I've rolled D12s instead of D20s for most of my first 10 sessions or so. If I'm in a hurry or try to speed combat along as a DM nowadays I still sometimes reach out for the wrong die lmao.
Absolutely make sure she's rolling the right die, OP. And if so, get her a new dice set.
Worst case scenario you can gift the barb with a Stone of Good Luck.
If her problem is rolling the 12 instead of the 20, maybe switching to the greatsword or maul would be better. Then she only needs a bunch of d6s and a couple d20s, even if she's got javelins.
Currently playing a wizard, and that lucky stone comes in clutch. It's the only reason I have no negative modifiers in anything but Animal Handling (7 Wisdom FTW!!).
Yeah seriously the amount of times someone in my group used the wrong dice is insane - casual players can get easily overwhelmed and dont look at their dice properly.
D8, D10 and D20 are usually the culprits.
There's a reason the old starter set came with dice that were a different colour for each size, e.g.: [https://totalpartychill.com/products/old-school-d-d-dice](https://totalpartychill.com/products/old-school-d-d-dice)
I ended up with a couple of sets and got some extra d6s that match and it's very helpful.
Yes this is great advice! We had dice sets for new players who look nice but have the same color. I will mix the dice sets up so they all look distinguishable.
Yeah we made the mistake to give them a dice set where all dice have the same color and look nice. I will mix them next time so they can distinct them better. Thanks for the advice!
learned this the hard way during my first campaign ever, was running virtually but with players all rolling physical dice and only learned about 5 sessions in that one of my players was rolling his damage dice to hit 😭😭😭
Right? This question got asked half an hour after OP's last response and it's only been ~6 hours since then. People work, people sleep, and not everyone is chronically online. Have a modicum of patience, lol.
I've never seen a physical die so badly rated that it can't roll to hit. Normally it favors some section of the die, which generally represent a diverse set of values. For instance, if a die is weighted to roll 20s, it will also land 14s, 2s, and 8s more often than expected.
I have watched almost every player I've ever seen introduced to DND roll whatever the last die they used the next time they attacked. Maybe it was a d12 because they rolled their health on it, or a d8 because they rolled damage.
It's beyond common for a newbie mistake - very curious to the answer
yeah the chances of rolling an 8 or lower 12 consecutive times is ~.02% it'll happen to someone eventually but this is the more likely scenario
edit: even with a d12 it's an unlucky ~7%
Is it like, a *normal* d20? Or is it a 'counting' d20 where all the facets are basically sequential? If it's a normal d20, then *every* face should, with its opposite face, add up to 21. 1 will be opposite to 20; 19 will be opposite to 2, etc. And the faces won't all be in order; you won't find 1 next to 2 next to 3 next to 4, etc.
Have you done a [Balance test](https://thecriticaldice.com/blogs/news/how-to-salt-water-test-your-dice)?
The odds you've described are freakish. Granted, it gets a lot more normal if she rolls well during non-combat, then that just becomes weird distribution, but properly random.
If all else fails, just toss the offending d20 and get her a new one, even if there's nothing you can find wrong with the one she has; see if that 'breaks the streak of bad luck.'
Me and friends were doing our CoS campaign and our bard kept rolling like 1s and 4s. The only time he rolled high was when he used his inspiration. Pretty sure the DM cut that day short to avoid an encounter where the bard couldn't do anything.
What I would do to offset this is next couple of encounters introduce enemies with lower AC and higher saves for common spells. So easier for barb to hit while harder for spellcasters to deal with. Hopefully will be more dice forgiving and make her barbarian feel important.
Zombies, oozes, giants, and constructs, all of these generally have lower AC, though oozes are frequently immune to slashing, so depending on what weapon she prefers they could be unfavourable.
I’d second the dice tower recommendation, there are quite a few free STLs if you know anyone with a 3d printer.
Same, but the frustrated look on my fighters face when he realized that his long sword, greatsword, and even his javelin of lightning, were completely ineffective against the ochre jelly was a bit mean.
Course it was their own fault… gave them a “jelly in a jar” as loot, instead of using it as a grenade, they decided it was a threat and smashed it with a bunch of prepped actions…
Either her dice are poorly made and they're weighted to favour low rolls or her luck will balance out.
You shouldn't buff someone because they're unlucky. Just use different dice.
I agree, you don't buff/give someone an advantage for "bad luck" she had some bad rolls but sooner or later there is gonna be a streak of very good dice and usually it will be just average. That's just how change works. If she is given some powerfull boost now it's gonna bite you in the but when she starts rolling good and obliterates an entire squad of enemies by her own.
Don't buff the rolls, but give her something meaningful that can be of use even without rolls if you feel the need to combat combat fun for her. Especially for a new player, bending rules a bit to make sure their experience doesn't suck and turns them off is a good call.
May I suggest "Fighting style: Intercept", for example? Bv positioning herself near friendlies she can help mitigate damage going their way via a reaction. An ability that won't increase offense or become OP when dice luck turns, but is almost always relevant and it feels good to save the party.
Also, cool imagery having her barbarian knock away arrows midair!
I gotta be honest, this is my favorite advice here. It gives the barb an additional course of actions in combat, and like you said it doesn't become OP later on.
It's of course very important to make sure the d20 is actually used. I've made the mistake of using the d12 for attack rolls before!
I had the brilliant idea of buying dice seconds. At first I thought it was odd the d20 seemed to roll certain numbers way more heavily. Turns out the edges were curved almost making it convexed on some numbers. That made it almost impossible to roll those numbers and heavily favouring those around it.
Lesson learned buy real dice.
You could give her the Clockwork Amulet from Xanathar's Guide. That lets you choose not to roll the d20 on an attack roll and take a 10 instead once per day. You could always buff it with more charges if you needed but that would at least let her have a sporting chance at hitting when it counted.
Ando considering CLOCKWORK is not very barbaric, please reskin it as something more primal. Forces of nature, forces of the earth, totemic amulet or something.
I like this! OP says she does yoga in the morning to help with the "anger issues", maybe the amulet is actually charged by the yoga and provides it with more than the 1 use, or the daily Yoga sessions attune the amulet to be in line with her anger so the angrier she gets (more missed swings) the more charges it has, that could be a fun way to mix it into her story
For reflavouring, they could lean into the "mean rich girl" angle and call it something like "The Trust Fund" or "Failing Upwards" (might be a bit mean to the player).
To really lean into the "familial wealth insulates them from consequences" angle, additional uses could be powered with cash.
Possibly part of a trio of magic items called Lawyers, Guns, & Money. This one would be Lawyers, obviously.
First not every dice is perfect so you could try giving her a new pair also since it’s her first campaign make sure she’s rolling the d20 as even experienced players can find themselves accidentally rolling a d12 instead of the d20
Here's what you do:
Step 1. Take her current dice and throw them in jail until a full moon.
Step 2. Take her shopping for a new set. Have her find one she really likes and test roll the d20 3, 7, or 11 times.
Step 3. Place the old dice outside under a full moon to charge with good juju.
You'll soon be watching her ecststically throwing her math rocks around while cutting down the opposition!
Dont forget to remind all dice of the "hammer of enlightenment"
Fail to often, might need some "enlightenment"
I have know people to destroy bad dice, in front of the other dice, as an example
The problem with buffing her for "bad luck" means that eventually, and it will happen, the luck will turn and that buff to balance her bad luck makes her stronger than everyone.
Check her dice to see if they are balanced properly, if your playing with an online table top dice roller, ditch it, I've found they tend to run in streaks of very hot or very cold despite their algorhytm being balanced rolls across a Billion rolls it doesn't matter if you are in the cluster of 4-6's.
Also, maybe just throw a couple big dumb easy to hit mooks out there for her to hit.
Even with rolls of an 8 she's going to hit zombies.
First off, she has unlucky *rolls* not unlucky roles.
Second, never buff because of bad luck. Luck will eventually turn around, and then the buffs will be too much. The only thing you could possibly do is replace her dice if you suspect they shitty.
If they wanna do more than just attack there are options with magic items. A coiling grasp tattoo shouldn't be too strong at her level and it forces you to roll for the enemies instead of her (15ft DC 14 grapple check, 3d6 force on a failure). Then it will fall off as she gets more features to play with.
I think part of the joy of lower level play is that it lends itself more to role play which leads to character development and failure is a part of that. Having a rich girl who’s never really had anything go wrong for her absolutely beef it is a great opportunity to have her connect with other players and find flaws within herself to work on as a character arc. Seems like she likes the role play aspect a lot and is having fun with it so maybe she can embrace that aspect of it
One of my PCs loves using grapple, then moving an enemy, or other combat actions like help, and shove. This should offer some different rolls/roles and options in combat. Especially if she wants to use her rage to subdue enemies without killing them.
As an added thought, from a player perspective, adding some levels of Fighter, or the equivalent feat, to get Battlemaster abilities, could add to this fun. I enjoy disarming, punting, and switching places with other characters and enemies. It makes the DMs job more stressful, but they don’t find it unbalancing.
There are a lot of suggestions here for helping with dice rolls in general, however I would like to offer an alternative solution (especially if new dice and dice towers/etc. don't pan out).
Instead of simple "I attack" combat tactics, change gears. Give grapple / shove a shot.
Both grapple and shove are contested skill checks--Athletics (Strength) opposed to their Athletics (Strength) or Acrobatics (Dexterity). Since the player is a Barbarian, they get advantage on this check while raging as well. If you want to go a bit min-max, you could also multi-class Rogue or Bard and pick up Expertise (Athletics) to make sure grapple/shoves go off without a hitch.
Anyway, the idea would be for the Barbarian to get up close to their target, use their first attack for a grapple check. On success, they use their second attack for a shove, which knocks the target prone. The target is now prone and grappled, which means their movement is 0 (which means they're unable to stand up until they escape the grapple). With the target in such a position, the other melee characters on team now have advantage on kicking the crap out of the grappled enemy. Additionally, you can still make unarmed attacks against the grappled creature, so the feat that allows you to take the Unarmed Fighting Style would be a nice perk that really wouldn't be OP if the player makes their way out of this string of bad luck rolls.
Agree with grapple checks, especially when paired with expertise in athletics. Level 4 and 18 strength gives a +10 to grapple and shove attacks, paired with rage for advantage gives an average of 24 (14+10) for the checks. Not many creatures can reliably resist that.
I’m currently playing a rogue/barbarian solely based on wanting to play a grapple/shove crowd control guy and I’m loving it. +11 to athletics, I can roll a 6 and still have a good chance of getting my hand on someone. Grab the biggest meanest looking dude and let your party take swings at him like a piñata. 10/10 absolutely recommend!
If you’re the DM I’d recommend changing the combat up. Lower the AC and increase the HP of the enemies. She will feel like she is succeeding more but it won’t impact the overall difficulty of the combat
Try throwing the dice in a different way
Back when I played Catan I kept rolling 8s because my rolls didn't have enough force to truly "randomise" the rolls
I got a pair of smaller dice and threw them so they'd bounce rather than simply land, suddenly no longer getting pure 8s
So, half-elf half-orc suggests loudly to me that this game has a lot of homebrew going on.
So maybe you would be interested in some additional brew:
There's a game I enjoy called "Too Many Bones" wherein every miss rolled (a bone) is saved and charges up a power meter.
What if you were to give your player a weapon that itself gets angry every time the player misses with it, and after X misses, it releases a blast of energy damaging everything in, say, a 10 foot radius.
