has always been that it is not REAL swashbuckling action without some comedy.

[Greywind]

Re: Cursed dice

 

Just woe to the one that is the comedy...