AwesomeDice Pound O’ Dice Giveaway

well I was given as a gag gift a over sized super heavy d6 one year for Christmas, I never use it and it sits in the bowl that I put out for my players for dice. generally I don’t let them role it because I have a glass table….. If you haven’t figured out were this is going then have I got a surprise for you. a new player to our group who didn’t know about the glass table because its covered in a table cloth or the super heavy die decided he was going to role it. before i could stop him it went into bullet time and the next thing I know I here clack clack crunch shatter break. he has cracked my table…. in his defense he felt super bad and chipped in to help me get a new wooden table but thats why we don’t role that die any more.

the ugliest dice i had were the ones from my first box set from D&D (red box)
a pale blue d20 colored with a black crayon (supplied)

im sure most of you can remember these. arriving with wear spots already.

One of the players at my table bought that clear bar of soap with a D20 in it, and once the soap was gone, decided to add the black die to his set. That die had a long unlucky run, and players started calling it the poop die, assuming said player washed his undercarriage with it a few too many times and cursed it when it was in the soap. This progressed to another player throwing away any dice that the poop die touched. This problem of die infection was compounded by the fact that the owner of the nasty die was an ecstatic roller, and the PD would touch other dice more often than anyone would have preferred.

I haven’t seen it in a long time, I have a feeling it was liberated at some point and set free into the wild, hopefully whatever child found it outside on the street didn’t put it in his mouth…

My ugliest die is a d20- a nasty cheap mac-n-cheese-orange monstrosity covered in urine-yellow spackles. That thing NEVER rolls well- I even tried to put it to the test, and rolled it exclusively for a whole session only to find that I hadn’t landed a single hit by the end of the day.

I hate that die.

I started gaming in about the 5th grade. My first set of dice, came from the red box. Ugly, and all. From there, I started collecting dice over the years. I’ve picked up a dice here, a dice there, a cool set of dice (Hematite rock, Peweter). When I worked at a game store, I got several new sets of dice. About 5 years ago, I went through a divorce, and I didn’t notice that my now ex-wife took my dice with her. This was a good 15 years worth of dice, having started the collection LONG before I met her. Good riddance to the monster, but I am still annoyed she stole all those memories. I was reduced to my “bag of dice” that I took with me. I’ve started rebuilding my collection, but it is miniscule compared to the glory it used to have.

This is a story of the cruel whims of fate, and the dark will that drive my dice.
This was early in the days of LFR, and I was playing an infernal warlock who could hurt himself to reroll misses. Everything was good, and I had set out all of my dice in organized rows with the 20′s facing up . To punish my dice, whenever I miss I place the die in the bag and move on to the next d20 (to spread out the bad luck, see? It totally works).

But on this dark day my dice decided no more, and they dug their terrible, unknowable mind-claws into my brain. On this day my dice decided to play with my superstitions, and simply quit. For an entire combat (mind you this was one of the more difficult SPECs, when warlocks were still weaksauce), every single d20 I owned refused to roll a successful hit. Even though I was rerolling every attack the dice turned up values you’d expect to see on a d6. Slowly but surely these sadistic dice drove me mad, and I ended causing so much damage to my own PC I had to start killing the NPCs we were rescuing in order to absorb the damage from my own failed attack rolls.

On this day every d20 I owned got together to push my buttons, and see how far fate could string me along. Not once did I hit a creature.

It was my first game of Death Angel. Our team was pretty beat up but victory was in our grasp. When it came to my turn, all I had to do was roll something other than a 4. It seemed like a sure thing… Until I managed to roll a 4 FIVE TIMES IN A ROW, defying all odds and sealing our fate, much to the chagrin of everyone else at the table. It was one of the most spectacular dice failures in all my years of gaming.

This is a friend of mine getting back at one of his dice. It’s an old vid and recorded using a state of the art razr telephone

Forgot the link…

I have an old d4 from my very first D&D game ever. I think that I must have long ago used up all the good rolls on it, because I haven’t rolled anything better than a 2 on it for years now. Playing a wizard with that die is torture.

The third evil lieutenant was all that stood between my paladin Thomas and the cure to the magical disease that had been ravaging a nearby town of exiles. With the end of the harrowing battle in sight, Thomas let loose, cast Divine Sacrifice, invoked his last Smite Evil for the day, and charged the lieutenant, bringing his warhammer to bear with both hands and full Power Attack. Totalling all of the bonuses, I only needed to roll a 5 on my d20 to hit for about a bajillion damage.

Naturally, I rolled a 3.

Unbeknownst to Thomas and the rest of the party, a fellow party member, the psychic warrior Aerik, had been trafficking with fell powers to manipulate fate in the party’s favor. Time froze as Aerik’s “ally” presented itself to him, offering to provide Thomas with a second attempt in exchange for a piece of Aerik’s soul. Aerik considered the look of shock and despair frozen on Thomas’s face, his holy powers having failed him, and consented. Time rewound, and Thomas swung again.

I rolled a 2.

Again, the apparition appeared to Aerik, offering to provide a third attempt to Thomas. Aerik reluctantly consented, and his player cautioned me to roll better. The other players snickered. I assured him that I had an 80% chance of success and confidently let the die fall from my hand.

I rolled a flat 1.

At this point, everyone at the table was lost to laughter. The DM composed himself enough to present the trade once more to Aerik’s player. Again, he agreed, but said I owed him bigtime.

Another 1.

“Here, use one of my d20s,” another player offered amidst howls of laughter. “No,” I said, utterly taken in by the gambler’s fallacy. “This one is bound to give a better result eventually.” I looked to the DM, who looked at Aerik’s player. “Piece of soul?” He nodded, head resting in his hand. I rolled.

1.

It’s one of the few times I’ve experienced truly breathless, pants-wetting laughter in my life. I did manage to roll a 6 on my next attempt, and we slew the baddie and saved the city. I think I still have that die somewhere…

A dwarf character of mine rolled two simultaneous 1′s while attempting to lead a pack horse across an improvised bridge over a mountain chasm. The DM had the horse go over the edge on the first, but gave me a balance check to save my dwarf. When that failed, I should have been toast. However, the DM subscribed to the “Fate more interesting than death” school of GMing for such situations. She had me land, injured, partway down the chasm with a permanent and crippling fear of heights.

In a 4E game I was finally unleashing some cool monsters on the party. I had their tactics lined up, power cards at the ready, and even had some cool voices prepped ahead of time for when the players were gonna be near death. I pulled my then “lucky” dice out, a forest green granite d20. I didn’t roll higher than a 3 with that die the entire 6 hour session. I would switch dice and get better results but I always went back to that one hoping the luck would come back. It never did and to this day I pull it out when I want the players to win…

DMing D&D 3.5 back in 2007, near the campaign wrap-up after a couple years, and nearly 40 game sessions:

The dark being Thalachronorastaris, the extra-planar dimension of time itself personified, stood before the seven great heroes. Though, each assigned as an avatar of one of the ancient gods, they themselves were in every right ascended.

But, this battle, this one I had prepared to challenge even their experienced wit and immense power. I would make these heroes grovel before the might that was this one monster.

Combat began, and the battle had dredged on for several hours. Though I found myself mystified at how successful the party was in whittling away at my magnificent creation.

It wasn’t until near the end of this final epic battle that I realized something was fishy about the dice I was using. I always had this thing about using a different pair of dice each game session, and this had come from what was supposed to be a “complete collection” of dice, which included oddball dice like d9, d14, d16. Worried I may have grabbed one of those dice, I examined it more closely, but no, this was definitely the shape and size of a typical d20. But then, as my stomach sank, I realized that there was a zero…

“There are no ‘effing zero’s on a d20!? What sort of sorcery was this!?”

As it turns out, and this was the first I had ever seen, that the dice was one of the old school d10’s (where 0-9 are repeated twice on a 20-sided dice). I had been so wrapped up in maintaining a descriptive and exciting session of combat that I completely overlooked that I had been rolling zero’s and just adding the monster’s bonuses subconsciously.

Within another five rounds, the heroes had defeated what was supposed to be the challenge of their careers with relative ease.

I love the first set of die i bought. Red with gold letters. Impossible to read but I love it. The pink dice roll better though! girls got to have pink dice i have 3 shades of pink now.

I think an image with slight explanation tells it all:
http://a7.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/387298_10151039445745483_1368009112_n.jpg

Post elven accuracy, two-fang strike…After that, that ability was renamed “twin whiff”.

So I was locked up for a while and we had a little D&D Group. We had to mold and shape all of our dice out of soap and or toilet paper. They worked out well enough but were constantly having to be repaired, modified and or replaced.

Recently I started carrying a bag of dice around with me everywhere. I just scooped up a bunch of random dice from my box of each shape and tossed them in a little bag. No big deal. I soon found that this little bag made much more sense to bring to games than the box I have at home. However, recently I found an issue with my dice bag: One of the dice is loaded. I have no idea where it came from, since I have 0 recollection of buying it, but I have a white d6 with black pips that has 2 6′s, 2 5′s, and 2 1′s on it. I had not noticed this, and so when we started rolling up characters one day, (4d6 drop lowest, reroll 1′s) I went about using this die. Since we reroll 1′s, I would always get a 5 or 6 on the die; but I still hadn’t noticed until someone finally said “Wait, how are you rolling so well?” I was like, “I don’t know, I guess the dice–” *looks down* “–damn.” And then I saw it. Everyone laughed at me and couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed I was using a loaded die for weeks without noticing.

The BEST worst die story I have is from way back. We were a group playing in White Wolf’s World of Darkness 2nd Ed. And one of our buddies was playing a Cultist of Ecstasy, with a penchant for twin Uzis going full-auto in combat. The issue, of course, were his rolls. Full-auto ups the die pool, but also ups the difficulty. And, in the White Wolf system, when one rolled 1s, they cancelled out other successes. If one accumulated too many ones, the GM was free to wreak whatever pain he might from a “botched” action. Our Cultist friend eventually earned the moniker “Botch King” – whenever we needed him in the clutch, he’d fail… spectacularly.

The second involves a friend’s homebrewed campaign setting for D&D, a place completely suited for rogues… except that we always ran into undead. I was playing one of the rogues, and whenever the dreaded Will save was mentioned… I was pretty boned, and managed to screw the party over. I just could not save on Will to save my life… nobody failed when the chips were down like I was managing.

So, deep in a dungeon, my character gets sent to swim down a bit, and check out an area quickly. The following, I think, is almost a quote from that session.

“What’s that, Mr. Aboleth? A shortcut you say? And treasure? I’ll get all my friends to come THIS way!”

Even today, many years later, I get jokes about that character and the terrible mind-control fish… I think I managed to do more damage to the party in that dungeon (also managing to knock a fellow PC into a Gate a vampire had opened, following, as you may have guessed, more mind-control and a hilarious use of a Ring of the Bullette.)