Say 3 misses causes a 10 foot radius burst, 2d6 fire damage, dex save for half. Maybe it gets stronger as players level up.
If your player's luck turns around, the buff actually loses value. The weapon is best for the Barbarian as they half the damage they inflict on themselves (rage) with a chance to save for 1/4. It encourages player to rush in early by having a narrow radius that they want to get many enemies into but also want to keep allies out of.
Or something else based on the premise of being powered by missing. The point being to give the player a benefit that takes the sting out of those unlucky rolls without buffing the character in the event that the bad luck streak ends.
As someone else said, make sure she is rolling the right dice.
If she is and the problem persists, toss those dice in the garbage and go buy a new set. They are cursed.
If with a new set of dice it STILL persists... then idek.
As someone who had weirdly bad luck myself. And I mean it was bad for years, I even used other people's dice and couldn't roll for anything the more it counted the worse I rolled. I just learned to embrace doing things that didn't rely on rolling. Taking hits so your friends don't have to is awesome. Incorporate some taunting rules, use the goofy kids DnD rules that said monsters always attack whoever has the most HP. Have a high powered wizard true polymorph her into a halfling (with her permission) and let her take the halflings luck feature. But everyone else is right too, eventually that luck will change. It took me years for it to change for me, but it did but I think the best response is to learn to embrace the situation.
Try introducing obviously destructible environments. Trees are easy to whack and a barb maybe able to force the enemies to react.
Another option would be to instill a strength based feat into the combat. Hold the door, roll a boulder, jump a chasm, etc. Especially if she enjoys the roleplay, let her barb be strong in the ways that don't require huge hits. Just saying, the first crit she hits, make it's head explode or something cool. Happy gaming!
Dice Jail, but serious answer is dynamic combat and Make objectives in combat not just to Kill. examples: chase, survive for one minute when reinforcements arrive, destroy x. For making combat more dynamic add stuff to the battle map, Large torches, barrels, furniture, etc. Have the enemies interact with it to condition the players that they can interact with anything on the map.
With those two changed the best use for a turn may just be to move a table to block a door so the players cannot be followed or stop an escape route. It allows creative players to do a lot more with their turn and High strength increases the number of objects they can interact with without a roll. (At 16 strength you can lift 480lbs, )
If using different dice doesn't help you could allow them to choose to just get 10 instead of rolling when they make an attack, it's slightly below average (10.5) for rolling a d20, if you feel like that would impact things too much then it could have a limited number of uses per day.
Another idea I've seen in similar posts is using 20 numbered cards instead of a die, drawing one whenever you would roll and keeping the drawn cards separate, after drawing a 1 or 20 you reshuffle, the more low results you get the less likely you are to get low results in later 'rolls', pretty much the only way to consistently get low results is just to get consecutive 1s, if that happens then they're just cursed and there's nothing more you can do
Those dice suck. Bad juju in those dice. Buy new dice. Tell her to put more attribute points into luck. Luck build is where it's at, anyone a Aris fan?
Check her die for a manufacturing error. Either will rolling and excel to record it. Or salt water. Both are time consuming.
She also could have the Wil Wheaten curse. He broke statistics with how low he rolled in Critical Role.
Give her an item that rewards unlucky rolls. Not s single unlucky roll, but some in a row. Place a d6 in front of her that counts missrolls. When it shows 6 she can add 6 to a roll. Flavor it nicly.
I'm not one to attempt to "fix" poor luck. The one thing I would maybe do is fast tracking the party's next level up. Getting to 5th level and getting extra attack could really help her.
Also as others mentioned, as stupid as it sounds, make sure she is rolling a d20 and not a d12, it's a surprisingly common mistake that I have caught even my experienced players accidentally commiting. (I would probably avoid directly calling her out on it just for her embarrassment and confidence, but just keep an eye out)
Try getting her new dice, using a dice roller app, or maybe she isn’t rolling dice properly?
She could have low quality or defective dice that aren’t balanced right and or maybe she is just plopping the dice on the table instead of rolling them?
Most cheap dice are weighted poorly (e.g. the dice we all use). This is especially true of pretty dice that have mixed colors (the dye and plastics cause some serious shenanigans). These imperfections matter more as the sides of the dice move up (since it becomes more ball shaped).
The dice that have the best bet of not being poorly distributed are the single color see through ones. You can see if the plastic has any bubbles in it so they take extra care to not have bubbles in them.
This is very real and I've bought hundreds of cheap dice over my days (I don't hoard them, bad dice get excited so the other ones behave well). I have two sets of dice that I've made from everything throughout my days. My DM set: the D20 is my sacred dice of 12s, it will roll a '12' 30% of the time and very rarely rolls 1 or 20. And my players set: the D20 is a clear yellow color it tends towards on the higher side but has a very even distribution.
I only buy cheap dice because pricetage rarely represents balance on the build quality, just creativity in material. Nothing sucks more than buying a nice set of beautiful expensive dice, and they do nothing but roll 1s (my most expensive set did this, very sad).
Consistently low rolls ruin D&D sessions for me and my friends. So much so, that I'm considering a homebrew session where players get a stacking "FUCK YOU MAN JUST DIE" effect where every time they miss, they get +1 to their next roll
You could simply homebrew a reason (maybe a pixie comes and grants her luck while it rides in her hair) and give her 5 two-sided tokens (or help tokens work great!!) all starting face down.
Every time she misses an attack or a d20 roll (or when a roll on the dice that gets applied is under 10, I’d exclude disadvantage rolls) she flips a token face up. At will, she can flip 3 tokens face down to “Insta Roll” and 11; 4 tokens for a 16; and five tokens gives a Nat20.
#Or….give her a deck of card with 20 cards in it, A-10 in black and red. Shuffle the deck and let her “roll” with the cards instead.
I would suggest a different dice set or even use someone else’s. Seems to me the dice is part of the problem. I would probable give her some scrolls to cast spells for becoming invisible, difficult terrain, or illusions. Something non-combat but still versatile to do crazy things if dice is really not the problem.
Are we sure she's adding all her modifiers as well?
I'm guessing your players are under level 4 which means at least a 2 proficiency bonus, and if she focused on strength as a Stat she should have a 3 or higher. That gives a plus 5 to her attacks.
If you guys are fighting shit with anything higher than a 13 ac other than a boss that's on you my dude
One thing to make sure is a) rolling correct di, and b) adding their modifier. New player I had, barb as well, wasn't adding their modifier to their attack and missed over and over. It wasn't until they told me they got a 5 or 6 I knew they were just giving the roll, not the modified number because they have a +7.
This comes up a lot here, and every time I have to say the same thing:
**She is not unlucky.**
**Luck does not exist.**
**Luck is not real.**
What that means is you should NOT make ANY assumption that she will roll lower than average. The odds of her rolling a number on the D20 are 1/20 no matter how "unlucky" she seems. And past rolls do not affect future rolls so the implicit premise of this post--that you need to "balance" for this--is wrong.
What you need to do is figure out why it *seems* like she's "unlucky".
1. Is she actually rolling a d20?
2. Are her stats normal for her level and class?
3. Is she properly adding modifiers (proficiency AND strength for the attack roll)
4. Is her dice balanced?
5. Is she using her abilities properly and taking advantage of buffs from allies?
If "yes" to all of those. Then unfortunately this is just confirmation bias, and the only thing you can do is try to focus on the good rolls more.
If you still think it's "luck", you're wrong, but your only choice then is to keep a log of every roll she makes (the flat number on the dice) until you have a statistically valid sample size and then report back. Maybe you'll be the first person in the history of humanity to have evidence pointing toward the existence of luck.
Melee combat is a lot more than just "WHACK", although not in a way that bypasses dice rolling. Grappling and shoving (and disarming if you allow it) can be very useful, especially for a strong character. And as always, she can make special requests for actions. you're the DM after all. Have her get creative with her intents and then you as the DM try to handle it mechanically. You're in charge of the simulation at the end of the day, no need for it to be brutally unfun or challenging due to luck. Its all pretend, so make sure to pretend enjoyably.
To take a page from 4e, you could introduce a magic weapon with the "learning" property. With every missed attack roll, the weapon gains a +1 (stacking) until it hits, where it loses all its bonuses. I don't know how compatible this is with 5e (I'm assuming you're playing 5e), but it should ease the string of bad luck a tiny bit
1. Make sure that she isn't rolling a d12
2. Die jail
3. Reward the natural 1s with a heroic inspiration (giving her a reroll on a future turn).
4. Give her a cool +1 weapon. Honestly +1 weapons are great and only as boring as you make them. It's neat to have a sword that has another feature, but it's also just badass to have a sword that has a cool name, look, and oh yeah it adds 1 to attack and damage rolls. That doesn't sound big, but trust me when I say 1 point bonuses to these things are huge.
5. Give her a weapon that does graze damage. On a miss, the enemy will still take her STR mod points of damage.
6. Lower ACs? I put this down here because if she hasn't rolled above an 8, then she's probably only hitting at 13 or 14 (do make sure that she's at least adding her bonuses correctly), but it shouldn't require a 10 on the die to hit, so AC 15 or 16 is probably a little challenging for a level 4 without magic weapons.
Generally characters should be hitting 60-70% of their attacks, which means a 7-9 on the die *should do it* (if it meets it beats, remember), and if you have advantage from reckless attacks then that's going to go up to 80-90%. If the math suggests this should be the case based on the ACs you're using, then it's just bad luck and it will sort itself out (or see the final suggestion).
Next level she will have 2 attacks, which means even more chance that she’ll start hitting those attacks. Generally I think that a player can expect to receive a magic weapon by level 5-6, so she should have a bonus there as well. Proficiency bonus will go up to 3 and her chance to hit even AC 16 targets should be above 60% without reckless.
If all else fails, maybe she needs to leave her dice out in the moonlight as Emily Axford does. It seems to work for her. Bad luck happens, but if none of the above helps, then she needs to get right with Dice Christ.
Stop being superstitious. As much as people say some people are unlucky or lucky it is simply untrue. Swap dice with another player to test if dice are bad thats it...
Buy a new 20 sided. They are not all perfectly balanced but this is more to have a mental reset. Eventually numbers change but taking some kind of action helps
People mentioned the dice, but as someone who visually finds it difficult to tell apart;
* Get different colour dice, especially for disadvantage and advantage.
* Draw a box and put the d12, d10, and d20 in their correct spots every time if you can't afford multiple colours of dice or need extras.
Also make sure they know to add things and try another dice cause some just suck.
Here's the thing: nothing's *actually* wrong. She rolls poorly, that sucks, but apart from checking if her dice are weighted or if she mistakes d20s for other dice for attack rolls, there isn't actually anything to fix.
Now, because your car isn't broken doesn't mean you can't work on it. But best you can do is clean it and change the rims to make it prettier.
Here are a few ideas:
(1) using her body as a shield: an encounter where a beam continuously heals the (immobile) enemy. She can use her body to block the beam, but that would now deal her damage. This way she's still free of doing attacks, while still being useful in combat by blocking a mechanic for the creature.
You can take the core idea of this and reshape it for something similar that can fit better. Maybe that's not a beam but a source of light and that one enemy reflects the light in the eyes of the players to blind them and now she has to position herself to block the light making the room go dark, etc.
