Sean Does Games

In Dungeons and Dragons, a natural 20 occurs when a  20 is rolled on a d20 for an ability check, attack roll, or a saving throw. It is generally treated as a success no matter what the actual difficulty class (DC) happened to be. If you score this on an attack roll, you get to double your damage dice. That's awesome, but there are a host of other activities characters participate in that don't get the same sort of helpful boost. Because of that, and because as a DM I like to see my players succeed as much as I like to see them suffer, I use natural 20s as an opportunity to inject some positive vibes into a story that is literally created for the sole purpose of making the characters' lives difficult. The intent of these windfalls is never to transform a character into a superhero or de-fang an enemy. They are always meant to give the PC (or NPC because they too can score a natural 20) a chance to shine with an heroic moment of their own. The following describes a f...

In Dungeons and Dragons, a natural 1 occurs when a 1 is rolled on a d20 for an ability check, attack roll, or a saving throw. It is generally treated as a failure no matter the bonuses that can be applied to the score. It's a pretty straight forward concept that guarantees no matter how skilled a character might be they can still make a mistake--sort of like real life. That's all well and good, but a little dull because many times mistakes have both short term and long term consequences that go beyond simple failure. Because of that, and because as a DM I'm a bit of a sadist, I like to use natural 1s as an opportunity to inject a little chaos into the story. The goal in doing so is never to kill or punish the characters but instead to heighten the stakes, ratchet up the tension, and have a little fun. This, of course, applies to NPCs and creatures as well. No one or no thing is immune to the evil whims of a natural 1. The following describes a few kinds of consequen...

So, I was faced with a problem that I'm sure most other #tabletopRPG players face...the dice were not rolling as they should. In fact, on a fairly consistent basis and across multiple games for multiple players, they were rolling positively horribly. No amount of sweet talking, promises, or encouragement improved that behavior. Witness the following:  This lovely die rolled 1 every time my gnome gunslinger Theophraxis tried to use his rifle. We even caught this behavior on the Time2Tabletop stream for The Infinity Tower. And yes, I know it's a spin-down die. I don't care. That's no excuse. These naughty twins both decided to produce a critical failure on a roll with advantage during my own D&D homebrew campaign. ("Advantage" is a rule in D&D 5e that lets you roll two dice and take the higher of the two scores.) The player was not amused.   In the same game, this tag team teased the player into the false hopes of a critical succes...