Note: Spoiler to the Rise of the Runelords modules – skip if you plan on playing it.

In a Pathfinder game we were assaulting an enclave packed with giants. We figured that if we could make a treaty with the element of elder giants who had been displaced by the young upstart meglomaniacal runt we might have a better chance. The group decided that we should send in the least threatening looking member, which happened to be my scrawny sorcerer. That’s all good, he has a high CHA and I love doing actual roleplaying. He enters the war room and greets the astonished giants with a quick greeting and open hands – diplo roll: 6.

Best roll of the night.

He then launches into a lengthy, well-thought out rationale on why they should put aside their differences and work together. The other players are nodding. the GM is nodding. The cat is nodding. Diplo roll: 2

As the giants get surly he launches on again, hitting new ideas and plans for the future. Diplo roll: 1

They’re coming over to squash him now and he makes a final impassioned pleas that if not for themselves, they should for their children and grandchildren. They pause. Diplo roll for a GM desperate to allow this: 1.

There was fighting.

The ugliest die I have ever used (and heaviest) was a D20 made out of some type of metal. It was a dull grey in color, and if I ever actually used it, everyone would get out of the way in case it came their direction (I swear the die weighs about a pound it seems). I definitely couldn’t ever use it on my glass table top, so it was reserved for those rare occasions we played at my brothers house.

I play in two different games with the same guy, Pathfinder and WoD (classic, not new). He rolls pretty well in Pathfinder, especially when something calls for d10s. In WoD, though–which is exclusively d10s–he almost never rolls a success. Many of his rolls are botches, actually. He finally had to give up playing a Mage, because the Paradox (a mystical “you did bad” punishment) got to be too much for him.

Worst dice rolls ever as a DM. Had a plot twist NPC against the ropes with 3 bugbears pinning it and ready to impale. The idea was that the party was to witness the death of their lead. The d20 used rolls 3 ones for 3 fumble misses and thus the lead survived. Off the cuff rework was required.

Worst dice rolls ever as a DM. Had a plot twist NPC against the ropes with 3 bugbears pinning it and ready to impale. Upon complaint by the players, I rolled the hits in plain view with the caveat they would only miss on a 1. The idea was that the party was to witness the death of their lead. The d20 used rolls 3 ones for 3 fumble misses and thus the lead survived. Off the cuff rework was required.

Ended up to be a decent twist of events. Even ugly dice have their uses.

Back in the day, and I mean the way back I had an an annoying character named Sedring the Great, wizard extraordinaire. A very high level wizard. I got so annoyed with him that I put a hidden temple of mandatory worship to Odin, and of course he ignored it. So Odin came down himself to confront Sedring, seeing as he was a very high level wizard. Well they got to verbally sparring and Odin finally gave Sedring a choice, give simple obeisance, or become Odin’s personal body slave for 100 years and be forever forgotten. Well the player decided he could stand up to a major diety and said, basically, bite me. Now realize he will save against any magic attack on a 2, So Odin, taking this response as a no, proceeded to smite Sedring. The player rolled a 1, and after much cajoling convinced me to give him another chance. Well he rolled another 1. At this point he screamed ‘Aww Come on’ and rolled again, another 1. In fact he rolled 11 consecutive 1′s in a row. This started a trend of craptastic die rolling by this player, to the point that if he did have a good roll, my dice, which he used, disappeared after that particular game session. This led him to create a story run game that didn’t utilize dice in any way. To this day he refuses to play any game that involves dice.

So, my dice horror story. Well, it seems no matter what I do nor what dice I use. My own or even borrowed. I am almost guaranteed to either miss, crit fail or if I do manage to hit. It is always for the least amount of damage possible. Has not matter what dice I use! Maybe I need to work on my die rolling skills.

I had just got a new set of metal dice. I’d been waiting for them to get in when we had a game. I was playing a paladin and was ready to slay and destroy evil. I had my new dice set and ready to go. The Dm was running the Keep on the Borderlands. My friend was running using a set of my dice that I gave him. I didn’t like them because they rolled badly all the time.

We started with the kobolds. First combat I walked in and we rolled initiative. The kobolds got the drop on me and scored two 20’s to hit me then max damage on the roll. I dropped out cold. After that was over I got healed and went to the next room and the next with the same results those dice where my bane. I’d never seen so many 20’s and max damage rolls against me. I’d fall and then they couldn’t hit anybody else for nothing. I never even got a change to roll my new dice most of the time.

The DM asked if he minded if he could have the dice. I told him that I wanted to keep them. That week I was pouring a sidewalk to my garage and needed filler. That dice set had never been seen again.

I have a house rule where a player may roll a D30 rather than a D20 once during a game. The joke is my D30 is the worst rolling die on earth. 90% of the time it rolls crit fails, to the amusement of all but the person counting on that high roll.

I have purchased 7 full sets of dice in my lifespan, and each time I indoctrinate a new player, I give them my oldest remaining set. That way they have no investment to play the game with us, it was done to me by my first DM and it only felt right to spread the goodwill. (and also I get to go get a new set of dice.)

“Hey! I’ve got several copies of this module that I don’t need! Instead of eBay-ing it, I’ll trade it on the Internet to people who can use it, and get cool gaming stuff in return. Everyone wins!”

“Hey! This guy wants to trade me 4 sets of GameScience dice for a copy of the module. I love dice, and my only set of GameScience dice is awesome! I’ll take 4 more sets! DEAL.”

“Hey. This one set is covered in dried Sharpie marker. Like…EVERYWHERE BUT IN THE NUMBER DEPRESSIONS. I…I can barely read this d20. To the point that it’s practically unusable. BUT IT’S YELLOW. WITH BLACK. It’s AWESOME. But so, so ugly.”

I am sad.

Built a real combat monster of a Werewolf, but when it came time to hulk out and lay the beat down on the big bad of a story he went through the entire combat without a single hit. 13 dice that just needed to roll 6 or better and it was miss, miss, botch, miss, miss, botch. Storyteller is the only system i refuse to play now.

I had a DM who had a particular orange d20 that rolled crits both for good and ill way more than statistically it should. We sat down and rolled it 100 times and charted the results and as expected it rolled a lot more 1s and 20s then our other d20s we tested.

So, we were in the middle of a Boss fight involving mecha warriors and I had just targeted one of them in the middle of a crowd. (I was a WOD Mage) So, I roll and then entire table cheers when I get an exceptional success. The mecha goes boom. And then the DM gets this shit eating grin on his face and starts counting out spaces. The explosion from the first mecha takes out half the rest of the crowd, which in turn sets off the rest of the crowd . . . . and they were nuclear powered. Needless to say, I ended up taking out the entire board in one “lucky” hit; to this day I haven’t heard the end of it.
So, good luck or bad?

Well, I don’t know if this is quite so devastating as some of the stories I’ve read, but here goes:

So we’re rolling in the Tomb of Horrors. Not to spoil things, but somewhere in there is a Mummy Lord, just waiting to make you save versus Death. I’m playing a janky Changeling assassin focused on the Cabinet Trickster prestige class, poisons, and Sneak Attacks – needless to say, I’m not feeling hopeful about being trapped inside the room with this mind-proof undead fiend, but there I am.

Fortunately, I start the combat invisible and, for may the second time since I’ve been playing this character, one of my teammates is actually helping me flank an enemy. I mean, seriously, none of them have even the slightest interest in setting that up in most combats.

So I’ve got my Legacy Swordcane of Assassination out, and my Kneeblade activated, and I full Attack, thinking I’m guaranteed to nail this guy with my Penetrating Strike/Craven feat combo. My first attack ignores his dexterity and gets +4, thanks to Flanking + Invisibility. I need to roll about a 7 to hit. Whiff. Okay, fine, spend Prestige Points to re-roll. Whiff. Spend more Points. Whiff. Spend the last of my points, dang it. Whiff. Whatever, I’ve got two more attacks. Whiff. Whiff.

Now it’s the Mummy’s turn, and he’s noticed me fanning the air back there. Save versus Death.

Often with these games, it is a tale of two dice. Jacob rolls high; that’s all there is to it. We often thought he was cheating, but as a GM I started to have my other players look over his shoulder. The kid is always throwing 18s, 19s and 20s.

I decided there was only one way to really get him afraid of rolling like that. I let him roll for the monster’s attacks and damage.

A swarm of undead flaming bats zipped up from under a bridge he was crossing, surrounding him quickly. Since he was scouting ahead, the rest of the party were two rounds from combat, so the rolls were all up to him. Everyone stood up to watch the dice as he took them in hand. Jacob rolls high. 6 bats attacked, only one missed and 3 crit with him rolling nat 20s. He rolled max damage for one of the non-crit bats and 2 shy for the other.

His elf went down from his own dice. It would have been sweet justice, but Jacob still rolls high.

Once when I was a kid, I was rolling up characters on the front porch, and some of my dice ended up in the lawn. Later that day, I heard a sickening crunch as I ran over them with the lawn mower. Two dice were obliterated, but two d6s were still rollable. They had some cracks, and one had some scorching on the 5 side, but they still work. I still have that scorched die, and it rolls well for me whenever I call on it.

I have two sets of dice, one red and one blue, that the previous owner claimed were blessed by a witch. I’ve had at least one refuse to touch them after hearing that. While I find them appealing they otherwise unremarkable, except the red D20.It would roll high often. Often enough it spelled doom for the PCs when I would GM a game. I started calling it “The Dreaded Red Die of Doom™”. I think it has lost its mojo. I may have to find that witch. Maybe this Pound O’ Dice has the killer spirit hidden in one of its many dice. I hope to find out.

When I was a youth I found a backpack filled with dice. It must have been three or four thousand hard, sharp dice that were transluscent and had numbers so hard to read you would need to lift them to the sky and peer at them to see what you rolled. I still have a few of them but most of them went the way of the dodo. We used them as ammo for slingshots, threw them at people in the movies, and took them to cons where we gave them away to any who needed.

One of the dreaded dice ended up in my pocket and followed me around for some years. Every time I would reach in for change it would jab and bite at my fingers. I would give it away only to find it, or one of its clones in my pocket the next day. I dreaded that die and what it meant to put my hands in my pocket. Finally I took a blow torch to it and rounded its edges. That die became awesome after that, It rolled 20′s nearly every time and it never bit me again. Finally my GM stole the die and threw it off a bridge. It never came back and I was sad. I miss that die now.

Our paladin has had dice issues since the beginning of the campaign. He’s had nights (and I want to say more than one) where he hasn’t been able to hit anything. The thing is, he keeps switching up his dice and it doesn’t help. The paladin’s estranged father is the new god of luck, though, so maybe that has something to do with it.

I had enough dice to fill a large fishing tackle box, including a set of 5″ on a side d6, wooden dice, brass dice, blank dice, seven sided dice… and, of course, many sets of polyhedra dice.