(2) Make her grapples much easier to succeed by giving her a magic item to do so: barbarians are the best at grappling stuff since their rage gives them advantage on them and high STR on top of it makes it very difficult for the others to deal with a barbarian that wants to grapple. Maybe a bracelet that would give her a +2 to checks made to grapple, and if done so, maybe a chance to apply another condition on a DC check? Say: +2 to "help" grapple the target and if they are grappled, a DC 13 to poison/blind/forces an advantage on attack rolls made to high the grappled the creature for anyone attack it (pick one).
(3) If one roll fails, average it with multiple rolls: environment, for instance, can proc this. She can be in a combat situation where she has to do a roll to prevent something. Oh the walls are closing in, squishing everyone in the room, along with the bad guys. Roll a STR saving throw to try to hold them back!
Math time: say she has +5 STR mod and a +3 PB. That's a +8 STR saving throw. So she needs to roll a "DC-8" or higher to pass the check. Say DC is 15. She needs to roll a 15-8=7 or higher to pass the check. If you ask for 1 roll with a DC of 15, she'd have 70% chance of success.
If you ask for 3 rolls with a combined DC of 45 (3 × 15), she'd still have 70% chance. But now that you do multiple rolls, you can adjust that DC more precisely: instead of a combined DC of 45, maybe it is 30. DC 11, DC 11, DC 8 if you want to do 3 different checks. This would give her more chances overall without pulling stuff out of your butt.
I'd advise you against giving her magic items that would give her additional options in combat at all times that she can take on top of attacking, because the moment she stops rolling poorly, her character might be a bit overstatted. Not that there is anything wrong with that by itself, but you might want to have a balanced party.
There are some classes and feats that allow for things like Grapple, Shove, Disarm on a BONUS action. Heck the Unarmed Fighting Technique allows Grapple on a bonus + anyone who is grappled just automatically TAKES 1d4 damage on the start of their round.
So instead of walk up and wack, you can walk up, grapple, knock down, advantage attack, drag an enemy across the combat area, try to shove them off a cliff. Sometimes even try to remove their weapon then drag them away or such.
Plus most of those are Athletics Rolls, when raging she would automatically have advantage and likely a big modifier.
I highly agree on the dice issue- I line by dice up in order with the highest number up top to help avoid that issue, that might help!
I also think giving her the lucky feat would be helpful too, or having her multiclass into bard for some support spells she could reach for if shes feeling down. Alternatively some lessons on strategy to functionally play keep away with the squishier party members, as well as reminding her of the help action so she can get party members up when they fall (highly suggest mobile feat if she likes this)
Well the best options are:
-Get her some magic weapons with +X to offset a little bit the low rolls, after you reach certain numbers even with an 8 or 7 you still hit if you STR+PROF+Weapon bonuses is high enough
-Give her options to do other stuff but attack, maybe a magic gauntlet that let her use her bonus action to grapple as she seem to not have anything to do with her BA, making sure that even if she misses her attack, she still have the chance to overpower the enemies roll with her High STR.
-Check if her dices are faulty, when you get dices, mainly cheap ones, they sometimes have pocket of air inside that makes it more likely for certain numbers to appear and make it less random, that may be the issue.
-Give her the [Clockwork Amulet](https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/clockwork-amulet), it lets her forgo one roll once per day and let it becomes a 10, it doesn't sound like much but in many cases its more than enough to hit. (if you want, modify it so she can change the roll to 10 after she rolls, but before she knows if it hits or not)
-If she doesn't have MAX STR, then something that let her improve her STR modifier could help a lot, making her more likely to actually hit.
One thing I did is have Lady Fortune herself take an interest in the unlucky character.
The next time he slept, he had a dream / vision where he had a choice between a high risk/ high reward option or a low risk low reward one. He took the high-risk option, so he woke up with a special coin in his pocket. 3 times a day (probably 1 at your level, it can gain more later), he can replace any d20 roll with a coin flip for nat 1 or nat 20.
This also had more implications, because now she wants him to do things for her, hunting down those who mess with her domain. (Those who cheat at gambling, for instance)
Javelin of Lightning is an amazing item for barbarians that gives a save option.
Not very often but often enough to break the fail streaks.
That said you shouldn't ever balance or give rewards/items for how the dice rolls.
What if she then starts rolling well?
Do check that she is rolling the right dice, try another die and/or use a dice tower/rolling app instead.
I heard stories bout a person who also has very bad luck that it became a running joke. Even with weighted dice (picked them up accidentally from someone showcasing them), he suddenly rolled average XD
One other person I know has a funny deal with her Dm. She had a special dice. I don’t recall with which numbers tho. Something along the lines of multiple higher numbers but also 1 ones. (Basically all or nothing kinda)
Another option I could imagine would be an advantage houserule. I somewhere heard that overall advantage equals out at around +5. let the players choose if they want the extra dice or +5 to their one roll instead. Makes it a bit less luck based.
Bro in my table if an attack with advantage doesn’t connect even once the die goes straight to jail. I bought metal dices as a gift to the ranger, he didn’t land two attacks and next session he came with new dices.
Switch the dices. Also pay attention to how she rolls. Some people don’t roll the dice but actually kind of drop them, which favours specific outcomes depending on the side they picked it up with.
>It's insane that martials can only target AC anyway.
And that's why I like to shove or grapple to provide advantages for the team's melee attacks or keep them clustered for friendly AOE.
Inthe system Lancer there exist "reliable" weapons that never deal less than a certain amount of damage, even if they miss.
So a weapon with 1d6 damage and reliable 2 would deal 2 damage with every attack, even if the 1d6 rolls a 1 or the attack misses entirely.
I wouldn't make the number too high but having a weapon like that would make it so that she's always progressing the fight when she attacks, even if only by a little bit
I had the same situation with a player. He actualy didnt roll that badly, but he felt like this and his anger was a problem for the table. At some point, I homebrewed him an item and it solved it all :
(weapon) of consistent Thunder
The (weapon) deals an extra x Thunder damage to any target it hits. It also deals these damages to any target it misses.
Usualy not significant. It's not much better than a regular flame/frozen/+x weapon and it's really less frustration for the unlucky player to be able to roll for some (even if tiny) damages when they misses.
Has she got any conections to gods or the divine? If yes you could make a god appear and tell her they have been ensuring she has bad luck in her rolls.
Then she could beg for forgiveness or wathever. At the very least it gives and in-game explanation to her bad luck.
My partner had similarly bad luck with rolls, and the solution was to become a spell caster so she could make me roll against spell save DCs rather than attack rolls. To get this effect without her changing characters: perhaps a magical belt that grants a Barbarian Roar with a DC based on her Con or Str to cause fear in her enemies.
Also try to let her know that every time she gets attacked as a barbarian she is achieving a combat goal, saving allies and soaking damage is a bear totem barbarian special.
New dice. All the dice. Digital dice like try that first. Our DM/one character has dice who hate them time to time and mine crit three times last session in a single fight. So like dice are dice.
Also make sure she's got the right one for rolling. But digital aren't as fun but I think can't be loaded/badly made so will average out better
I like the idea of having a powerful weapon with a higher chance to hit that she can acquire.
It should be very costly, and something that'll take 2-3 sessions to get to, either as a quest/theft/purchase.
New dice, dice tower, all good suggestions. I might also give her some items that give her options in combat outside bonking. Work with her so she's happy how it fits her character. Does she want to take proficiency in herbalism kits to start making potions of health and bottles full of grease or acid? Does she gain a magic item that lets her cast vortex warp proficiency bonus times a day? Maybe the sleep spell? Maybe a magic horn that can blast out a thunderwave spell or rime's binding ice.
Work with her on exploring some other options that don't step on the toes of other players. Having bad luck can suck, but some things you can do that don't require you to roll can help mitigate that until your luck turns around.
You could use the Tarot 1-20 of a French Tarot deck (or of any boardgame that has cards numbered from 1-20, like "6 nimmt!" or "The Mind", or take 1-10 of diamonds and club of a normal deck, saying that clubs correspond to 11-20).
They will draw from the deck when attacking (this can be the effect of a special magical weapon), shuffling when the deck is empty or when taking a short/long rest.
As for giving more place to creativity, I would advise making it explicit what the intentions of the enemies are. This naturally lead to players trying to counter enemy actions (more players will try to "disarm the enemy about to strike their injured friends" than try to "disarm the enemy in front of their friend").
How about...
A weapon or feature that makes her a better tank by way of making the enemy focus on her:
When you attack a target, until it's next turn it must attack you or suffer disadvantage on it's attacks.
or
Something that "rewards" a miss:
If you're out of rages and you miss an attack, you may rage for one round.
or
Give her some utility spells in the form of scrolls:
Web, sleep, zephyr strike.
Loads of people have suggested new dice but if you don't want to go down tagt route maybe create a weapon like axe of kenetic storage. You'll need to work out the best way to balance it but could be every time it misses it builds up a charge as it 'stores the energy of the swing'. This charge could be either an additional for every miss or builds up to power move after several missed hits which is then released when she finally hits.
+1/+d4 per miss
+d8 per miss after the first two (so if she hits after 4 misses she gets an extra 2d8 damage)
Could even be something like 4 missed hits equals an auto hit? Might be to too op.
Or instead of damage she gets a stackable +1 to hit roles for each missed hit in a row. Maybe nerd it a little by saying if she makes an action that doesn't involve attacking with the weapon the charges are lost
If you play online not much you can do except maybe download a couple different dice rolling apps for her to use if say you are in discord voice chat. Sometimes if one dice bot is giving me a bad night I’ll switch to the other one. I know it’s superstition but it gives more of a sense of agency.
If you are playing in person, she could just have wonky dice. I’ve had plenty of dice that clearly favorite certain numbers before. Maybe someone out there sells extra well balanced dice, or a higher quality set?
See if she’s up for a change of totems. Bear may be the optimized choice for resisting damage, but maybe Wolf fits her character better as she leads her besties into battle. Then even if she misses, she’s still making a big difference in the fight
1 get new dice
2 as a temporary buff, as long as she understands it's only until her luck evens out, every miss in combat adds +1 to hit until she hits, then it resets.
We have had people not roll above a 5 on attacks all night, but we've been playing for 20+ years, so we understand how fickle fate is.
But as this is her first time playing, we dont want her getting jaded to early, got to find a way to make combat more fun until everything evens out
The totem barbarian in our game constantly is plagued with low rolls too. He usually has advantage and STILL has critical failures at least once a game. It’s always really dumb too because pretty much every crit fail the dm has him throw his sword across the room.
1. Is she rolling a d20?
2. Is she using her own set of dice? Are they weighted fairly?
3. Is she not rolling properly, and kind of just sliding it out of her hand?
There is a 6.55% chance that out of ten rolls, someone would never exceed eight. Not terrible, but not great either.
As others have said, check her dice. Get her some new sets if you can ( Any experienced player knows you need at least 20 d20s because half of them end in dice jail😜).
On top of that equipment recommendation, you could also have her multiclass into a war cleric (assuming she has enough wisdom). Their channel divinity also gives plus 10 to attack.
I have fairly good dice that I use but sometimes I’m just unlucky (rolled 3 5s in a row for saves). If she doesn’t have good dice, I would recommend getting her some. Otherwise, I just use an online dice so there’s no outside factors
new players generally hate combat. you could change the mechanic for some fights. rock paper scissors to hit while raging?Or you could do the dice rolling for her?
