this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2026
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Dealing with players rolling terribly in combat? (lemmy.world)
submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by Zonetrooper@lemmy.world to c/dnd@lemmy.world
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Everyone has bad dice days. Everyone has that one time you get a Nat 1 at a critical moment.

But guys, my party is in trouble.

They're consistently rolling terribly in combat across multiple sessions, classes, and dice types. And I mean terribly. Over time, you'd think their d20 rolls would average out to about unmodified 10, right? Plus or minus a bit. Hah. No. They're averaging about 7. Other rolls (damage, healing, etc) also often suffer from this. It's turning combat into a slog; anything with an AC of above 12-14 or so is proving awful to fight, and when attacks do hit they often do little damage.

We're all experienced players, and it's a digital platform - so I can both know they're not missing modifications to the raw d20 roll, and know it's not "bad dice". Unfortunately, they're also experienced enough to figure out ACs from misses/hits, so it's not like I can even give them "free passes" on attacks as anti-frustration measures.

It's at the point where I'm thinking the honest only way to "fix" this is to artificially nerf NPCs or vastly reduce the CR I'm used to them being able to handle. Is that really it, folks?

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[โ€“] wer2@lemmy.zip 8 points 4 days ago (1 children)

They need to roll the d20 and not the d12.

But seriously, the party can figure out AC, but not hit points. If something is dragging on, just have things die on the next hit. I know some people would complain about it, but it is the group's game, if something isn't fun, change it. You have the power.

Also, some things fight to the death, but it is also ok to have some things surrender or run away. Fighting a group of bandits? When one goes down, have someone scream "Bear! No!" and run away crying. Killed half the goblins? The rest turn tail and run.

There are many levers to pull, and don't be afraid to use them.

[โ€“] Zonetrooper@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

Oh, trust me. I'm already working in that kind of thing.

Actually it was a sign of how incredibly frustrated my group is with this situation that they - who normally will pull out every stop to ensure not a single foe escapes - looked at the fleeing NPCs and said "Nah, forget that. We're not dealing with more of that."