My tackle box has been missing for over a year now. Lost dice box signs have been posted, ‘all is forgiven’ messages left on the dice newspaper, no luck. I now have a handful, barely enough to fill a change purse. I miss my big box ‘o’ dice, and the pound of dice would go a long way towards replacing it.

Dice horror story: Five or six years ago, I was playing a 1st-level RPGA module that many folks had complained about (the final boss fight was considered overwhelming even by Bandit Kingdom standards). I was playing a Fighter, and a man I was crushing on was playing some other sort of melee character. Boss fight starts up, and suddenly my d20 just chokes on me. For about eight rounds, I can’t roll above a 10. And my crush’s character is wailing for mine to help him out, because (since he IS hitting) the boss is giving him all the attention. It’s not until AFTER that character drops that I start rolling well enough to hit. Looking back on it years later it has a tinge of cinematic awesomeness, like seeing the guy fall down is what unlocked something in my fighter so she could start bringing the pain, but oh golly it was infuriating at the time. My crush gave me grief about that module for the rest of the convention.

Ugly dice story: When I went to San Francisco many years ago, I stopped into a magicians’ shop to buy a souvenir for my husband, and I spotted a pair of large and VERY irregularly shaped d6s. I had no intention of ever rolling them in a game, but the fact that they made ME have a w-t-f moment meant that I just HAD to have them. Any time I was playing my rogue character, I would pull out those dice and claim they were my sneak attack dice, just to watch the reactions of the other players. (I never did actually roll them in a game, though inevitably someone at the table would want to pick them up and roll them several times, and they do seem random enough…) The last time those dice were rolled were as a prop in “Guys and Dolls” – they’re big enough to be seen by the audience, and at that distance they’re not obviously wonky, and heck, even if someone DOES notice that about them it just adds to the story.

It’s a simple story really, but listen to my tale,
A tale of darkest curses, of dice doomed to fail.
A band of valiant heroes, did meet upon that day,
To fight great evil, and the price of it to pay,
Although we didn’t know it, in the future it remained,
Yet we were to be forsaken, for so it was ordained,
A battle ensued, of orcs and of men,
As our heroes discovered their den.
A thunderous strike, a massive great boom,
A clash of steel, as fire filled the room.
Strike after strike, the warrior cleaved,
The orcs very lives were that day reaved.
A 20! a crit! Oh glorious power!
Little did we know, this was the doomed hour.
Fury felt the gods, at our unsightly luck,
Doomed shall ye be, with failure stuck!
Since that day, though we tried, never again,
Did those dice get a 20, in any domain.

I can’t top many of these hilarious stories, but in a D&D 4e fight three weeks ago I managed to roll four (4) natural 1′s on attack rolls during the fight. My GM does critical failures, usually involving falling prone or dropping your weapon. I went to use piercing shard, which I flavor as turning my sword to mist and slicing through the monster’s head to deal psychic damage. Critical miss! I slipped and sliced through my own head, thereby rendering myself injured and invisible… to myself. After that fight was over, he was kind enough to offer an xp perk for surviving the fight with so much failure.

My worst set of dice came in the original Gamma World box. The 6 was mis-cast so that it had one side sticking out about 1mm from the cube. The face on the d12 was also shifted such that 1 face (the 10, IIRC) were slightly sunken. I never used the dice (having a perfectly good set of dice from the White box of D&D).

One of my favorite RPG stories comes from my second D&D 3.5 group. I was a freshman in college, and still pretty new to roleplaying. We had a DM who we all loved as a friend, but as a DM he could be kind of a jerk. He loved to mess with our plans and watch us squirm. On one occasion, our DM took his antics a little too far. I can’t remember exactly what he did, but one of our players took her d20 and THREW IT right at our DM. At the EXACT SECOND that the die hit his face, the only thing our DM could think to do was to yell out, “CRIT!”. It was only after we got our laughter under control that we realized the die had broke the DM’s glasses. This was a lesson well-learned by an evil DM: messing with the players has its consequences.

Back in high school, I was running a game for my younger brothers and a friend. They developed a habit of spinning the d20s for crucial rolls, and I allowed it because the spin was cool and the extra time it took made the action feel extra dramatic.

Except….that back in those days the dice we were using had all the high numbers on one side and the low ones on the other, rather than mix that you get with today’s d20s. So if you spun your old school d20 with 18 facing up you were all but guaranteed to have the final number be an 11+.

It was months before I caught on to the sneaky bastards.

D&D 3.5 The cleric of my friend must make a save roll against will CD 15, for a cleric of level 7 with wisdom 18 (+4) and an amulet of wisdom +3 is very easy, bonus: +12…. he sayd: “No problem, easy. I fail only with a roll of 1 or 2!” rolling the die and the result is 2! Master: “….make another roll, same CD!” , he:”It’s impossible to fail twice in a row a so easy TS!”…. rolling die and 1!, then ge gets the die and throwed it away mumbling and grumbling, another spell were casted in the area and the master sayd: “make all a roll against will CD: 14″, my friend gets the twin die of the precedent one and sayd: “For G*D Sake, I’ll roll the twin of the precedent! It’ll never fail, it’s impossible fail three saves in a row!” rolling die and score 1!!! He gets the second die and throwed it away so far that’s almost lost! LOL

I dont ever remember being particularly superstitious about my dice. But Ive seen others who are.
-Lining the sets up in nice rows, making sure a particular number is ‘up’ on each one.
-Rolling ‘test’ rolls with a few d20′s to see which ones would be the Actual rolled dice.
-Keeping them separated in different bags dependent on use or sets.
-Claiming that such-and-such is a lucky die, etc…..

Personally, i view it as all random. Sure, sometimes it seems a bit un-random. And for anyone who has ever listened to a particular older dice-peddler at one of the Big Summer Cons can attest to, not all dice are created equal. But for me, it is just generally a ‘Take it as it comes’ approach.

I have even stuck with one die over and over, never getting above say, a 10 or so. Ive had other players cajole me to switch dice, and even provide dice for said purpose. Often it seems, that never mattered. If I Did swap dice, with mine, or provided extra, or even sometimes provided special lucky dice, my “luck” rarely changed dramatically.

So, perhaps in hindsight, I have some sort of bad dice-rolling Karma thing going on…..

I have a group of d20s that are not part of a single set, but have two things in common with one another which cause me to call them a terrifically horrible “set” of dice. There are five of these dice, single-colored (yellow, orange, green, darker green, and clear). The first thing they have in common is that they always roll poorly. The highest I ever remember rolling with any of these dice is a 13, but the typical roll results in anywhere from a 1 to a 6. Never a 19 or 20. Not on these dice. The other thing I’ve noticed is the arrangement of numbers on the die. You know how on most dice, you can add any two opposite sides of the die together and it will equal the number of sides on the die, plus 1? Well, not on these die. On these, it looks like whoever manufactured them, just started on one side and started working their way around the die until all the sides had a number. So all the low numbers on one side, and all the high numbers are on the other. I know that technically, the dice are supposed to roll randomly and the arrangement of numbers shouldn’t logically have an effect on which side ends up… but we’re not talking about logic here, are we? We’re talking about good ole, gamer superstition! I’m convinced the arrangement of the numbers on these ugly little dice have been designed in such a way as to ruin my gaming life!

Back in the depth of time we were playing a modified 1st edition D&D game. We had been trying a combat system that included attacks and Parries. This led to twice as many die rolls and a chance to debunk the whole law of average.

Late one night I was playing in a solo adventure and we had reached what should have been the final scene, my character face to face with her final foe. Our allies lay scattered across the subterranean chambers so it was winner take all. What followed may have been the longest single combat I’ve ever participated in and the details of the adventure and the fight should be burned into my brain forever. Unfortunately my dice overshadowed all else.

When it came to the defense they were on fire. I blocked blow after blow. Despite my opponents superior martial presence I was able to hold him at bay.

Unfortunately my offence wasn’t quite as impressive. While a series of critical misses forced me to switch weapons at least a half dozen times, that wasn’t the night’s truly pathetic highlight. After we started counting I rolled 43 2s. Despite my superior defense I could not land a blow. Most of my attack rolls that weren’t 2s weren’t much higher. Furthermore you can guess what my average damage die roll was.

For at least an hour and a half we battled it out. I went through every D20 I owned and a number of the GM’s spares as well. At least a dozen die got pitched out into stream behind my friend’s house. In the end I won but while I remember little of the adventure itself, I will forever recall the “Night of the 2s”

The Laptop Bag of Dice Eatery

Late one night in my apartment, one of my gaming buddies, Russell, rolled a fist full of World of Darkness D10′s. One of them rolled off the table and hit his chair. The distinct sound of the dice bouncing off the wall was heard by all. The dice was nowhere to be found. I moved a few months later, and the dice never turned up even with the apartment empty.

Another gaming friend, Sid, lost his orange d6 when it fell off the table during a Castles and Crusades game. We heard it hit the floor, or so we thought. We searched everywhere for it but it was lost.

Just recently Russell purchased a new laptop and slipped it into his old laptop case. He heard a strange crunching noise. Both Russell’s grey d10 and Sid’s orange d6 were found at last. Needless to say, both gamers are quite happy at having their lost dice found.

Revitalized Luck

Years ago I bought a D&D 3rd Edition Player’s Kit. It came with a nice set of black dice with gold numbers. I loved the dice. They rolled so well for me. I used them primarely for DMing and called them my “Killer Dice”. The paint wore off of them and it was impossible to see the numbers anymore – unless I happened to be gaming in a well lit space. The dice tumbled around in my bag unused for quite a while.

I have had shitty luck with dice these past 3 years. Anyone in the Raleigh Tabletop RPG’s Meetup can tell you this. My rolls are notoriously bad. My character concepts are fun and interesting but my characters turn into a joke when they can’t follow through on anything.

The Killer Dice still rolled so well, but they were impossible to read. I hated bending over to look at them so closely and I was afraid of being falsely accused of cheating since they rolled so well and no one else could see the numbers on them.

An hour, a tiny paint brush and some silver miniatures paint revitalized the set. They now roll great and look fantastic. What a way to turn my luck around!

Back in the day, when I bought my first set of dice that my best friend was going to teach me to play D&D with, we went to the store, bought the dice, went home. Seemed normal enough. After about 20 min. of play, due to hideous rolls, My brand new elf fighter had managed to trip over his own sword, onto the spear of his FIRST opponent and die. We then took a trip back to the store where I bought another set of dice, and proceeded to offer the new set as a burnt sacrifice to the dice gods. I rolled up a new Human Paladin and proceeded to triple crit. on his first attack roll. Moral of the story, never anger the dice gods.

My Ex and I divorced over 3 years ago and I am still finding his dice randomly from time to time in the home I live in. Yes, he had that many dice.

Ok, so mine is a worst die story for one of my players (it was awesome for me cus I hated his character!). This is in my GURPS game.