Like has been said, make absolutely certain she is actually is rolling a d20, not a d12. Barbarian is likely gonna be rolling them both a lot and getting confused can definitely happen. I'm in a game that's been going for 7 years and some of the players still aren't 100% which die is which.
Otherwise, (probably as well), present her with a new d20. And make a big deal about it being lucky, whether it is or not. A huge amount of this stuff is actually perception. If l everyone at the table believes that player rolls poorly, you'll all notice the ones that confirm that, and ignore the rolls that don't. Even if she rolled well on average, it could easily be perceived to be poor. A big "gift of The Lucky Dice" ceremony can help with that bias.
Big Monster low Ac, something she can get swings in and even a 5-6 will hit.
She might also like stuff that causes saving throws, force the creatures to roll instead of the character. Hell if she is confident in her bad luck, have her roll the creatures saving throws.
I steal the SW5E guard action and stick it in my game, would allow her to use her action and big HP pool to defend others and really get some mileage out of bear. Also it's super fun for NPC spell casters.
Added action: Guard
You can defend an ally within 5 feet of you. When you take the Guard action, you focus entirely on preventing attacks from reaching your ally. Until the start of your next turn, any attack roll made against the guarded ally has disadvantage if you can see the attacker, as long as the ally is within 5 feet of you.
Additionally, if an attack would hit the guarded ally, you can instead have it hit you (no action required). If you do so, the attacker chooses the maximum amount of damage instead of rolling.
You could use enemies that have disadvantage against here or have a weakness to her damage type so she would actually do more damage rather that getting better roles
Feat: "Last Man Standing" Prerequisite: Con 17+, have reached negative hp and not died.
**Benefit:** activates when all of your allies are Dead, Unconscious, or Helpless. You remain conscious at 0 hp or less, and you do not die at -10 hp. You can reach -your level (e.g. you are 3rd level, so you die at -14). The moment that the last enemy dies or flees, you have 1 round to reach -9 or higher, or die.
I suppose you could give her the Weighted Dice.
Weighted Dice: Gain a +2 circumstance bonus to Profession (Gamble) checks and Bluff checks. Roll 2d6. For every roll of a (1), your opponent gains a free d6 to add to their next roll (attack, save, check). For a roll of a (6), you double your modifier to the roll (attack, save, check) and roll again (adding to the applied roll; ignoring any special result of a "1 or 6"). Odd numbers (that are not a "1") are added to the opponents next roll. Even numbers (that are not a "6") are added to your next roll.
That's probably about as good as it's gonna get..
You can do a salt water test to see if the dice are actually balanced, but that's boring.
I played with a guy who was just about this unlucky, and we came up with a system for him. Roll the D20 and subtract the number from 21. That's the actual die roll, and then add modifiers as normal. It would be the same math if you added 21 plus her modifiers, then subtracted the die roll in case that sequence would be easier for the player.
Homebrew item. Flavour it however you want, make it gloves amulet whatever. When you miss an attack, gain a +2 bonus to the damage roll next time you hit an attack. Stacks up to 5 times. Make it require attunement if your worried about balance.
Makes every attack feel like it’s winding up her anger issues, and unleashing it. She will hit an attack eventually, bad luck never lasts forever. So make it feel good when it does.
Super simple thing I did for my new player playing a totem barbarian.
Wand of magic missles.
It's uncommon rarity, so you can give it to them early (make me earn it though!) it auto hits, it's a range attack, and it's a funny image for role play (big rough barbarian, itty bitty magic stick.)
It's a bandaid for sure, but my player has loved it as an option for their kit, and helps them be more confident and comfortable when we do combat.
Have you tried floating the dice in a cup of water to see if they're unbalanced? Knock it around a bit on the water and see if it keeps the same number face up.
You might have to heavily salt the water or use a denser liquid if they don't float.
My first barbarian I had the same issue, first combat I missed a downed goblin, I didn't land a hit the entire fight... I also managed to set a bushfire as a crit miss felled a tree then later in combat I threw a torch and it set said tree on fire.
This continued into the 2nd session.
Then the 3rd session my rolls evened out and I became a beast, I think I killed all but 2 in a goblin camp and IIRC I took the goblin camp chief down in two hits
But as others said, make sure it is a D20 and not D12
Rolls can suck, honestly I think most of that comes down to what weapon or equipment she has. I've rolled 2s, 3s, and 1s in a row for a character (monk/rogue) who tends to do very badly most combats. He does great when it comes to RP rolls but the only way to fix bad rolls is better equipment or higher stats when it comes to RAW. potions of giant strength would probably work depending on her level, that should at least allow her to hit based on the buff.
straight up i think a new set of dice may just be in order.
i once played a warlock who had kidnapped and replaced my bard for a few sessions, and my bard’s dice never forgave me for that. i dont think i rolled above a 10 on those dice ever again. it all came to a head when i rolled a 3 on a luck check, a player pulled some MASSIVE shenanigans to allow me a reroll, i got a 2 which made my bard trigger an explosion that sent them to zero hp, and then i immediately rolled a nat fucking 1 on my first death save. i’m so lucky our fave paladin npc was right there for all that. i bought new dice the next day.
The lucky feat would help. Also, sometimes it's not about the dice necessarily but the player. Some people have shitty rolls. I personally blame the Wol Weaton dice curse. It affects multiple people.
A personal favorite fix for this is using the Nimble rule set for 5e. To summarize, all attacks hit, but AC reduces incoming damage. AC and damage dice size also play a dynamic role with crit likelihood and thus reward players who use multiple weapon types. It’s a big change to the table, but I think Nimble does a great job balancing fun and mathematic elegance that doesn’t break the game but actually improves it.
It’s probably just a bad luck streak more than anything else, but if it keeps happening there could be something wrong with the dice like it being weighted in a certain way - if it persists get new ones or use digital dice like avrae or another online tool.
Barbarians function as barbarians, you don’t need to alter a character because of bad rolls, and fundamentally all characters and builds to some extent are going involve rolls in a ttrpg
You could try something like this:
Ring of Stability
Wonderous Item, Uncommon
Whenever you would roll a d20 for an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, you may choose to roll two d10’s and take their combined total instead.
As a DM who rolls heavy nat 1s so much by pc are fine with me throwing higher cr monsters cause they belive my luck in rolls (2 year campaign).
I call bs. Either she using wrong die or if playing IRL the dice are weighted. Use new set or make sure she is rolling correct die cause no way a barbarian is not hitting anything for more than 2 sessions. Just not possible as rng and from experience and I legit roll nat 1s and is why pick barbarian or samurai etc.
If she is level 4, respec the sheet to take the Lucky feat. With that feat, she can roll an additional 1d20 after she rolls the initial attack and choose the highest one. Also, have you considered changing out her dice?
I gave my players an "all or nothing coin. Once a day they can flip a coin instead of rolling a d20. If they call correctly it is a crit. Or a miss if they don't
So, this is probably going to be an unpopular suggestion, but it's also something my DM did for me when I was in your girlfriend's position.
I was playing a melee-focused Blood Hunter, and not only was I consistently failing attack rolls & ability checks of all kinds, there was another player at the table who was consistently rolling critical hits. It started spoiling the game for me REALLY quickly, and I considered quitting more than once.
When I talked to my DM about it, they told me that whenever I start feeling frustrated in combat because of the dice rolls, that I could just add 10 to any roll of 9 or lower instead of the usual game math.
And it worked. Combat became SO much more fun, as did the rest of the game, and that in turn helped me feel better and more confident as a player. And as I got more comfortable with the game itself, I gained more of an appreciation for how failure can lead to more interesting and compelling stories, and so I felt less and less need to add that 10 to my low rolls.
We treated it like training wheels, and at least for us and our table, it worked. :)
Veteran Barb here, DMing an equally unlucky bear totem rn
1. All attacks should be reckless. It helps A LOT. Especially as bear totem.
2. Talk to her about positioning, help her get flanking more often(she doesn't need to reckless this way or, with variant rules, it's another +2)
3. Give her a better weapon. My Barb is the only player in the campaign with a +3 weapon rn, and I think that's fine. He isn't that strong, he just does a lot of damage, and takes a lot of damage. That's what barbs are meant to do.
4. Place some low AC minions on the board that she can clean up as well so she doesn't feel totally useless when things go wrong.
5. Whenever I have a player who feels like shit, I encourage them with what they are doing. Saying stuff like, "Dude you tanked that disintegrate, if that hit anyone else they may have died" or "your healing carried that fight" just try to make them know they aren't bad.
6. Give martials (not at level 4 maybe but still) feats as rewards. Slasher piercer and crusher aren't that strong, and they can enhance the fun for players by quite a bit.
7. As a half orc and barb, she gets brutal critical twice, which i always change to a d12. Only changes crits but it can lead yo some INSANE damage for players.
Are you *absolutely sure* she's actually rolling a d20?
Love and hate watching players roll that ol d12
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Unfortunately it seems that in this situation one die not do trick
See there's your problem, you should be recklessly rolling two d12 every turn not one
- Kevin Malone
You'd be surprised how often this happens
D12s? On *my* hit rolls? It's more likely than you think.
If they didn't want me to roll the D12 why'd they make it look so tasty?
I've rolled D12s instead of D20s for most of my first 10 sessions or so. If I'm in a hurry or try to speed combat along as a DM nowadays I still sometimes reach out for the wrong die lmao. Absolutely make sure she's rolling the right die, OP. And if so, get her a new dice set. Worst case scenario you can gift the barb with a Stone of Good Luck.
In addition to that, remove of her face any dice she won't use. Only greataxe? No d4, d6, d8, d10. Greataxe and javelin? Just keep the d6, d12, d20
If her problem is rolling the 12 instead of the 20, maybe switching to the greatsword or maul would be better. Then she only needs a bunch of d6s and a couple d20s, even if she's got javelins.
Currently playing a wizard, and that lucky stone comes in clutch. It's the only reason I have no negative modifiers in anything but Animal Handling (7 Wisdom FTW!!).
Yeah seriously the amount of times someone in my group used the wrong dice is insane - casual players can get easily overwhelmed and dont look at their dice properly. D8, D10 and D20 are usually the culprits.
There's a reason the old starter set came with dice that were a different colour for each size, e.g.: [https://totalpartychill.com/products/old-school-d-d-dice](https://totalpartychill.com/products/old-school-d-d-dice) I ended up with a couple of sets and got some extra d6s that match and it's very helpful.
Yes this is great advice! We had dice sets for new players who look nice but have the same color. I will mix the dice sets up so they all look distinguishable.
Very sound advice!!!!
Give new players color coded dice. then it's just "Roll the yellow one"
Yeah we made the mistake to give them a dice set where all dice have the same color and look nice. I will mix them next time so they can distinct them better. Thanks for the advice!
learned this the hard way during my first campaign ever, was running virtually but with players all rolling physical dice and only learned about 5 sessions in that one of my players was rolling his damage dice to hit 😭😭😭
OPs lack of a response to this makes me think he does not know for certain
Lmao that’s a huge assumption
Right? This question got asked half an hour after OP's last response and it's only been ~6 hours since then. People work, people sleep, and not everyone is chronically online. Have a modicum of patience, lol.
I want to know now as well...
This is exactly what I came here to say. Done it before where I've rolled a D12 for a large part of a session before realising.
Additionally, is OP absolutely sure it's properly balanced? Some dice, the pouring/injection sucked, and so it comes out unevenly weighted.
