this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2026
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Dealing with players rolling terribly in combat? (lemmy.world)
submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 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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[–] hzl@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 points 5 days ago

Players not succeeding on rolls isn't necessarily a bad thing. It can increase tension in your encounters and is ultimately something you can't control directly. You can fudge dice on your end, but honestly this reduces tension and if you're not decisive about it can be pretty noticable.

So what can you affect? First, the stats of the monsters you're throwing against them or the DCs that you're looking for can be adjusted. If they're consistently struggling more than is enjoyable, you can always scale things back a bit when you're prepping encounters. Inspiration can also be a great way to let the players swing things in their favor without feeling like they're being handed a success. There are also times when you can throw in a "oh actually, roll that with advantage" with some reasonable excuse, which also doesn't feel like a gimme. But aside from this you have a whole toolkit in your ability to shape the world around them.

Magic items can be really helpful here. A staff with silvery barbs or bless or something similar can be a great way to put some die manipulation into your players' hands, especially if the party composition lacks things like this. But don't forget that you can also use set pieces.

Maybe the ceiling above an enemy has a weak point, or they're standing directly under a chandelier or some nets. Maybe an enemy prefers their own safety in a crowded fight over that of their allies and drops an AOE that brings some friendly fire. Maybe some magic item or wards on the monster are responsible for part of its AC and dispelling it might help. The options are only limited to what you can imagine.

For great tension in a game, though, you want there to be risk of failure. Resist the urge to just hand the win to your players. Your job isn't to make sure they win every encounter, that's their job. They'll sort it out themselves. Maybe they don't, though, and they're taken alive. Maybe the entire party wipes and properly dies, but in 100 years someone enters their tomb and ressurrects them to perform some task that they're uniquely suited for. Maybe some sketchy wizard who wants something from them and has been scrying on them for the past week teleports them away, only to back them into a corner and try to make them do something against their interests or beliefs. Maybe they're captured and lose this particular fight, but are able to rest wherever they're being held and find others to help them secure their belongings and fight back.

In general, don't worry about how the dice are rolling. They're meant to be out of your control, but you can do literally anything with the world.