The group was in a long corridor leading to a giant metal door at the end of it. Behind this door was the man they’d been searching for. They knew he was back there, especially when the turrets started firing. They ended up spread out throughout the hallway having finally defeated the turrets. In a fit of rage the man behind the door opened up a tiny mail slot at the BOTTOM of the door (below the knees) and chucked a sticky grenade out of it. I took out my dice and rolled a 3 (a critical success). He hadn’t really been aiming at anyone in particular, but with a critical success it had to hit someone right? So I assigned numbers to each player in the corridor with 6 being a re-roll. I rolled a 5 indicating that the sticky grenade passed between the legs of the first person (right at the door), flew right past the next person in the hallway, then proceeded to increase in height to fly over the crouching guy guy near the very back of the corridor to stick right on the chest of the player furthest from the door.

He blew up and died.

im the only one with the books, dice and have all the resources to dm. but my ugly sets of dice i hv they use. it bad to where i have them to suceed an obsicle but they fumble and they ask, hey can i jump other that guy to get behind him so i say roll it out and they crit. most the time when they are in battle, they miss the creatures so that prolongs the game. i need dice that works for me for once

Years ago I was running down Main Street in the University Of Delaware when my sneaker caught a rock and began the familiar all the way down the street. I finally decided to stop and pry it out and to my surprise it was a clear blue d6 that was chipped and mangled almost beyond recognition. I tossed it in my pocket and continued on my run but it caused me to check the streets each day on my run for others. It gets used during most of my games and seems to be the one that gets people’s attention and the story is one passed along in my gaming circles…

We had a few players in this group a few years ago that were known for “borrowing” dice and then the dice would magically disappear. And they wouldn’t just “borrow” any dice, they would find the amazing, great rolling, perfect dice… and then we would never see them again. We couldn’t pin point them on it, as it always seems like they would put them back at night, but slowly we saw them missing one by one. So, my husband and I got an idea… We went to out local game store and found the UGLIEST dice we could. None of them matched, and they were all of those ones at the bottom of the bin that no one wanted to buy. We got a couple of sets of them and took them home. A few days later we had our gaming group and the same guys came without dice asking to borrow some. So we handed the new sets. That looked at them for a moment blinking. We explained that these were the “Loaner Sets” and we got them for the only reason of loaning them out on game night…
We never had another missing dice again

There was a guy I used to play D&D 2nd Edition with who was one of the… slower players at the table. He played a lot of warriors and he had a great deal of enthusiasm for it, but whenever he had to do something, we’d have him walk through the math.

That’s why I found it oddly fitting when he showed up to the game table with oversized dice, or as I like to think of them, ‘Duplo dice’. Duplo, the Lego made for kids who are young enough to swallow and choke on the Lego pieces.

My gaming group has a whole set of red dice with green pips that seems to all lean lower than we think is normal.

Back in college I joined a campaign that had been in progress for countless years. No one knew when the game had started, just that players would be added or dropped as they got into or left the school. In the middle of the table sat an old, dented, rusty cookie tin full of the saddest, most random collection of dice I have ever seen. Originally intended to be a repository for players who had no dice of their own or had forgotten to bring their dice, players had been contributing dice to that tin since the beginning of the game. But the tin had evolved into something much more sinister: Blue Bolts from Heaven! The threat was that if a group of players became too uncontrollable or a game got too off topic then the tin would be dumped out onto the table signifying the damage the party would take from the DM’s divine retribution. To my knowledge the tin was never used thusly, although I was in a couple games where we seemed to tread dangerously close. I have often wondered if the Blue Bolts have struck a party down in the many years since…

A bad dice story-

The setup:
As GM, I was running a 2nd Edition AD&D game many years ago. Characters were all about 8th level, and one particular Paladin in the group was wearing a Helm of Brilliance that he just picked up from a huge trove of treasure. The group was trying to exit this labyrinth/maze of a dungeon that I had created, and encountered some major undead under control of a mage/vampire on their way out. The Paladin, being who he is, rushed into combat.

“Whack, slash, slice…” and the Paladin was doing fine… until the Vampire cast Fireball against the frontline of the party, targeting the Paladin. He needed a 3 to save… he got a 1.

The rules call for “all magic items in the character’s possession to pass a VS MAGIC save”. Of course, the Helm of Brilliance was rolled first… picking up a different d20… her rolled, and got a 1.

As GM, I rolled about 20d6 to get the total damage from the Helm (on the Paladin’s head), and the player again rolled a different d20 from his stack… again he got a 1. The other players were not fairing much better against the Paladin’s exploding head, but at least reduced their personal damage by half. Still, most of them were now dead.

Dead is dead or so I thought (along with six of the eight members of the party), but just as the round was ending the party’s wild mage steps in with an Alternate Reality spell, giving the Paladin ONE chance to reroll his original save and change the entire outcome.

He picks up his ORIGINAL d20 looking to change his luck… and rolls a 1! ALL THREE of those d20s ended up in the canal behind my house. The remaining two characters finished off the vampire and dragged the remaining pieces and parts of the other party members back to town. They never did resurrect that Paladin!

The green d20 I got in my redbox in the 80s always manages to fail saves in a most spectacular fashion. The best was in a 3e game I was DMing; we had a sub-plot that was a bit of a break for the story and was a standard slay-the-dragon dungeon crawl. By the time the party got to the dragon, the Illusionist in the group had used up all of his “useful” spells so on a lark he tossed a Phantasmal Killer at it; now that give the target 2 saves to not die, the targets of which were something like 5 and 3; the dragon died before a single sword was swung.

One of my friends has a method of “blessing” cursed dice–particularly D4′s. Which is he grabs them and shoves them in his mouth. I don’t know what compels this kind of behavior, but suffice it to say I deal with all of my D4′s with extreme prejudice since I have no idea where they’ve been if they’ve ever left my sight. I’ve got a few that I KNOW have not been behind his teeth, and every time they roll low he blames the lack of his blessed spit.

We’ve also got one friend who rolls low no matter what–unless he needs to roll low, and then it’s 6′s, 20′s, 10′s–what have you. It’s bad enough most of us at least have a backup character concept for our Star Wars game because he’s the ship’s pilot. We are all going to die. It’s not so much that the dice are cursed as the dice gods have cursed him.

I can’t think of any instances of cursed dice, but I’m pretty sure we had a cursed table one time. It was the only time our group played at this place, but everyone, players and DM was rolling horribly. One enocunter dragged on for 3 hours, because no one was hitting. I was imagining a group of adventurers and a horde of wild animals, having a tickle fight in the middle of the jungle. Funny at first, but eventually it just got pathetic.

I will always have a love-hate relationship with my first serious boyfriend – the one who introduced me to D&D – a game I love. He bought me my first set of gaming dice. Damn, if those sapphire blue dice didn’t roll perfectly whenever I needed them to. And damn also that once we had broken up, I was reminded of what an asshole he had been everytime they fell out of my dice bag. I can’t quite bring myself to either use them or throw them away, but every time I roll poorly on a critical save, I curse the fact that I even have or think of my sapphire beauties.

You know the shirt that says my dice are trying to kill me…….well that’s my dice alright. I can get a few good rolls out of like one or two dice but the majority I think are talking to each other in the bag to conspire against me. I keep a group of d20s out because if I don’t rotate them after a few rolls they get bored and start rolling low numbers at the worst times. I can let other people use them and they roll fine. Especially when my GM rolls them then their bad guys do really well. Even when I GM my dice hate me. I ran a Star wars campaign and my players were practically next to the storm troopers trying to sneak past. They weren’t being very quiet and my poor bad guys couldn’t hear a single thing. I rolled many notice checks with bonuses and still they were not able to hear the group. It was funny but epically sad.

It’s not necessarily unlucky or cursed, but I “inherited” my dad’s dice set when I started gaming, long after he had moved on to other interests. One of the dice, a D20, seemed pretty normal, but rolled consistently low. Upon further examination, it was a combination D10/D20, with little markings next to the single digits to indicate numbers over ten. Who even knew that existed? Lucky for me, it was not my favorite die to begin with, but I’m sure it has messed up a few important Ravenloft skill checks. The more you know!

So we had the bittersweet joy of storming an Evil Overlord’s citadel in what would be the last excursion of the campaign. Stomping monsters into the ground, tearing apart the extra-dimensional horrors, and carving our way to the highest point in the tower, we had been helped by a great deal of luck. My first dice set: the cheating dice. The probability of those dice was always a reverse bell curve, rolling 9 natural 20s in a row over the course of two encounters (poor golems never stood a chance) and rolling 1s for every check not related to beating something over the head with a halberd.
Now, we had a player in our group with just consistently bad luck, horrible luck, the kind of luck that makes us, the paranoid and superstitious gamers make warding signs and hand him dice with grilling tongs. We gamers are primitive miracle worshiping creatures after all.
So, with the hordes of minions lying dead and broken, the final boss of our campaign awaited up the stairs. We faced off, our party of three against the monster our DM had been cooking up. And the ones rolled. They rolled like water from a stream, then snow from an avalanche. And we got mollywhomped in three rounds, all of us broken and battered. With no option for retreat, there we died, all of our hard work going up in a smoke of chain lightning and that cursed number: 1.
Of course, blame went around, since we had a character who litterally fell apart after three critical failures of a Will save, me, who had managed to toss his only weapon off of the building with a failed 1, and another, doing absolutely nothing for the encounter after getting himself stuck in the ceiling. Natural 1s. The angry party turned first to the player with his unfortunate luck, of course, since we all know that bad rolls are contageous. I like to think that I know better: sometimes the dice get angry and hate your abuse, your selfish acceptance of the 20, and fervent denial of the 1. “Stupid dice!” “I hate these dice!” “etc. (It’s the dice’s fault for a 1, but it’s my fault for a 20)” The dice don’t like that. They plan. They plot. Then, they take their revenge.
Be nice to your dice.

In my old group (we played D&D 3.5 initially but transitioned to Castles and Crusades and then reverted to 2nd Edition), my DM had a dice catapult. If some one was acting stupid he would launch a d20 at them to get them to shut up. Well one day I bought a set of solid steel dice (heavy as hell). Another player, not exactly the sharpest caltrop in the haversack, decided to launch my brand new solid steel D20 at the DM. Instead of harmless bouncing off the DM or the table in front of him, it smacked right into the screen of the DMs work issued laptop, damaging it. Thankfully the laptop was replaced by his work the next week anyway, but needless to say, those dice were no longer allowed to be brought out at his table. (Point of awesomeness: It rolled a crit after hitting the laptop)

About 15 years ago, I bought a set of 3 “bone” d6, which had exaggerated points so as to resemble knuckle bones. Upon paying, I gave them a test roll: triple 1s.
All I could say was “that’s not a good omen.” and that was definitely the case. In the time since, they’ve never rolled well when needed, rolling low when I need high and high when I need low.
Ever since that first fateful throw, they became known as the Omen Dice.