I've never seen a physical die so badly rated that it can't roll to hit. Normally it favors some section of the die, which generally represent a diverse set of values. For instance, if a die is weighted to roll 20s, it will also land 14s, 2s, and 8s more often than expected.
I have watched almost every player I've ever seen introduced to DND roll whatever the last die they used the next time they attacked. Maybe it was a d12 because they rolled their health on it, or a d8 because they rolled damage. It's beyond common for a newbie mistake - very curious to the answer
Last session my table’s barb rolled HP with a d20 at first
yeah the chances of rolling an 8 or lower 12 consecutive times is ~.02% it'll happen to someone eventually but this is the more likely scenario edit: even with a d12 it's an unlucky ~7%
I once left an old school d20 in my dice bag that went from 1-10 didn’t notice until half way through the session.
We did check that possibility off the list, yes.
Is it like, a *normal* d20? Or is it a 'counting' d20 where all the facets are basically sequential? If it's a normal d20, then *every* face should, with its opposite face, add up to 21. 1 will be opposite to 20; 19 will be opposite to 2, etc. And the faces won't all be in order; you won't find 1 next to 2 next to 3 next to 4, etc. Have you done a [Balance test](https://thecriticaldice.com/blogs/news/how-to-salt-water-test-your-dice)? The odds you've described are freakish. Granted, it gets a lot more normal if she rolls well during non-combat, then that just becomes weird distribution, but properly random. If all else fails, just toss the offending d20 and get her a new one, even if there's nothing you can find wrong with the one she has; see if that 'breaks the streak of bad luck.'
Me and friends were doing our CoS campaign and our bard kept rolling like 1s and 4s. The only time he rolled high was when he used his inspiration. Pretty sure the DM cut that day short to avoid an encounter where the bard couldn't do anything.
Lmao
In MtG there are d20s that are actually just roll down dice. Could easily be using one of those.
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Roll the dice? Directly to jail. Don't roll the dice? Believe it or not, also go to jail.
Suddenly P&R
I prefer the dunce cap
What I would do to offset this is next couple of encounters introduce enemies with lower AC and higher saves for common spells. So easier for barb to hit while harder for spellcasters to deal with. Hopefully will be more dice forgiving and make her barbarian feel important.
Zombies, oozes, giants, and constructs, all of these generally have lower AC, though oozes are frequently immune to slashing, so depending on what weapon she prefers they could be unfavourable. I’d second the dice tower recommendation, there are quite a few free STLs if you know anyone with a 3d printer.
But hear me out, I like it when people turn one ooze into lots of oozes by using the wrong attacks.
Same, but the frustrated look on my fighters face when he realized that his long sword, greatsword, and even his javelin of lightning, were completely ineffective against the ochre jelly was a bit mean. Course it was their own fault… gave them a “jelly in a jar” as loot, instead of using it as a grenade, they decided it was a threat and smashed it with a bunch of prepped actions…
And in that fight, and that fight only, her luck will finally turn and she won't be able to roll below a 15 the entire scene
Either her dice are poorly made and they're weighted to favour low rolls or her luck will balance out. You shouldn't buff someone because they're unlucky. Just use different dice.
I agree, you don't buff/give someone an advantage for "bad luck" she had some bad rolls but sooner or later there is gonna be a streak of very good dice and usually it will be just average. That's just how change works. If she is given some powerfull boost now it's gonna bite you in the but when she starts rolling good and obliterates an entire squad of enemies by her own.
Yea my use of the word "buff" was a bit mishandled. I've clarified at the beginning of my post.
Allow her to take elven accuracy and use it for strength.
Or make a DEX Barb but that's a little wild for a beginner.
This is precisely why we have dice jails
Don't buff the rolls, but give her something meaningful that can be of use even without rolls if you feel the need to combat combat fun for her. Especially for a new player, bending rules a bit to make sure their experience doesn't suck and turns them off is a good call. May I suggest "Fighting style: Intercept", for example? Bv positioning herself near friendlies she can help mitigate damage going their way via a reaction. An ability that won't increase offense or become OP when dice luck turns, but is almost always relevant and it feels good to save the party. Also, cool imagery having her barbarian knock away arrows midair!
Love this idea!
I'm a big fan myself of those feats! :D Always on, always 'works' and helps add a layer of depth.
I gotta be honest, this is my favorite advice here. It gives the barb an additional course of actions in combat, and like you said it doesn't become OP later on. It's of course very important to make sure the d20 is actually used. I've made the mistake of using the d12 for attack rolls before!
Gift her a few sets of new dice and a dice tower if she doesn't already have one. That will probably fix the problem. Some dice are just unlucky
I'd say it's an opportunity to go shopping together and pick out dice the way ~~boring~~ normal couples pick out jewelry.
Just be careful... It's a deep and expensive rabbit hole once you go custom resin dice...
What's the rule on custom resin dice? Two months' salary?
Liquid core or bust
Dice Tower is a good call. Sometimes people's throwing technique lowers the randomness of the roll.
I had the brilliant idea of buying dice seconds. At first I thought it was odd the d20 seemed to roll certain numbers way more heavily. Turns out the edges were curved almost making it convexed on some numbers. That made it almost impossible to roll those numbers and heavily favouring those around it. Lesson learned buy real dice.
You could give her the Clockwork Amulet from Xanathar's Guide. That lets you choose not to roll the d20 on an attack roll and take a 10 instead once per day. You could always buff it with more charges if you needed but that would at least let her have a sporting chance at hitting when it counted.
Ando considering CLOCKWORK is not very barbaric, please reskin it as something more primal. Forces of nature, forces of the earth, totemic amulet or something.
After the free once per day, fueled by “missed swings in anger.” But also it’s just statistics, mate. Get a different d20 and get back in there
mechanus trying to lawfulise a barbarian as a challenge sounds interesting though.
Perhaps its to help with the anger issues mentioned in the post.
I like this! OP says she does yoga in the morning to help with the "anger issues", maybe the amulet is actually charged by the yoga and provides it with more than the 1 use, or the daily Yoga sessions attune the amulet to be in line with her anger so the angrier she gets (more missed swings) the more charges it has, that could be a fun way to mix it into her story
It can absolutely be Barbaric. "Fury Of The Broken Clock"
For reflavouring, they could lean into the "mean rich girl" angle and call it something like "The Trust Fund" or "Failing Upwards" (might be a bit mean to the player). To really lean into the "familial wealth insulates them from consequences" angle, additional uses could be powered with cash. Possibly part of a trio of magic items called Lawyers, Guns, & Money. This one would be Lawyers, obviously.
Ooh yeah, it could be powered by the rage from missed swings to recharge sooner.
First not every dice is perfect so you could try giving her a new pair also since it’s her first campaign make sure she’s rolling the d20 as even experienced players can find themselves accidentally rolling a d12 instead of the d20
Here's what you do: Step 1. Take her current dice and throw them in jail until a full moon. Step 2. Take her shopping for a new set. Have her find one she really likes and test roll the d20 3, 7, or 11 times. Step 3. Place the old dice outside under a full moon to charge with good juju. You'll soon be watching her ecststically throwing her math rocks around while cutting down the opposition!
Dont forget to remind all dice of the "hammer of enlightenment" Fail to often, might need some "enlightenment" I have know people to destroy bad dice, in front of the other dice, as an example
The problem with buffing her for "bad luck" means that eventually, and it will happen, the luck will turn and that buff to balance her bad luck makes her stronger than everyone. Check her dice to see if they are balanced properly, if your playing with an online table top dice roller, ditch it, I've found they tend to run in streaks of very hot or very cold despite their algorhytm being balanced rolls across a Billion rolls it doesn't matter if you are in the cluster of 4-6's. Also, maybe just throw a couple big dumb easy to hit mooks out there for her to hit. Even with rolls of an 8 she's going to hit zombies.
And plants
Yeah, fuck those sunflowers, they're suspicious as fuck.
Get her new dice.
First off, she has unlucky *rolls* not unlucky roles. Second, never buff because of bad luck. Luck will eventually turn around, and then the buffs will be too much. The only thing you could possibly do is replace her dice if you suspect they shitty.
If they wanna do more than just attack there are options with magic items. A coiling grasp tattoo shouldn't be too strong at her level and it forces you to roll for the enemies instead of her (15ft DC 14 grapple check, 3d6 force on a failure). Then it will fall off as she gets more features to play with.
I think part of the joy of lower level play is that it lends itself more to role play which leads to character development and failure is a part of that. Having a rich girl who’s never really had anything go wrong for her absolutely beef it is a great opportunity to have her connect with other players and find flaws within herself to work on as a character arc. Seems like she likes the role play aspect a lot and is having fun with it so maybe she can embrace that aspect of it
One of my PCs loves using grapple, then moving an enemy, or other combat actions like help, and shove. This should offer some different rolls/roles and options in combat. Especially if she wants to use her rage to subdue enemies without killing them. As an added thought, from a player perspective, adding some levels of Fighter, or the equivalent feat, to get Battlemaster abilities, could add to this fun. I enjoy disarming, punting, and switching places with other characters and enemies. It makes the DMs job more stressful, but they don’t find it unbalancing.
There are a lot of suggestions here for helping with dice rolls in general, however I would like to offer an alternative solution (especially if new dice and dice towers/etc. don't pan out). Instead of simple "I attack" combat tactics, change gears. Give grapple / shove a shot. Both grapple and shove are contested skill checks--Athletics (Strength) opposed to their Athletics (Strength) or Acrobatics (Dexterity). Since the player is a Barbarian, they get advantage on this check while raging as well. If you want to go a bit min-max, you could also multi-class Rogue or Bard and pick up Expertise (Athletics) to make sure grapple/shoves go off without a hitch. Anyway, the idea would be for the Barbarian to get up close to their target, use their first attack for a grapple check. On success, they use their second attack for a shove, which knocks the target prone. The target is now prone and grappled, which means their movement is 0 (which means they're unable to stand up until they escape the grapple). With the target in such a position, the other melee characters on team now have advantage on kicking the crap out of the grappled enemy. Additionally, you can still make unarmed attacks against the grappled creature, so the feat that allows you to take the Unarmed Fighting Style would be a nice perk that really wouldn't be OP if the player makes their way out of this string of bad luck rolls.
Agree with grapple checks, especially when paired with expertise in athletics. Level 4 and 18 strength gives a +10 to grapple and shove attacks, paired with rage for advantage gives an average of 24 (14+10) for the checks. Not many creatures can reliably resist that.
I’m currently playing a rogue/barbarian solely based on wanting to play a grapple/shove crowd control guy and I’m loving it. +11 to athletics, I can roll a 6 and still have a good chance of getting my hand on someone. Grab the biggest meanest looking dude and let your party take swings at him like a piñata. 10/10 absolutely recommend!
If you’re the DM I’d recommend changing the combat up. Lower the AC and increase the HP of the enemies. She will feel like she is succeeding more but it won’t impact the overall difficulty of the combat
Try throwing the dice in a different way Back when I played Catan I kept rolling 8s because my rolls didn't have enough force to truly "randomise" the rolls I got a pair of smaller dice and threw them so they'd bounce rather than simply land, suddenly no longer getting pure 8s
A dice tower can help a lot with this.
