Dungeons & Dragons: How To Help Players With Bad Luck As A DM

Dungeons & Dragons can differ quite a bit from the various past times that it draws its inspirations from. Wargaming has precisely detailed rules that allow strategy and tactical play to minimize the role of luck. Communal storytelling doesn't require the permission of an external power to say a character succeeds at a task.

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A run of bad luck doesn't have to be a negative experience for the player involved. Here are a few different ways to make it so that rolling poorly doesn't have to ruin a person's ability to have a good time and engage with the story you are telling.

How To Keep Failure Interesting

A scenario you want to avoid when Dungeon Mastering is that the players are stuck at an obstacle and forced to repeat the same skill check until they succeed. For a player with bad luck, this can be especially frustrating. They might roll worse than a much less qualified character but end up sidelined because everybody else tried after they failed.

The solution to this is having failed rolls still advance the scene. This can mean they succeed but with a consequence, or that their failure changes the scenario in a way that they can't try again.

Skill Check

Initial Scenario

Complication

Knowledge Check

The players need to pass a skill check in history, arcana or a similar skill to know something relevant to the plot. Perhaps recognise a symbol as belonging to a certain faction, or knowing the correct way to activate a magic item.

Not succeeding on the roll might not give the information needed, but a character might still know a lead, which will get them there in an extra step. For example, they might recognize a gap in their knowledge but know a library or expert who could help. Success allows them to move faster, but failure doesn't prevent the plot from advancing.

Strength Check

Some heavy obstacle is blocking passage. Rubble, fallen trees and more. A DM might call for an athletics check to clear the rubble, opening the path on a success.

Failure might clear the passage more slowly and produce difficult terrain that is still challenging to move through. They might also destroy loot that would otherwise be found when clearing the path.

Mobility Check

A climb requires several successful athletics checks to complete. A failure partway up causes a fall that deals damage and forces the player to start over from the bottom.

Instead of a failure causing a fall and restart, they may need to leave behind some items to lighten their pack or enter the next encounter in a poor position because they had to climb a gentler route that opens them to attack.

Lockpicking

The players are trying to open a locked door, through either brute force or lockpicking.

A failed lockpicking attempt sets off an alarm. Guards come out to intercept them, but they can be looted for keys and disguises after the encounter.

Not all situations make sense for this type of fail-forward approach. When a check doesn't have any consequences for failure, you can often just not call for a roll. If there is no difference between the players trying a skill check one or twenty times before succeeding, just allow them to succeed.

How To Make Bad Luck Fun

One reason that bad luck can be frustrating in D&D is that it can get repetitive. Failing to hit an enemy's armor means your attack doesn't land. Failing a saving throw means taking the negative effects of a spell. These are things that happen to the player rather than involve the character. There are different ways you can approach this issue.

Describe Failed Rolls In Interesting Ways

Being descriptive can salve the wound of having to tell the player they failed at something. Rather than failing to hit an armoured enemy, describe the way they parry or deflect the attack. This active description moves the narrative focus from the player failing to the worthiness of their opponent.

Critical decks are a common supplement for D&D that provides helpful prompts for describing these moments. Often they'll be designed towards certain types of game, and you may need to look at several to find one that fits your DMing approach.

Unless your group embraces that style of play, you should avoid describing critical failures as comedic flops. It can feel for the player like the DM is punching down at them. A battle-hardened veteran wielding a legendary weapon probably shouldn't have a one-in-twenty chance of accidentally stabbing themselves when making an attack roll.

Mechanics That Make Bad Luck Fun

There are a few different ways the mechanics of D&D can be made to reward failing in interesting ways.

• Inspiration: when a player fails at a roll, give them inspiration if they can describe how it went wrong and ideally tie the failure into the character. This can be spent to offset bad luck in the future.
• Classes like Wild Magic Sorcerer have their own way of making bad luck fun and memorable. Their Tides Of Chaos ability lets the DM recharge their class feature at any time by giving them a wild magic surge.
• Divination Wizards can store their bad rolls and give them to other people.

You can also make custom magic items that activate after failed rolls. Here are a couple of examples:

1. Weapon of momentum: When this weapon misses on an attack roll, it gains +1 to attack rolls made before the end of your next turn.
2. Staff of conservation: When a spell cast with this focus fails, you regain a spell slot one level below the spell cast. You can use this effect a number of times daily equal to your proficiency modifier.

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