It started out so well. Our paladin burst through a door and rolled a nat 20 to attack, followed by a nat 20 to confirm, followed by a nat 20 just to see if he could. He used that d20 for the rest of the campaign…but it was out of good luck. Not only did it roll badly quite a bit, it was devious. It saved its 1s for when we truly needed to succeed, and that’s when it struck. Even with the amazing feat it accomplished early on, he had to abandon it after the campaign. It had worn out its welcome.

We used to have a purple d20. We just called it the purple die. It seemed to have a natural predisposition to rolling 17+. Why is this a horror story you ask? Because, you see, I was the DM who had to try and keep things challenging when my players had access to such powerful equipment…

Eventually I had to start hiding the die. I actually don’t know if it really was as good as we thought at the time, but it got annoying having everyone constantly wanting to roll that die.

I am one of those people that have a set of dice for each thing, never share dice between things. When a campaign is over I put them in a big bowl of left over dice for others to use.

I was asked to GM an interim game (our usual GM had been going for nearly 3 years of every Friday night) it was only going to be for a few weeks, but still I went out and bought a new set. For the most part my players decided that they were in a talk it out campaign (not completely surprising as we had a diplomat Wookiee), so I was not having to do a huge amount of rolling (I give bonuses for actually doing the whole talk before rolling). They seemed to be having an easy time, so I kept upping the level of the guys they were going against. It was not until I had the final battle, which I had spent a couple of weeks doing the math for and planning to be an epic ending battle, that I realized it might be my dice. I ended up lying and giving one space and one planet hit each round, when in fact there were no hits at all.

It turns out the dice are only bad for me though, when anyone else uses them from the bowl they do good, maybe they are just punishing me for having lied to my group, but I only did it to keep the battle interesting (BTW I did later tell the players that I had lied about hitting during that last battle, and they all agree it was the right move).

I have (still) some dice that for like 7 levels my character never got a critical, until I actually fought a boss (elder arantham) did I get a critical on the final blow killing him! I was very happy.

I think the worst story I’ve got involves this D&D character I played named Eniphox. He was this fantabulous pirate captain who could talk his way out of pretty much anything, but when it came to walking the walk problems showed up. I don’t know if I was just really unlucky or if my dice were just horrible. Any time he picked up his sword, went to climb a cliff face, or tried to show off and do something with extravagant flair, you could bet I would be rolling an average of 5. This reached it’s worse while, towards the end of the campaign, a very serious battle got going. Eniphox always got two attacks with his rapier on a full attack action, and for speed I would always roll them simultaneously. I had gotten into the habit of using two gorgeous Chessex Gemini d20s for the attacks, blue-steel for the first and purple-steel for the second. To this day it is the only time I’ve personally seen anyone roll two klutzes simultaneously. I documented the moment with my camera phone while the DM carefully contemplated what beautifully horrible consequences my failure could have. Needless to say, it did not end well.

http://i.imgur.com/XHQLR.jpg?1

In my main 3.5 campaign, I played an unspecialized wizard. I had very little offensive power initially (of course), so I carried around my trusty crossbow. I always used a blue d8 to roll for damage and seemed to always roll 1′s. However, I was also infamous for getting in the killing blow. Thus, by level 3 or so, my character was convinced he was a crossbow demon, I even chased down fleeing enemies into other parts of the dungeon, armed only with my crossbow. Thankfully, the rest of my party would usually show up and save my hide… Even today I keep my blue d8 on hand to roll for special occasions. My players love it when I use it for damage when I’m the DM…

Well, I own this 6 sided die that only has the numbers 1-3 on it twice. So, we were playing 4th edition at a friends house and he had all these monsters that had regenerating powers if the die roll on a six sided came up anywhere from 4-6. And he kept asking me to roll for it. Amazingly, the monsters never regenerated their powers. He still has no clue, but, we players had private fun at his expense.

No amazing story just a god awful set of brown swirl dice (I think they were supposed to resembly bronze), that truly look like someone fished them out of the toilet let them harden, shined them, and shaped them into dice.

Pretty much all of my dice are bad dice. Rolls typically fall towards the low end of the range, especially my d20s, which will, blessedly, occasionally roll higher than a ten, roughly 1 in 15 times. I’ve tried buying new sets, which will roll mediocre for a short time, but quickly roll as poorly as the rest.
Seriously, my dice are that terrible. I have to roll six set of ability scores to get something vaguely usable. I roll misses and fumbles far more often than hits. Even new sets are quickly tainted.

Hopefully a new pound will break the curse.

…or at least give me a good number of dice to work off of for a while as sets fall to the curse.

Pretty much all of my dice are bad dice. Rolls typically fall towards the low end of the range, especially my d20s, which will, blessedly, occasionally roll higher than a ten, roughly 1 in 15 times. I’ve tried buying new sets, which will roll mediocre for a short time, but quickly roll as poorly as the rest.
Seriously, my dice are that terrible. I have to roll six set of ability scores to get something vaguely usable. I roll misses and fumbles far more often than hits. Even new sets are quickly tainted. The DM bought me a dice tower, to no avail. Dice apps don’t help. The only other suggestion my DM has made is to get some electronic number generator called a “Dragon Bone” which I can only imagine was long ago discontinued.

Hopefully a new pound will break the curse.

…or at least give me a good number of dice to work off of for a while as sets fall to the curse.

My friends and I were gathered for our long running Forgotten Realms D&D campaign sometime last year, we all usually bring snacks and foodstuffs that we pass around and share among our group. More often than not I tended to bring grapes.
On this one occasion we were in quite a large protracted fight involving all the players, many NPC’s and monsters and it took some time to cycle around to each of the players. So we were all sat and there was general banter between turns as people were waiting out their turns but I had my D20 and any damage dice I needed in my hand at the ready so I could get straight back into it….
My turn came around and my DM asked me to make a roll…
I looked at my hand and saw grape stalks, I looked all around me, frantically patted my pockets.
“Oh f*&%!…” I exclaimed and everyone turned to me with quizzical looks…
“I think I’ve eaten my dice..!”
Everyone was like “Wha!?!”…
We all got up, looked around, in the grape punnet, around the table and room, 3 different people patted me down and we found nothing…
After a moment of pure disbelief we all stopped and I stood at ease putting both my hands into the front pocket on my hoodie…. And pulled out a handful of dice…

The entire group collapsed laughing and took ages to settle down…
That incident gets brought up all the time now, everyone joking around like moving my dice bag away from me when I’m eating etc and it’s a good laugh…

But I tell you something… In that moment, I’d never been so terrified.

i had this black d4 that came in the 3.5 beginner box,it’s been lost somewhere in my house for the last 6 years now and i’ve been looking for it ever since.

i have all the rest of the dice from that set, just not the poor d4.

My GM had a d20 that was made of soft plastic. Over the yers he had used it so much the corners had rounded out and the thing was like a marble. It would roll forever, but when it stopped it usually rolled a 20. I lost hundreds of first level fighters to the GM’s “crit” die!

When I first started playing Hackmaster with friends, I didn’t have my own dice. So, naturally, my friends were all too happy to help me out. Of course, their “help” generally consisted of giving me all of their ugliest and/or most unlucky dice. Hence, I ended up with a strange hodgepodge of mismatched dice… with way too many d4s and far too few d6s and d8s.

Being the thrifty (read: poor) player that I am, though, I’ve done all I can to make the best of it! :p

This sad tale of feline hi-jinx and moral decay starts with a gamer who among his friends was simple known as “The Dice Man”. This man had actually collected gaming dice before he knew what they were used for, then one glorious day his cousin bought him the game “Star Frontier” and his adventure in gaming commenced.

He devoured any game he bought any die that was available this universe seemed unlimited to his obsession with polyhedral decadence. Mini D6 2600 of them. Reg D6 too numerous to count, D20 enough to use as grapeshot in all the gun on the Flying Dutchman. He relished in his Faustian mission of dice dominance.

It came to be that to further boast of his collection he bought the ultimate dice containment device, this demonic device was simply known as a, “Roly Kit”(true die maniacs know what i am talking about), a blue hexagon of sheer die indulgence. It held thousands of dice with his most precious sets in their own little holding bins. He would take this kit and on the gaming table roll it out to its full six feet in length and proclaim, “So which set do think tonight guys!?” as he smirked at his fellow gamers. He would pick out a set roll the kit up and play while periodically and to the disgust of others pop a D20 in his mouth from time to time while in deep thought of what to do on his next turn…….

Enter the lovely maiden who loved and married this mad man and even supported his addictions to his three dimensional geometric moldings. She would end up being the Delilah to his Samson and that day would be soon, for as if on cue, ENTER THE CATS!

Yes, his lovely bride was a true friend to Satan’s little helpers and soon this man became the fixation of all three Feline Tormentors…….die on the table or floor….Instant cat toy to be batted away down a vent register never to be seen again. OOOHHH the Agony of it all! But still these monstrous little HELLCATS had not done their coup de grace on our poor protagonists dreams….

It was a hot night, a humid night; the basement office office his sanctuary from the mundane world was cool and pristine filled with his fellow adventurers ready for what was going to be an EPIC all-nighter! He had prepared everything in advance; Snacks in bowels, Mt. Dew Chilled to perfection, and the table set up ready to roll with his roly-kit by his throne of a chair. The game began and immediately as expected the intensity grew to stroke inducing proportions!!!!

THEN IT HAPPENED!!!!!

At vital part of the scenario when decisions meant the difference in life or death, The Normal became surreal!!! The D20 went into his mouth……………”WTF!” he shouted as he spit the d20 onto the floor like a he bit into a bad piece of fruit.. Gaming Immediately Stopped!
His Face turned a Type of Cuthulian Green that most would never, and should never, see.
He looked down at his treasure chest of joy with disgust as he picked it up and laid in on the table….Even in the coolness of that basement paradise nobody was prepared as the yellowish liquid started to leak from every hinge on his prized possessions and the unmistakable and nauseating odor of CAT URINE filled the room!!!

I never even saw it coming i had shooed the cats out of my office and they had to have been in there for only a moment but…that moment was enough! In one dramatic move they had systematically ruined every single die i treasured and subsequently had to throw away because even after three trips thru the dishwasher the smell never came out…….I had been defeated.

I am now much more humbler and have learned my lessons. But one of these days i will have my revenge!

I use to play V:tM with a bunch of my friends every Tuesday. Well, there was usually a set of d10 I used, or tried to use. Well, one night I managed to get half the set, a couple of my friends always tried to keep at least half of it from me. Anyway over the night, I managed to get the rest of the set through sleight of hand while they were distracted by the ST. Sadly my friends had been rubbing their bad luck all over them. Needless to say, my character ended up nearly dying both to a horrible roll and another players actions.