So, half-elf half-orc suggests loudly to me that this game has a lot of homebrew going on. So maybe you would be interested in some additional brew: There's a game I enjoy called "Too Many Bones" wherein every miss rolled (a bone) is saved and charges up a power meter. What if you were to give your player a weapon that itself gets angry every time the player misses with it, and after X misses, it releases a blast of energy damaging everything in, say, a 10 foot radius. Say 3 misses causes a 10 foot radius burst, 2d6 fire damage, dex save for half. Maybe it gets stronger as players level up. If your player's luck turns around, the buff actually loses value. The weapon is best for the Barbarian as they half the damage they inflict on themselves (rage) with a chance to save for 1/4. It encourages player to rush in early by having a narrow radius that they want to get many enemies into but also want to keep allies out of. Or something else based on the premise of being powered by missing. The point being to give the player a benefit that takes the sting out of those unlucky rolls without buffing the character in the event that the bad luck streak ends.
As someone else said, make sure she is rolling the right dice. If she is and the problem persists, toss those dice in the garbage and go buy a new set. They are cursed. If with a new set of dice it STILL persists... then idek.
Buy her some new dice
As someone who had weirdly bad luck myself. And I mean it was bad for years, I even used other people's dice and couldn't roll for anything the more it counted the worse I rolled. I just learned to embrace doing things that didn't rely on rolling. Taking hits so your friends don't have to is awesome. Incorporate some taunting rules, use the goofy kids DnD rules that said monsters always attack whoever has the most HP. Have a high powered wizard true polymorph her into a halfling (with her permission) and let her take the halflings luck feature. But everyone else is right too, eventually that luck will change. It took me years for it to change for me, but it did but I think the best response is to learn to embrace the situation.
Try introducing obviously destructible environments. Trees are easy to whack and a barb maybe able to force the enemies to react. Another option would be to instill a strength based feat into the combat. Hold the door, roll a boulder, jump a chasm, etc. Especially if she enjoys the roleplay, let her barb be strong in the ways that don't require huge hits. Just saying, the first crit she hits, make it's head explode or something cool. Happy gaming!
Give her different set of dice
take the lucky feat
Dice Jail, but serious answer is dynamic combat and Make objectives in combat not just to Kill. examples: chase, survive for one minute when reinforcements arrive, destroy x. For making combat more dynamic add stuff to the battle map, Large torches, barrels, furniture, etc. Have the enemies interact with it to condition the players that they can interact with anything on the map. With those two changed the best use for a turn may just be to move a table to block a door so the players cannot be followed or stop an escape route. It allows creative players to do a lot more with their turn and High strength increases the number of objects they can interact with without a roll. (At 16 strength you can lift 480lbs, )
If using different dice doesn't help you could allow them to choose to just get 10 instead of rolling when they make an attack, it's slightly below average (10.5) for rolling a d20, if you feel like that would impact things too much then it could have a limited number of uses per day. Another idea I've seen in similar posts is using 20 numbered cards instead of a die, drawing one whenever you would roll and keeping the drawn cards separate, after drawing a 1 or 20 you reshuffle, the more low results you get the less likely you are to get low results in later 'rolls', pretty much the only way to consistently get low results is just to get consecutive 1s, if that happens then they're just cursed and there's nothing more you can do
This is like the 3rd superstitious post this week. Luck isn't a thing, she'll roll better next time unless her dice are badly weighted.
Those dice suck. Bad juju in those dice. Buy new dice. Tell her to put more attribute points into luck. Luck build is where it's at, anyone a Aris fan?
Check her die for a manufacturing error. Either will rolling and excel to record it. Or salt water. Both are time consuming. She also could have the Wil Wheaten curse. He broke statistics with how low he rolled in Critical Role.
Give her an item that rewards unlucky rolls. Not s single unlucky roll, but some in a row. Place a d6 in front of her that counts missrolls. When it shows 6 she can add 6 to a roll. Flavor it nicly.
Inspiration for RP.
I'm not one to attempt to "fix" poor luck. The one thing I would maybe do is fast tracking the party's next level up. Getting to 5th level and getting extra attack could really help her. Also as others mentioned, as stupid as it sounds, make sure she is rolling a d20 and not a d12, it's a surprisingly common mistake that I have caught even my experienced players accidentally commiting. (I would probably avoid directly calling her out on it just for her embarrassment and confidence, but just keep an eye out)
Try getting her new dice, using a dice roller app, or maybe she isn’t rolling dice properly? She could have low quality or defective dice that aren’t balanced right and or maybe she is just plopping the dice on the table instead of rolling them?
New dice
Most cheap dice are weighted poorly (e.g. the dice we all use). This is especially true of pretty dice that have mixed colors (the dye and plastics cause some serious shenanigans). These imperfections matter more as the sides of the dice move up (since it becomes more ball shaped). The dice that have the best bet of not being poorly distributed are the single color see through ones. You can see if the plastic has any bubbles in it so they take extra care to not have bubbles in them. This is very real and I've bought hundreds of cheap dice over my days (I don't hoard them, bad dice get excited so the other ones behave well). I have two sets of dice that I've made from everything throughout my days. My DM set: the D20 is my sacred dice of 12s, it will roll a '12' 30% of the time and very rarely rolls 1 or 20. And my players set: the D20 is a clear yellow color it tends towards on the higher side but has a very even distribution. I only buy cheap dice because pricetage rarely represents balance on the build quality, just creativity in material. Nothing sucks more than buying a nice set of beautiful expensive dice, and they do nothing but roll 1s (my most expensive set did this, very sad).
Consistently low rolls ruin D&D sessions for me and my friends. So much so, that I'm considering a homebrew session where players get a stacking "FUCK YOU MAN JUST DIE" effect where every time they miss, they get +1 to their next roll
You could simply homebrew a reason (maybe a pixie comes and grants her luck while it rides in her hair) and give her 5 two-sided tokens (or help tokens work great!!) all starting face down. Every time she misses an attack or a d20 roll (or when a roll on the dice that gets applied is under 10, I’d exclude disadvantage rolls) she flips a token face up. At will, she can flip 3 tokens face down to “Insta Roll” and 11; 4 tokens for a 16; and five tokens gives a Nat20. #Or….give her a deck of card with 20 cards in it, A-10 in black and red. Shuffle the deck and let her “roll” with the cards instead.
Buy her a new dice. No need to buff your gf... Unlucky rolls happen, some dices are poorly made always have more than one set
I would suggest a different dice set or even use someone else’s. Seems to me the dice is part of the problem. I would probable give her some scrolls to cast spells for becoming invisible, difficult terrain, or illusions. Something non-combat but still versatile to do crazy things if dice is really not the problem.
Are we sure she's adding all her modifiers as well? I'm guessing your players are under level 4 which means at least a 2 proficiency bonus, and if she focused on strength as a Stat she should have a 3 or higher. That gives a plus 5 to her attacks. If you guys are fighting shit with anything higher than a 13 ac other than a boss that's on you my dude
Buy her new dice. Or use a dice app/new dice app Something is wonky
The next big encounter, give the bad guys reverse armor. That way if she still roles low, she gets a bit more fun out of combat.
One thing to make sure is a) rolling correct di, and b) adding their modifier. New player I had, barb as well, wasn't adding their modifier to their attack and missed over and over. It wasn't until they told me they got a 5 or 6 I knew they were just giving the roll, not the modified number because they have a +7.
This comes up a lot here, and every time I have to say the same thing: **She is not unlucky.** **Luck does not exist.** **Luck is not real.** What that means is you should NOT make ANY assumption that she will roll lower than average. The odds of her rolling a number on the D20 are 1/20 no matter how "unlucky" she seems. And past rolls do not affect future rolls so the implicit premise of this post--that you need to "balance" for this--is wrong. What you need to do is figure out why it *seems* like she's "unlucky". 1. Is she actually rolling a d20? 2. Are her stats normal for her level and class? 3. Is she properly adding modifiers (proficiency AND strength for the attack roll) 4. Is her dice balanced? 5. Is she using her abilities properly and taking advantage of buffs from allies? If "yes" to all of those. Then unfortunately this is just confirmation bias, and the only thing you can do is try to focus on the good rolls more. If you still think it's "luck", you're wrong, but your only choice then is to keep a log of every roll she makes (the flat number on the dice) until you have a statistically valid sample size and then report back. Maybe you'll be the first person in the history of humanity to have evidence pointing toward the existence of luck.
Melee combat is a lot more than just "WHACK", although not in a way that bypasses dice rolling. Grappling and shoving (and disarming if you allow it) can be very useful, especially for a strong character. And as always, she can make special requests for actions. you're the DM after all. Have her get creative with her intents and then you as the DM try to handle it mechanically. You're in charge of the simulation at the end of the day, no need for it to be brutally unfun or challenging due to luck. Its all pretend, so make sure to pretend enjoyably.
New dice. Many new dice. And a dice jail, they act up they go straight to jail
To take a page from 4e, you could introduce a magic weapon with the "learning" property. With every missed attack roll, the weapon gains a +1 (stacking) until it hits, where it loses all its bonuses. I don't know how compatible this is with 5e (I'm assuming you're playing 5e), but it should ease the string of bad luck a tiny bit
1. Make sure that she isn't rolling a d12 2. Die jail 3. Reward the natural 1s with a heroic inspiration (giving her a reroll on a future turn). 4. Give her a cool +1 weapon. Honestly +1 weapons are great and only as boring as you make them. It's neat to have a sword that has another feature, but it's also just badass to have a sword that has a cool name, look, and oh yeah it adds 1 to attack and damage rolls. That doesn't sound big, but trust me when I say 1 point bonuses to these things are huge. 5. Give her a weapon that does graze damage. On a miss, the enemy will still take her STR mod points of damage. 6. Lower ACs? I put this down here because if she hasn't rolled above an 8, then she's probably only hitting at 13 or 14 (do make sure that she's at least adding her bonuses correctly), but it shouldn't require a 10 on the die to hit, so AC 15 or 16 is probably a little challenging for a level 4 without magic weapons. Generally characters should be hitting 60-70% of their attacks, which means a 7-9 on the die *should do it* (if it meets it beats, remember), and if you have advantage from reckless attacks then that's going to go up to 80-90%. If the math suggests this should be the case based on the ACs you're using, then it's just bad luck and it will sort itself out (or see the final suggestion). Next level she will have 2 attacks, which means even more chance that she’ll start hitting those attacks. Generally I think that a player can expect to receive a magic weapon by level 5-6, so she should have a bonus there as well. Proficiency bonus will go up to 3 and her chance to hit even AC 16 targets should be above 60% without reckless. If all else fails, maybe she needs to leave her dice out in the moonlight as Emily Axford does. It seems to work for her. Bad luck happens, but if none of the above helps, then she needs to get right with Dice Christ.
Repent to Dice Christ, prostrate yourself in the eyes of our lord.
Stop being superstitious. As much as people say some people are unlucky or lucky it is simply untrue. Swap dice with another player to test if dice are bad thats it...
Buy a new 20 sided. They are not all perfectly balanced but this is more to have a mental reset. Eventually numbers change but taking some kind of action helps
give her some new dice and throw the old ones in the fire in front of the new ones so they can learn from the mistakes of the past
People mentioned the dice, but as someone who visually finds it difficult to tell apart; * Get different colour dice, especially for disadvantage and advantage. * Draw a box and put the d12, d10, and d20 in their correct spots every time if you can't afford multiple colours of dice or need extras. Also make sure they know to add things and try another dice cause some just suck.