I DM for an AD&D game for years. We had a good friend who played a high level thief, but after two solid games of just horrible rolls he decided to take matters into his own hands. He started punishing his dice. If they rolled bad two times in a row he would step on it, three times he would throw it against a wall, four times he would put it in the freezer for ten minutes. But one time he just couldn’t get anything with his brand new D20 so he put it in the microwave. He wasn’t used to my microwave and thought he put it in for 10 seconds, but it was actually 10 minutes. About 6 minutes later we checked on it and sure enough melted pile of blue D20 right in the middle of my brand new microwave.
New house rule. Punish dice if needed, but cruel and unusual is unacceptable.

My oldest die. It’s one i got from the red box set, a poor sickly green d20 that came with the crayon to ink in the numbers. It’s been inked in a couple of times already, and just seems to be getting smaller and smaller, as it approaches 30 years old. It rolls and rolls, the corners of the face becoming more and more indeterminate…..

We were finally at the start of the last game in a longrunning Shadowrun campaign. I was playing an investigator, and all my skills were based on information, hacking, and so on. We planned to kidnap the daughter of a senator or judge; for no real reason, the DM named him Antonin Scalia. My character was always having doubts about our plans, and just for the heck of it I rolled a memory check to see if I knew anything about this Scalia or his daughter. I was an experienced investigator, and my roll was something like ten d6. Except when I rolled, every one of the ten dice came up as ones.

There was a long pause while the DM and I just looked at the dice. Finally he looked up at me and told me I knew Antonin Scalia, all right. He’s a monster, a bloodthirsty killer for the mob who will stop at nothing to destroy the lives of all who cross him. My character became nightmarishly afraid and insisted that we abandon the entire plan and not go anyway near Scalia’s daughter. He almost came to physical altercations with the other characters. They finally asked if I had any notes proving this. I did, I told them–in my files in my apartment, which the other characters had led an enemy to in the previous session, cutting us off from all access lest we get sniped or raided. The rest of the session was derailed by trying to break in and not get killed so we could get my notes to confirm Scalia was as dangerous as I said.

Finally I got the notes and read them over. I told the others that Anthony Scolia was worse than I thought. Scolia is an unimaginably powerful murderer and will literally tear apart and eat people who get in his way. For heaven’s sake we need to stay away from him.

Anthony Scolia? the others said.

Yes, I said.

We’re trying to kidnap the daughter of Antonin Scalia.

Yeah, he’s fine, we can go ahead with that, I said. Must have had like a brain fart or something.

By then it was late at night, and we never got a chance to follow up on that mission. I also was very careful to never use the dice that rolled a fistful of ones ever again. I even put them up for sale when the DM from this story opened up a used game shop, but they never sold. They now sit in a drawer, far away from anything I touch, recalled only when I need to tell the story of the most hateful dice I have ever known.

Back in my high school senior year (’07), I went on a band trip to New York City. We played in Carnegie Hall and did some other cool stuff. I decided to run a small set of adventures for my nerd friends (we had all signed up to be in the same hotel room for this reason); nothing spectacular just 1-2 hours of D&D a night for 4 or 5 nights. By the third day, I discovered that one of

My first DM had this d20 (Big Red, as it was known) that generally liked to kill party members and make stories interesting by reinforcing his desires in “chance” rolls of fate. I was in awe of it until my set of sparkly grey dice manifested its own reliable: Infamous Eight. Unerringly, that d8 bonked, slashed, and buffed with a 7 or higher.

When I switched to EarthDawn with another group, it was always easier to explode the 8 a few times, such that I refuse to increase some skills simply to avoid changing dice. To this day it still serves faithfully.

Back in my high school senior year (’07), I went on a band trip to New York City. We played in Carnegie Hall and did some other cool stuff.  I decided to run a small set of adventures for my nerd friends (we had all signed up to be in the same hotel room for this reason); nothing spectacular just 1-2 hours of D&D a night for 4 or 5 nights.  By the third day, I discovered that one of my d20s was incapable of rolling over 12.  I spent 10 minutes rolling the thing, and it only rolled over 12 a relative handful of times.  I was pissed. It was a fugly d20 too, neon purple frosted (I dislike the frosted look) with orange numbers.  Super-rounded edges, no precision. Like I said, crap d20. Don’t even know where I got it.

The night we performed would be followed with a dinner and tour cruise around Long Island Sound. I kept the d20 in my pocket, and in the middle of our cruise, I collected my buddies.  I gave the thing 5 tries to roll something over 12. It failed miserably…

…so I chucked it as far as I could off the ship.

In hindsight I probably should have given it to one of my players, as they needed dice of their own at that time.  Oh well.

Tl;dr there’s now a cursed d20 lying somewhere on the bottom of Long Island Sound, New York.

Back in my high school senior year (’07), I went on a band trip to New York City. We played in Carnegie Hall and did some other cool stuff. I decided to run a small set of adventures for my nerd friends (we had all signed up to be in the same hotel room for this reason); nothing spectacular just 1-2 hours of D&D a night for 4 or 5 nights. By the third day, I discovered that one of my d20s was incapable of rolling over 12. I spent 10 minutes rolling the thing, and it only rolled over 12 a relative handful of times. I was pissed. It was a fugly d20 too, frosted neon purple (I dislike the frosted look) with orange numbers. Super-rounded edges, no precision. Like I said, crap d20.

The night we performed would be followed with a dinner and tour cruise around Long Island Sound. I kept the d20 in my pocket, and in the middle of our cruise, I collected my buddies. I gave the thing 10 tries to roll something over 12 (more than statistically likely). It failed miserably…

…so I chucked it as far as I could off the ship.

In hindsight I probably should have given it to one of my players, as they needed dice of their own at that time. Oh well.

Tl;dr there’s now a cursed d20 lying somewhere on the bottom of Long Island Sound, New York.

I don’t know what it is, but something about my first green dice hates when I play melee characters. The d20 especially hates when I want to do anything awesome and or cool. Like one time I tried to jump on the back of a dragon by plunging my two handed sword into its wing. I jump off this rock formation, first roll, and I make it. I’m able to stand on it’s wing without slipping off, but when I make the roll to hit it comes up a natural 1. I slap myself in the face and am unconscious for most of the fight.

Another time I was fighting side by side with a friend and his face is being chewed off by this giant cockroach type thing. I roll to swing my torch and get, you guessed it, a natural one. I hit my friend square in the chest almost killing him. I almost set him on fire too. Same character different time, I am around the corner shooting at a rust monster. The Fighter has a corner and wall of solid rock between him and me. I roll a one and not only miss the rust monster but ricochet the shot off of two walls and shoot my friend in the leg.

Sometimes I wonder why I still use that dice.

My friend Harry had a bad night with cursed dice, and everyone at the game table kept offering him to let him use their spare dice. He kept waving away their offers, but he was clearly becoming more and more frustrated with his accursed dice. Finally, somebody said, “C’mon, Harry, you keep rolling failures and critical fumbles, man! Why don’t you use some different dice?” He responded through clenched teeth, “Oh no! They WILL learn!” Everyone had to admire his tenacity in insisting that his dice MUST be taught to roll properly!

We had started a new game of 2nd edition D&D looking toward a quest of truly epic scope and power. The DM had us roll up our characters using 5d6 dropping the 2 lowest. My younger brother rolled up 3 sets of stats and never broke into the double digits once and managed to roll a 3 for a stat four separate times.

My story comes from the perspective of a game master. First let me say the in general I am *NOT* superstitious about my dice. I use whatever dice are at hand, including digital, and loan them out with impunity… almost.

I had a player who can only be described as cursed. The first time I played with this player at my table we were starting an AD&D game. He showed up with 3 character sheet, “Just in Case.” I scoffed after all I had no intention of killing anyone off in the first session. No intentions but I had no control over this aspect.

First round of combat, my “lucky” player fires a bow. Natural 1, fumble. Scatter die aims at him with no range. I tell him to roll a second attack against himself. Natural 20, critical hit. He rolls max damage. DEAD.

Next round he brings in his second character. A knight atop a war horse. He fumbles, a skill check to pick up a lantern sitting atop a minor stash of explosives. Explosives are not much I decide that they wont hurt anyone. But he has to make a ride check since the explosion went off right under his horse. Failed. Two sides of a horse to fall off of. One has some burning grass the other an ally. I tell him to roll, he lands on the ally. I have him roll 2d4 damage to party member. Max damage to the Wizard. Dead.

By the end of the night he was on his fourth character, and killed a total of 2 other PCs. I have forever changed the way I handle fumbles because of this guy. I also NEVER let him use my dice.

Gather ’round, villagers, and hear the terrifying tale of the Bowl of Fail.

T’was September of 2008, and a group of adventurers gathered weekly in the basement of the famed Hall of Targhee at the University of Idaho to battle the forces of evil and dark comedy. All went well as their adventures lead them to restore a prince to his rightful throne, heal the mind of a crazed wizard, join the Guild of Heroes, and defeat a horrifying death knight. They even saved the race of Gnomes from extinction, much to everyone’s chagrin.

Until one day, the cleric retrieved from the DM’s cupboard a blue plastic bowl in which to roll his dice. Little did he know that he had retrieved the cursed artifact, the Bowl of Fail.

In their trip to Mechanus, the cleric rolled a botch to conceal himself, and drew the attention of a Kolyarut Inevitable. He botched again, and was unable to find an escape route among the gears. He botched twice more in saves against the Inevitable’s attacks, and then botched three consecutive reflex saves to not fall into the Gears of Mechanus themselves.

Then the bowl did its final foul deed, and as the cleric tried to make a climb check to pull himself out, it yet again botched. The bowl’s eighth consecutive fail crushed the cleric to paste, rendering him forevermore grease upon the gears of Mechanus.

Let this be a warning to ye all. Never, ever, roll dice in a popcorn bowl, for it may be… the Bowl of Fail.

I have a heartbreaker tale. I bought a set of lovely dice that were translucent red mixed with solid white, a color the company selling the dice labelled “Strawberry Creme.” The dice had bright gold lettering, and were lovely to look at…until the numbers began to fade. Or darken. Or both.

This wasn’t some slow deterioration after years of loving play, either. No, these dice began to fade and wear out after a few months, leaving me with a handful of unreadable dice. Very pretty color, but utterly useless for play. Except for the d10.

The lettering didn’t fade in the d10…Oh no, that would be too simple. Instead, it turned an ugly green, like a corroded penny. If I had to guess, I’d think they used copper in the paint to give it the shine.

how the mighty have fallen. These once-pretty dice have fallen so low, brought down by cheap materials. Shed a tear with me.

At one stage we were gaming on a daily basis, these many and varied sessions brought dice from the many schools of creation. One of us had a set that no matter what, his character was foiled in every task he tried. A well constructed martial artist who could barely give himself a blood nose let alone anyone else. There also existed in this house a Ball-peen hammer. Slowly each of our fateless dice would meet the “Hammer of Fate”. We ended up with a small pile of multicoloured dust on a brick by the back door. This hammer still lives in my tool kit, and has magical powers to cause dice to behave, simply by waving it over them.