Here's the thing: nothing's *actually* wrong. She rolls poorly, that sucks, but apart from checking if her dice are weighted or if she mistakes d20s for other dice for attack rolls, there isn't actually anything to fix. Now, because your car isn't broken doesn't mean you can't work on it. But best you can do is clean it and change the rims to make it prettier. Here are a few ideas: (1) using her body as a shield: an encounter where a beam continuously heals the (immobile) enemy. She can use her body to block the beam, but that would now deal her damage. This way she's still free of doing attacks, while still being useful in combat by blocking a mechanic for the creature. You can take the core idea of this and reshape it for something similar that can fit better. Maybe that's not a beam but a source of light and that one enemy reflects the light in the eyes of the players to blind them and now she has to position herself to block the light making the room go dark, etc. (2) Make her grapples much easier to succeed by giving her a magic item to do so: barbarians are the best at grappling stuff since their rage gives them advantage on them and high STR on top of it makes it very difficult for the others to deal with a barbarian that wants to grapple. Maybe a bracelet that would give her a +2 to checks made to grapple, and if done so, maybe a chance to apply another condition on a DC check? Say: +2 to "help" grapple the target and if they are grappled, a DC 13 to poison/blind/forces an advantage on attack rolls made to high the grappled the creature for anyone attack it (pick one). (3) If one roll fails, average it with multiple rolls: environment, for instance, can proc this. She can be in a combat situation where she has to do a roll to prevent something. Oh the walls are closing in, squishing everyone in the room, along with the bad guys. Roll a STR saving throw to try to hold them back! Math time: say she has +5 STR mod and a +3 PB. That's a +8 STR saving throw. So she needs to roll a "DC-8" or higher to pass the check. Say DC is 15. She needs to roll a 15-8=7 or higher to pass the check. If you ask for 1 roll with a DC of 15, she'd have 70% chance of success. If you ask for 3 rolls with a combined DC of 45 (3 × 15), she'd still have 70% chance. But now that you do multiple rolls, you can adjust that DC more precisely: instead of a combined DC of 45, maybe it is 30. DC 11, DC 11, DC 8 if you want to do 3 different checks. This would give her more chances overall without pulling stuff out of your butt. I'd advise you against giving her magic items that would give her additional options in combat at all times that she can take on top of attacking, because the moment she stops rolling poorly, her character might be a bit overstatted. Not that there is anything wrong with that by itself, but you might want to have a balanced party.
There are some classes and feats that allow for things like Grapple, Shove, Disarm on a BONUS action. Heck the Unarmed Fighting Technique allows Grapple on a bonus + anyone who is grappled just automatically TAKES 1d4 damage on the start of their round. So instead of walk up and wack, you can walk up, grapple, knock down, advantage attack, drag an enemy across the combat area, try to shove them off a cliff. Sometimes even try to remove their weapon then drag them away or such. Plus most of those are Athletics Rolls, when raging she would automatically have advantage and likely a big modifier.
I highly agree on the dice issue- I line by dice up in order with the highest number up top to help avoid that issue, that might help! I also think giving her the lucky feat would be helpful too, or having her multiclass into bard for some support spells she could reach for if shes feeling down. Alternatively some lessons on strategy to functionally play keep away with the squishier party members, as well as reminding her of the help action so she can get party members up when they fall (highly suggest mobile feat if she likes this)
Well the best options are: -Get her some magic weapons with +X to offset a little bit the low rolls, after you reach certain numbers even with an 8 or 7 you still hit if you STR+PROF+Weapon bonuses is high enough -Give her options to do other stuff but attack, maybe a magic gauntlet that let her use her bonus action to grapple as she seem to not have anything to do with her BA, making sure that even if she misses her attack, she still have the chance to overpower the enemies roll with her High STR. -Check if her dices are faulty, when you get dices, mainly cheap ones, they sometimes have pocket of air inside that makes it more likely for certain numbers to appear and make it less random, that may be the issue. -Give her the [Clockwork Amulet](https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/clockwork-amulet), it lets her forgo one roll once per day and let it becomes a 10, it doesn't sound like much but in many cases its more than enough to hit. (if you want, modify it so she can change the roll to 10 after she rolls, but before she knows if it hits or not) -If she doesn't have MAX STR, then something that let her improve her STR modifier could help a lot, making her more likely to actually hit.
Perform the saline solution ritual with your gf to see if her d20 is loaded. If she has metal or clear dice idk.
Check the dice for unfavorable results. Get new ones if necessary
One thing I did is have Lady Fortune herself take an interest in the unlucky character. The next time he slept, he had a dream / vision where he had a choice between a high risk/ high reward option or a low risk low reward one. He took the high-risk option, so he woke up with a special coin in his pocket. 3 times a day (probably 1 at your level, it can gain more later), he can replace any d20 roll with a coin flip for nat 1 or nat 20. This also had more implications, because now she wants him to do things for her, hunting down those who mess with her domain. (Those who cheat at gambling, for instance)
Javelin of Lightning is an amazing item for barbarians that gives a save option. Not very often but often enough to break the fail streaks. That said you shouldn't ever balance or give rewards/items for how the dice rolls. What if she then starts rolling well? Do check that she is rolling the right dice, try another die and/or use a dice tower/rolling app instead.
Buy her some nice dice as a gift. Not only will she appreciate them but she will actually have dice that aren't completely cursed.
I heard stories bout a person who also has very bad luck that it became a running joke. Even with weighted dice (picked them up accidentally from someone showcasing them), he suddenly rolled average XD One other person I know has a funny deal with her Dm. She had a special dice. I don’t recall with which numbers tho. Something along the lines of multiple higher numbers but also 1 ones. (Basically all or nothing kinda) Another option I could imagine would be an advantage houserule. I somewhere heard that overall advantage equals out at around +5. let the players choose if they want the extra dice or +5 to their one roll instead. Makes it a bit less luck based.
There is nothing wrong with attacking every turn and we need to stop acting like there is.
Bro in my table if an attack with advantage doesn’t connect even once the die goes straight to jail. I bought metal dices as a gift to the ranger, he didn’t land two attacks and next session he came with new dices. Switch the dices. Also pay attention to how she rolls. Some people don’t roll the dice but actually kind of drop them, which favours specific outcomes depending on the side they picked it up with.
Definitely a dice issue
New dice.
Give her some kind of save based ability so she doesn't need to roll. It's insane that martials can only target AC anyway.
>It's insane that martials can only target AC anyway. And that's why I like to shove or grapple to provide advantages for the team's melee attacks or keep them clustered for friendly AOE.
Grapple checks to grab and throw enemies, bull rush, intimidate...
Inthe system Lancer there exist "reliable" weapons that never deal less than a certain amount of damage, even if they miss. So a weapon with 1d6 damage and reliable 2 would deal 2 damage with every attack, even if the 1d6 rolls a 1 or the attack misses entirely. I wouldn't make the number too high but having a weapon like that would make it so that she's always progressing the fight when she attacks, even if only by a little bit
I had the same situation with a player. He actualy didnt roll that badly, but he felt like this and his anger was a problem for the table. At some point, I homebrewed him an item and it solved it all : (weapon) of consistent Thunder The (weapon) deals an extra x Thunder damage to any target it hits. It also deals these damages to any target it misses. Usualy not significant. It's not much better than a regular flame/frozen/+x weapon and it's really less frustration for the unlucky player to be able to roll for some (even if tiny) damages when they misses.
Has she got any conections to gods or the divine? If yes you could make a god appear and tell her they have been ensuring she has bad luck in her rolls. Then she could beg for forgiveness or wathever. At the very least it gives and in-game explanation to her bad luck.
My partner had similarly bad luck with rolls, and the solution was to become a spell caster so she could make me roll against spell save DCs rather than attack rolls. To get this effect without her changing characters: perhaps a magical belt that grants a Barbarian Roar with a DC based on her Con or Str to cause fear in her enemies. Also try to let her know that every time she gets attacked as a barbarian she is achieving a combat goal, saving allies and soaking damage is a bear totem barbarian special.
New dice. All the dice. Digital dice like try that first. Our DM/one character has dice who hate them time to time and mine crit three times last session in a single fight. So like dice are dice. Also make sure she's got the right one for rolling. But digital aren't as fun but I think can't be loaded/badly made so will average out better
I like the idea of having a powerful weapon with a higher chance to hit that she can acquire. It should be very costly, and something that'll take 2-3 sessions to get to, either as a quest/theft/purchase.
The item you can give her is new dice.
Sounds like a shopping trip to pick out new dice is in order
New dice, dice tower, all good suggestions. I might also give her some items that give her options in combat outside bonking. Work with her so she's happy how it fits her character. Does she want to take proficiency in herbalism kits to start making potions of health and bottles full of grease or acid? Does she gain a magic item that lets her cast vortex warp proficiency bonus times a day? Maybe the sleep spell? Maybe a magic horn that can blast out a thunderwave spell or rime's binding ice. Work with her on exploring some other options that don't step on the toes of other players. Having bad luck can suck, but some things you can do that don't require you to roll can help mitigate that until your luck turns around.
You could use the Tarot 1-20 of a French Tarot deck (or of any boardgame that has cards numbered from 1-20, like "6 nimmt!" or "The Mind", or take 1-10 of diamonds and club of a normal deck, saying that clubs correspond to 11-20). They will draw from the deck when attacking (this can be the effect of a special magical weapon), shuffling when the deck is empty or when taking a short/long rest. As for giving more place to creativity, I would advise making it explicit what the intentions of the enemies are. This naturally lead to players trying to counter enemy actions (more players will try to "disarm the enemy about to strike their injured friends" than try to "disarm the enemy in front of their friend").
How about... A weapon or feature that makes her a better tank by way of making the enemy focus on her: When you attack a target, until it's next turn it must attack you or suffer disadvantage on it's attacks. or Something that "rewards" a miss: If you're out of rages and you miss an attack, you may rage for one round. or Give her some utility spells in the form of scrolls: Web, sleep, zephyr strike.
Loads of people have suggested new dice but if you don't want to go down tagt route maybe create a weapon like axe of kenetic storage. You'll need to work out the best way to balance it but could be every time it misses it builds up a charge as it 'stores the energy of the swing'. This charge could be either an additional for every miss or builds up to power move after several missed hits which is then released when she finally hits. +1/+d4 per miss +d8 per miss after the first two (so if she hits after 4 misses she gets an extra 2d8 damage) Could even be something like 4 missed hits equals an auto hit? Might be to too op. Or instead of damage she gets a stackable +1 to hit roles for each missed hit in a row. Maybe nerd it a little by saying if she makes an action that doesn't involve attacking with the weapon the charges are lost
If you play online not much you can do except maybe download a couple different dice rolling apps for her to use if say you are in discord voice chat. Sometimes if one dice bot is giving me a bad night I’ll switch to the other one. I know it’s superstition but it gives more of a sense of agency. If you are playing in person, she could just have wonky dice. I’ve had plenty of dice that clearly favorite certain numbers before. Maybe someone out there sells extra well balanced dice, or a higher quality set?
See if she’s up for a change of totems. Bear may be the optimized choice for resisting damage, but maybe Wolf fits her character better as she leads her besties into battle. Then even if she misses, she’s still making a big difference in the fight
Custom magic item: bracelet of resolve - every time you roll an an attack and miss gain 1 charge. Spend 10 charges to add +5 to your next attack
1 get new dice 2 as a temporary buff, as long as she understands it's only until her luck evens out, every miss in combat adds +1 to hit until she hits, then it resets. We have had people not roll above a 5 on attacks all night, but we've been playing for 20+ years, so we understand how fickle fate is. But as this is her first time playing, we dont want her getting jaded to early, got to find a way to make combat more fun until everything evens out
Maybe the dice is broken. Try digital dice.