Best dice I have are my set of Warhammer Fantasy 25th anniversary metal dice. Always reserve them for the most important rolls, and they never let me down. Well, one time they did, and my entire dwarf gunline ran away in terror from a giant, but I’ve forgiven the dice for that…

O.k. I was the guy in my group who was notorious for rolling not just poorly, but abysmally bad. I’m not talking about your rough rolling patch here. I didn’t just fail a lot of rolls. I didn’t just get botches or critical misses at the worst possible time. I would fumble spectacularly and often in the most humiliating way possible! The group unanimously decided that it wasn’t just all of my dice that were cursed, but any dice I laid my hands on. If another player didn’t have enough dice of their own for their roll and I offered mine, they would flat out refuse them, claiming that accepting the loaners would be tantamount to tearing up their character sheet. One particular time my friends and I were playing AD&D 2nd Ed. Comes to mind. I had rolled SIX consecutive 1’s on a 20 sided die! I kid you not. 12 turns in my 1st combat of the game against Orcs with no hits. The 1st level MAGE was rolling his eyes at me asking me to hurry it up as he was getting bored cleaning his blade waiting for me to dispatch the single Orc I was fighting. To quote Wall-E, “Pathetic.”

In one of my previous D&D groups, one of the regulars (we’ll call him “Kevin”) had the weirdest superpower. You could roll 18 and 19′s all night long, but the minute the die touched Kevin (or he picked it up), the absolute best outcome you could hope for on that die was a 3 or a 4. PERMANENTLY. On the plus side, he always seemed to roll better after draining somebody’s dice (and there were multiple occasions where the power could be turned for good to nerf the DM’s dice). For a while, I thought it was just a silly superstition, “Don’t let Kevin touch the dice!”… but I have an entire bag that proves otherwise.

A long, long time ago, in a city far away…

We were playing vampire the Masquerade. It was a long running campaign and we were nearing the climax. Our group was in a graveyard, trying to lose our hunters and the Ravnos comes up with an idea for a distraction… a great idea really, wondrous in its majesty and utilizing his greatest skills.
He was rolling 11 d10.
Rolling a 1 cancelled a success or counted as a negative.
His result was a negative 9.
Never before nor after, despite many years of gaming, have I ever seen anyone roll 10 1s on 11 d10. It was amazing, and terribly sad.
The storyteller decided that the character tripped, fell on a branch and staked himself.

I was once in a fairly long ongoing campaign, we had played all the way from 1st and had gotten to about 12th, fending off a demon invasion the entire time. Well, we had just gotten out of a temple where we had failed to close the gate in time, and now a whole army of demons were swarming out of it as we fled with our tail between our legs.
We get up to a bluff overlooking where the demons are making camp, and most of the group decides to beat a hasty retreat back to the kingdom where they can warn them about the incoming invasion, but the paladin decided to stay behind, he felt he needed to stay behind and try to buy us some time.
So the rest of us take off, leaving him some of our supplies and the ranger’s second best bow. A while later he goes to the edge of the bluff and puts some arrows towards the commanders’ tent. The demons captains and their leader charge up there, enraged and ready to eradicate, but all they see is one paladin and a couple of empty potion bottles.
He stands there with his sword drawn and yells his battle challenge to the commander, and rolls initiative. The captains, not wanting to steal their commanders glory, step back and prepare to watch the slaughter. The commander himself rolls well, but decides to delay, for the hell of it.
This is a CR 16 or 18 baddy that was intended to be the final boss for the entire campaign when we finally got there, and here’s one little 12th level paladin, asking to be smeared in the dirt.
Well the paladin had drunk his potions, cast his buffs, and activated his last Smite Evil, lowered his sword and charged the bastard. We did a quick calculation, and he needed literally a 2 to hit this guy, he was so buffed. Undoubtedly he wouldn’t do near enough damage before getting pulverized, but anything would help.
So the paladin charges and rolls the best natural 1 I’ve ever seen. So here’s this paladin, charging the demon, and he trips, just at the last second.
And we’re playing with the critical fumble rules, so he has to roll again to see if he fumbles. Another natural 1, critical fumble ensues. There’s an collective ‘oh, snap’ from around the table.
So we pull out the table and he rolls one more time, to see what he does to himself, best case: 20, he just whiffs. Worst Case: another natural 1 and he beheads himself, a step worse than personal impalement.
The roll goes down: 2.
The GM begins reading the table. “Kills self…”
The entire table groans, the paladin buries his head in shame, his valiant last stand was for naught.
The paladin trips on a rock, spinning around manages to impale himself with his own sword, through the heart.
“…And nearest adjacent creature,” finishes the GM.
“WHAT?!~”
The paladin, sword shining, armor actually glowing with divine light, charges the demon lord and at the last minute trips, spinning around precariously, and with his last effort drives his own sword through his heart and up into that of the stunned demon as well. The creature looks down, stunned for a moment, uncomprehending as to what had just happened, then lets out a bellow of rage that rises into a death shriek as it’s body explodes in a torrential explosion, destroying not only all remains of the paladin (except his armor and sword which we found when we went back later), but also all of his captains.
The paladin, with his one last heroic moment had destroyed the entire end of the campaign, all because of 3 terrible dice rolls.

The Lutz Die: It is a legend in my old gaming group from back in the mid and late 1980′s. We had a player whose last name was Lutz. (First name will not be given.) Mr. Lutz had a black d20 with white numbers; except for the “20″, which was gold-colored.

He’d roll the die and, mysteriously, just when he needed it to, it came up a natural 20. Or so he said,. Her always rolled his dice in a cupped hand, revealing his results AFTER he called them.

We called him out on it, and he just said he was lucky – that his d20 was lucky.

I sat next to him one game and watched carefully and caught him cheating with that black d20. I called him out on it, showed the DM and everyone else how he managed to fudge his roll with Flash-like speed after the die hit the table. I even used his black d20 with the gold “20″ to demonstrate.

He got up angrily, left the room, and forgot his d20. His cheating revealed, he never returned, and I got to keep The Lutz Die (which was no luckier than any other d20 in my collection, but it spawned many joking calls of “20!” from my gang whenever I rolled it.)

Yes, I was a dice-narc, but everyone in the group agreed Mr. Lutz deserved to be caught.

A rousing game of Battlelords of the 23rd Century. Our pilot Orphan at the helm, we were fleeing from some nasty marauders. Orphan’s piloting skill was pretty damn good at 90% (Percentile based skill system, roll under to succeed). The marauders fire. Orphan takes evasive maneuvers –
Battlemaster: Roll it!
Orphan rolls: a 99 (a critical failure)
Battlemaster: No, there’s no way.. roll that again
Orphan rolls: 100
The ship spontaneously falls to gravity’s whim and we all have to check to see if we survive the crash.
Orphan rolls: 100
Orphan’s player: Someone hand me the rule book and a character sheet… and throw these away while your’e at it… (offering up the cursed polyhedrons)
From then on at the table, any epic failure was known as “Pulling an Orphan”

My ‘blue’ dice arrived with wear spots, and black splotches. I gave them to my dad for when we play, and he never rolled above a 15 on the D20. Very disappointing.

I don’t know if this is going to be a good story in comparison to some of you, but I was in a D&D group, where I had, well still have this D20 die. (I keep it to remind me that karma is a bitch) It was a good die util it went bad. I was playing a Dwarf Fighter at the time. I was in a small group adventuring in the forests and praries of the world. It all started with a fight against orcs. That is when the ones started rolling in. A broken axe, armor that fell off, a trip over a root, being knocked out when falling over the root. All in order, all rolls of one. After the battle, we fled across a river…Crossing the river, I fell in, failed dex check, got swept down the river, failed swim roll and eventaully drowned, 3 more failed swim rolls. 12 dice rolls of a One. Now that is sad. Anyone want a d20 that constantly rolls a 1? Anyone

The funniest dice story I have is that we had a friend join our table who might’ve had the worst dice luck ever, to the point where no one would touch his grey dice for fear of getting his bad luck. One day, while killing some time waiting for a player to show up, w had a “dice off” (we roll every dice in our possession (about 100) and remove the lowest dice roll on the table, and so on until we are left with 1 dice. Shockingly our friend’s cursed d20 beat out the 70 or so dice we’d been rolling (including about 20 or so d20′s and a D30) to get to the final 2…where it promptly showed it’s true colour, rolling a 1 in the clutch

Well I bought this set of dice. They were this deep golden marble color with black numbers. I was stoked when I bough them. Even played with them in the store for a bit. The d20 was hot rolled 15 or above the everytime I rolled. Well after that it was all down hill from there. I honestly think someone hexed that set of dice against me. Cause no matter what game I played after that the dice would roll the opposite end of the spectrum I needed. Playing D&D whether I was the DM or player I rolled nothing above 10. Later on we playing another game where we needed to roll low and I rolled five 20′s in row

The dice gods have always had it out for me, not only the ones I roll but the ones rolled against me. Back in the 90′s was in a 2nd edition campaign with an elf wizard. Everytime he tried to attack with a dart he missed, that was until one faithful day that he failed a save and was dominated by a vampire. That nice vampire then had me attack my compainions. Wouldn’t you believe it that I finally rolled a hit when I wanted to miss.
This poor soul had such atrocities performed against him, kidnapped and raped by the surviving female orcs of a clan the PC’s had previously killed off the warriors(likely parent to a number of half orc-elves, hope he doesn’t have to pay allymony), hunted by an ancient white dragon, killed by a power word stun?(insta kill chars below lvl 4) and temporally raised to only die again, etc. His last moment of life was when two harpies swooped in to attack. I believe they each had two claw attacks, the DM’s daughter rolled the dice and wouldn’t you believe it but 3 crits and a hit. Being a lvl 4 wiz with 12 hitpoints, and I took it as a sign that he should stay dead.

So more recently in a 4th edition game my rogue had taken some damage and only had 6 hit points left. They had already collected the prize they were sent for and just had to get off a crumbling tower before it’s collasped. At the top of the tower they were confronted with a flying shadow drake. After watching things go bad after the first round, he spent an action point to succeed on a heal check to get the druid back in the game and then took the initiative that this was a fight best fought on more stable ground and decided to jump to a nearby roof top. Only needed to roll a 9 to succeed the DC 15 jump, and if failed should be able to absorb enough of the damage with his +10 acrobatics check. So the inevitable occurred and he failed the jump check and fell 20 feet to the ground. So on average the 2d10 would be 11(so a roll of a 2 would have meant absorbing 6 damage and having only 1 left), the dm rolled higher then that, maybe 15 or so. Still not too bad, needed to roll a 10 or higher to absorbe enough damage to stay alive, and I rolled a 2. So after taking 9 damage and laying face down in the mud with -3 hit points, it was time for the dreaded death saves. Just need a success or two to buy time until I could be saved. The dice gods stepped in once again and three failures in a row and he’s dead in the mud after 5 <10 rolls in a row. Of course the dice gods had to rub salt in the wounds, after rolling the high damage, the DM couldn't roll a single successful hit in the remainder of the encounter.

I've purchased some die on ebay in the past, and one d4 stands out. the numbers are in the middle of the edges and not the tips, so it was a little harder to discover but it was mis-numbered. So the sides show 1,1,2 or 2,2,1 or 3,3,4 or 4,4,3. So if one was nefarious they could look to the side with the higher number and always claim rolls of 2 or 4. I will admit that I've accidentally used that die one or twice but dare not anger the dice gods further by continual use and a accidental read, so it's been regulated into storage.

i have had a d20 in my dice bag now for thirty years that has rolled a 20 only once in the time i have owned it. it usually delivers 1 thru 5, tending more towards 2. don’t know why, but it does.

My dice are famous in my group for being cursed. the most common rolls I see on d20s are 3s, or if I’m really lucky, 7s. I almost always fail any clutch saving throw or skill check, or in some cases, not even when it’s clutch. I think the most stand-out stories would be these two:
In the HackMaster Basic playtest, I gave my character the cooking skill, so he could prepare a basic meal from rations. It’s a very easy check, which combined with my skill gave me an effective 99% chance of success. First cooking roll? rolled a 100.
Then there was the time my heavily armored, tough as nails troll adept came busting through a door, only to be met by a pair of flash-bangs going off in his face. Now in Shadowrun, for those who haven’t played it, all checks are rolled using d6 dice pools. a 5 or a 6 is a success, so on average you should get one success for every 3 dice you roll. Armor and toughness are counted together for a damage resistance roll. My damage resistance came to a dice pool of 18. Hauling out a huge wad of dice, I began rolling…and cursing. Out of 18 d6s, I managed a grand total of 2 successes. My poor troll very nearly died right then and there.
Largely because of my cursed dice, out of my group, I’ve definitely had the highest number of PC deaths. By a lot. It got to the point that my buddies nicknamed me “DA”, for “Dead Again.” I’ve had new characters die in the first combat round of a new campaign. More than once.

My dice are, on the whole, good dice. They roll average and throw me the high numbers I need on occasion. The only problem is that they can sense dramatic moments in the game, and they love nothing more than to destroy them.

During what was essentially a “boss battle” against two very powerful monsters, the group managed to give my fighter the first, crucial strike in the battle. My character raised her great sword, swung…

and botched. My dice gave me a 1. So it goes to a roll on the critical botch table.

They rolled 100. My fighter took a wrong step and pulled her groin, knocking her out of the battle. Should have stuck the dice in the microwave for their treachery…

I currently run a D&D 4e campaign, and one particular session stands out in terms of dice failure. There was a combat between a party of six PCs and a group of bullywugs that went on for FOUR hours. No one in the combat (me included) could roll higher than a five, and most of the time it was one or two. We went through five entire rounds of combat without anyone hitting anything before the hits started landing. Ever since then, the party has been extremely wary of bullywugs, because they expect the dice to suddenly fail us all.

My ugliest dice was (as someone else suggested) the d20 from the old red D&D box. Mine had an unusual end… After a few years of use it was rolled on a hard surface where it sheared itself into three pieces. I think it did manage to roll both a ’1′ and a ’20′ on its final cast which seemed fitting.

I have had plenty of cursed dice along the way, but my “favorite” set was a collection of visibly identical six- and ten-sided die. There were an even number of each (can’t remember how many now) and half rolled high more often while the other half rolled low more often. They weren’t intentionally purchased for that quality, just happened to play out that way. The catch was that, being identical to look at, and not consistently high or low rolling, it was easy to get stuck with some or all of the “wrong” half of the set in play… Hilarity ensued when someone wanted to borrow the “lucky dice” and we couldn’t figure out which was which.

The first set of dice I ever bought were pretty bad. My d20 seemed to prefer 1 well over 20, and the rest were not much better. As well, the color was fading on them pretty quick. However, at my first year at the Origins convention I went to a panel hosted by Keith Baker, creator of the Eberron setting. At the end he asked if there were any final questions. So I raised my hand, “Will you bless my dice?” He did and I think they got better. Now if I can just get Ed Greenwood and Monte Cook to bless them I think I’ll have enough collected power power to resurrect Gary Gygax.

My unluckiest set of dice was the first set I bought. They are a plain yellow set with black numbers. I thought they looked cool at the time. Never had much luck with them though so they were quickly replaced. I still have them, just in case someone needs to borrow a set

My very first dice was a black-speckled gray d20. It was pretty enough, but a tad hard to read. Worse, it was declared ‘moody’ – it seemed to roll either really well, or really awful. After one particuarly ridiculous session, I proceeded to record every roll for several sessions, then stuck them in a spreadsheet… and lo and behold, it was rolling somewhat more 17s, 15s, 7s… and 1s.
If you look on the average d20, you might see why this would cause a few eyebrows… needless to say, it was retired.
It was *fantastic* with a keen falchion, though.

We where mostly making our heroic escape from a city (only caused an estimated 200 causalities amongst the innocent population), going over a roof, intending to scramble down the city wall. But only mostly, because the local wizard had dominated my raging barbarian. As the only person with climb trained, I had made it to the roof first. And I was now being directed by the GM to take swings with my great axe as other members of the party ran away. Which wasn’t a problem since my dice rolling had sucked all evening. Had we been using critical misses, I would have been in danger of killing myself. This lasted right up until the point the last person, the party healer, made it up the wall and ran past me. And my turn came round.
GM: Ok, take a swing at
Healer: No problem, I’ve got plenty of heals left, so I’ll be fine even if you do finally manage to hit.
Me: Heh, no problem.
Dice roll (d20): 20
Me: Opps
Healer: Ouch!
GM (far to cheerfully): How much damage is that?
Me: Erm, 12, + D12, 2D6, and other bits for a +9
Dice roll (d12 + 2d6): 12, 6, 5
Me: Ouch! 44 points of damage.
Healer: Bugger, -1hp

I then promptly made my save against domination, and decided that since I had put him down, I should probably carry the healer away, rather than leave him to bleed out on a rooftop or face an angry crowd.

Names have been changed to protect the hapless.

I have the unfortunate reputation of being a dice “killer”. It started with my own dice.. I could no roll anything above a 15 to save my life…literally! Other players looked sadly upon me but I figured it was beginners luck. Then one day someone’s dice rolled right off the table and fell near my foot; I leaned over to pick it up passed it to him and he proceeded to roll, in his own words “the worst f@&cking rolls of his life!” That was it, I was forever branded a die curser and when anything comes near me everyone gasps and begs me not to pick up, pass, look at, breathe on or even think about their dice. I need a whole new set of dice to cure my curse!

We have a D20 that has been retired for about a year now. The player that retired it, bounced it off my cement basement wall before it was retired.

I have never seen a player roll so many double ones in my life, but this guy had about 5 in one session. He will torture himself from time to time, and break the die out for another try, but it always ends up bouncing off my wall again.

I have this lovely turquoise blue iced d20 that NEVER fails me on arcana checks. The die can’t do squat except for arcana. I know this well. But one fateful evening, we were all running out of a series of collapsing caves, being chased by a purple worm. It was a skill challenge; we could use any skill so long as we could explain how it would make sense. My party kept succeeding on their checks, the rogue in particular gracefully speeding on ahead. And for some reason, I decided to use my arcana die on non arcana checks.

I rolled three 3′s in a row. You’d think I would have given the die up, but I just knew it wouldn’t keep failing me. If it weren’t for our warforged rushing back in to save me, I would have died.

That die is back to arcana checks ONLY.

I recall at one point my group was asked to cross a lake to an island within the middle. They all but knew they’re would be a lake monster and they were right of course, but i decided to make it random when he would attack according to a die roll. So as they ferried across one at a time on a makeshift raft i rolled and they’d look at me in a mix of horror and anxiety, and for a while it looked like they would get by unscathed, with 3 across and two remaining when suddenly i rolled. “20″ i roll to confirm. “20″. I roll again hoping to get another and simply out right kill one of them. “1″. well damn. So i just destroyed the boat leaving one in the water to fight a lake monster. No pressure.

Okay, here we go! A few months ago, I was playing AD&D ver. 2.0 and there were 5 of us players. We were off to a great start hitting most everything we rolled; and then the curse came. One of my friends needed a d20 so I said, “Here take mine, it’s awesome. So, he did,and immediately rolled a 1! Ugh, critical fumble, roll percentages. Oh no, DM consults his critical fumble chart and guess what happens. Break weapon. It was a Holy Avenger +5. He was a Paladin and he had to roll for damage and everyone around hi took 20 HP of damage. We hurt ourselves more than the monsters we were fighting. He was a “tad” upset, but we kept playing. Next encounter I say, “I will avenge you by using my +4 sword (it was an artifact). I used the same dam d20. Guess what happened? Yep. Ka-Boom! I broke that weapon as well with the same d20. The DM is laughing his ass off at this point. Next encounter, my friend has a plus 2 sword and he is really bummed about losing his +5 Holy Avenger, and the same
thing happens again. He took the dice and threw them across the basement, yelling all kinds of obscenities. I told him he needs to change classes and be a monk and he could just use a bo-staff, or a wooden sword. We still laugh about it to this day. It was hilarious. Oh, I still use the same d20, but have never had such bad luck with it as I had that day. Until next gaming session of course.

I still have my d20 from the Red Box set of the mid 80s. I like it even though it is getting very ball shaped. It is named The Elder and I mostly just let gaming celebrities roll it when I’m at cons. I let my sister take it to Origins Game Fair this year and she got Wil Wheaton to roll it. He asked what he was rolling against and someone said “Save vs Poison”. You can probably guess that he rolled a “1″ and died on the spot. Felicia Day who rolled The Elder the next day that the “1″ was typical of Wil. (she rolled a 12 BTW).

Funny dice stories accumulate when you’ve played for many years. Here’s one you might like.

Last year during a gaming session, one of my buddies was having a string of bad rolls with a particular d20 he’d chosen that day. He’d already rolled several 1′s, and the other rolls weren’t high either. As the game wore on, he began threatening the die if it didn’t deliver some luck. Finally, when the fourth 1 turned up, he’d had enough. “That’s it!” he cried. He ran outside with the d20, grabbed a brick lying by the curb, and proceeded to smash the hateful little polyhedron into a pile of plastic dust in the middle of the street!

It was very funny (and cathartic I’m sure), but what was even funnier was when he took his next d20 out into the street to show it the stained patch, just to be sure it knew the penalty of failure. “See that? That’s what happened to the last die that rolled poorly!” Yeah, he’s a little off.