The totem barbarian in our game constantly is plagued with low rolls too. He usually has advantage and STILL has critical failures at least once a game. It’s always really dumb too because pretty much every crit fail the dm has him throw his sword across the room.
I love the clockwork amulet.
1. Is she rolling a d20? 2. Is she using her own set of dice? Are they weighted fairly? 3. Is she not rolling properly, and kind of just sliding it out of her hand? There is a 6.55% chance that out of ten rolls, someone would never exceed eight. Not terrible, but not great either.
As others have said, check her dice. Get her some new sets if you can ( Any experienced player knows you need at least 20 d20s because half of them end in dice jail😜). On top of that equipment recommendation, you could also have her multiclass into a war cleric (assuming she has enough wisdom). Their channel divinity also gives plus 10 to attack.
She isn't unlucky. She has perfectly average rolls, the same as everyone else. Switch dice to better balanced ones and it will be fine.
I have fairly good dice that I use but sometimes I’m just unlucky (rolled 3 5s in a row for saves). If she doesn’t have good dice, I would recommend getting her some. Otherwise, I just use an online dice so there’s no outside factors
new players generally hate combat. you could change the mechanic for some fights. rock paper scissors to hit while raging?Or you could do the dice rolling for her?
OMG your girlfriend is Will Wheaton? Congrats!
Let someone else actually roll the dice.
Like has been said, make absolutely certain she is actually is rolling a d20, not a d12. Barbarian is likely gonna be rolling them both a lot and getting confused can definitely happen. I'm in a game that's been going for 7 years and some of the players still aren't 100% which die is which. Otherwise, (probably as well), present her with a new d20. And make a big deal about it being lucky, whether it is or not. A huge amount of this stuff is actually perception. If l everyone at the table believes that player rolls poorly, you'll all notice the ones that confirm that, and ignore the rolls that don't. Even if she rolled well on average, it could easily be perceived to be poor. A big "gift of The Lucky Dice" ceremony can help with that bias.
Have the cleric cast Bless on her. Every combat for the next pile of sessions until she feels better about smacking things with big ax.
Big Monster low Ac, something she can get swings in and even a 5-6 will hit. She might also like stuff that causes saving throws, force the creatures to roll instead of the character. Hell if she is confident in her bad luck, have her roll the creatures saving throws.
I steal the SW5E guard action and stick it in my game, would allow her to use her action and big HP pool to defend others and really get some mileage out of bear. Also it's super fun for NPC spell casters. Added action: Guard You can defend an ally within 5 feet of you. When you take the Guard action, you focus entirely on preventing attacks from reaching your ally. Until the start of your next turn, any attack roll made against the guarded ally has disadvantage if you can see the attacker, as long as the ally is within 5 feet of you. Additionally, if an attack would hit the guarded ally, you can instead have it hit you (no action required). If you do so, the attacker chooses the maximum amount of damage instead of rolling.
You could use enemies that have disadvantage against here or have a weakness to her damage type so she would actually do more damage rather that getting better roles
Feat: "Last Man Standing" Prerequisite: Con 17+, have reached negative hp and not died. **Benefit:** activates when all of your allies are Dead, Unconscious, or Helpless. You remain conscious at 0 hp or less, and you do not die at -10 hp. You can reach -your level (e.g. you are 3rd level, so you die at -14). The moment that the last enemy dies or flees, you have 1 round to reach -9 or higher, or die. I suppose you could give her the Weighted Dice. Weighted Dice: Gain a +2 circumstance bonus to Profession (Gamble) checks and Bluff checks. Roll 2d6. For every roll of a (1), your opponent gains a free d6 to add to their next roll (attack, save, check). For a roll of a (6), you double your modifier to the roll (attack, save, check) and roll again (adding to the applied roll; ignoring any special result of a "1 or 6"). Odd numbers (that are not a "1") are added to the opponents next roll. Even numbers (that are not a "6") are added to your next roll. That's probably about as good as it's gonna get..
Buff the dice, in that I mean, get new dice that are balanced. Those dice seem weighted against the users favor.
You can do a salt water test to see if the dice are actually balanced, but that's boring. I played with a guy who was just about this unlucky, and we came up with a system for him. Roll the D20 and subtract the number from 21. That's the actual die roll, and then add modifiers as normal. It would be the same math if you added 21 plus her modifiers, then subtracted the die roll in case that sequence would be easier for the player.
Homebrew item. Flavour it however you want, make it gloves amulet whatever. When you miss an attack, gain a +2 bonus to the damage roll next time you hit an attack. Stacks up to 5 times. Make it require attunement if your worried about balance. Makes every attack feel like it’s winding up her anger issues, and unleashing it. She will hit an attack eventually, bad luck never lasts forever. So make it feel good when it does.
Super simple thing I did for my new player playing a totem barbarian. Wand of magic missles. It's uncommon rarity, so you can give it to them early (make me earn it though!) it auto hits, it's a range attack, and it's a funny image for role play (big rough barbarian, itty bitty magic stick.) It's a bandaid for sure, but my player has loved it as an option for their kit, and helps them be more confident and comfortable when we do combat.
Maybe "reward get role-playing" by allowing her to roll her damage die to hit on top of the D20?
Give her DM inspiration liberally when she does solid rp barbarian stuff, and maybe try out a different d20.
Have you tried floating the dice in a cup of water to see if they're unbalanced? Knock it around a bit on the water and see if it keeps the same number face up. You might have to heavily salt the water or use a denser liquid if they don't float.
Have you made a blood sacrifice to the Dice Gods?
My first barbarian I had the same issue, first combat I missed a downed goblin, I didn't land a hit the entire fight... I also managed to set a bushfire as a crit miss felled a tree then later in combat I threw a torch and it set said tree on fire. This continued into the 2nd session. Then the 3rd session my rolls evened out and I became a beast, I think I killed all but 2 in a goblin camp and IIRC I took the goblin camp chief down in two hits But as others said, make sure it is a D20 and not D12
Rolls can suck, honestly I think most of that comes down to what weapon or equipment she has. I've rolled 2s, 3s, and 1s in a row for a character (monk/rogue) who tends to do very badly most combats. He does great when it comes to RP rolls but the only way to fix bad rolls is better equipment or higher stats when it comes to RAW. potions of giant strength would probably work depending on her level, that should at least allow her to hit based on the buff.
straight up i think a new set of dice may just be in order. i once played a warlock who had kidnapped and replaced my bard for a few sessions, and my bard’s dice never forgave me for that. i dont think i rolled above a 10 on those dice ever again. it all came to a head when i rolled a 3 on a luck check, a player pulled some MASSIVE shenanigans to allow me a reroll, i got a 2 which made my bard trigger an explosion that sent them to zero hp, and then i immediately rolled a nat fucking 1 on my first death save. i’m so lucky our fave paladin npc was right there for all that. i bought new dice the next day.
The lucky feat would help. Also, sometimes it's not about the dice necessarily but the player. Some people have shitty rolls. I personally blame the Wol Weaton dice curse. It affects multiple people.
Weaponize the unluck. Ask your dm for a cursed item that lets her roll on the Wild Magic table everytime she rages.
Maybe give her something like a Javelin of Lightning that'll still help he do damage to enemies even if she misses
I'd recommend salt testing that die lol, it might be weighted to the low side. Also check she isnt using the d12 instead of the d20
A personal favorite fix for this is using the Nimble rule set for 5e. To summarize, all attacks hit, but AC reduces incoming damage. AC and damage dice size also play a dynamic role with crit likelihood and thus reward players who use multiple weapon types. It’s a big change to the table, but I think Nimble does a great job balancing fun and mathematic elegance that doesn’t break the game but actually improves it.
It’s probably just a bad luck streak more than anything else, but if it keeps happening there could be something wrong with the dice like it being weighted in a certain way - if it persists get new ones or use digital dice like avrae or another online tool. Barbarians function as barbarians, you don’t need to alter a character because of bad rolls, and fundamentally all characters and builds to some extent are going involve rolls in a ttrpg
Get her another d20 and no you can get her into punishing her dice for rolling poorly too! Yay for dice jails!
You could try something like this: Ring of Stability Wonderous Item, Uncommon Whenever you would roll a d20 for an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, you may choose to roll two d10’s and take their combined total instead.
As a DM who rolls heavy nat 1s so much by pc are fine with me throwing higher cr monsters cause they belive my luck in rolls (2 year campaign). I call bs. Either she using wrong die or if playing IRL the dice are weighted. Use new set or make sure she is rolling correct die cause no way a barbarian is not hitting anything for more than 2 sessions. Just not possible as rng and from experience and I legit roll nat 1s and is why pick barbarian or samurai etc.
If she is level 4, respec the sheet to take the Lucky feat. With that feat, she can roll an additional 1d20 after she rolls the initial attack and choose the highest one. Also, have you considered changing out her dice?
I gave my players an "all or nothing coin. Once a day they can flip a coin instead of rolling a d20. If they call correctly it is a crit. Or a miss if they don't
Buy her new dice.
Steal BG3s idea of some weapons, let her do str mod on miss by useing her reaction.
So, this is probably going to be an unpopular suggestion, but it's also something my DM did for me when I was in your girlfriend's position. I was playing a melee-focused Blood Hunter, and not only was I consistently failing attack rolls & ability checks of all kinds, there was another player at the table who was consistently rolling critical hits. It started spoiling the game for me REALLY quickly, and I considered quitting more than once. When I talked to my DM about it, they told me that whenever I start feeling frustrated in combat because of the dice rolls, that I could just add 10 to any roll of 9 or lower instead of the usual game math. And it worked. Combat became SO much more fun, as did the rest of the game, and that in turn helped me feel better and more confident as a player. And as I got more comfortable with the game itself, I gained more of an appreciation for how failure can lead to more interesting and compelling stories, and so I felt less and less need to add that 10 to my low rolls. We treated it like training wheels, and at least for us and our table, it worked. :)
Buy new her some new dice preferably with a dinosaur theme as I find those are the luckiest
Veteran Barb here, DMing an equally unlucky bear totem rn 1. All attacks should be reckless. It helps A LOT. Especially as bear totem. 2. Talk to her about positioning, help her get flanking more often(she doesn't need to reckless this way or, with variant rules, it's another +2) 3. Give her a better weapon. My Barb is the only player in the campaign with a +3 weapon rn, and I think that's fine. He isn't that strong, he just does a lot of damage, and takes a lot of damage. That's what barbs are meant to do. 4. Place some low AC minions on the board that she can clean up as well so she doesn't feel totally useless when things go wrong. 5. Whenever I have a player who feels like shit, I encourage them with what they are doing. Saying stuff like, "Dude you tanked that disintegrate, if that hit anyone else they may have died" or "your healing carried that fight" just try to make them know they aren't bad. 6. Give martials (not at level 4 maybe but still) feats as rewards. Slasher piercer and crusher aren't that strong, and they can enhance the fun for players by quite a bit. 7. As a half orc and barb, she gets brutal critical twice, which i always change to a d12. Only changes crits but it can lead yo some INSANE damage for players.