I always find this to be the case with my sister and me. Over the entire course of our Arkham Horror boardgaming history, my sister has been racking up successes with every skill check, boldly attacking powerful monsters and destroying them with ease. Me? It's the exact opposite, as the dice defies me every time I pick it up. She can even make dice fail at will! There was an encounter in the Witch House: Make a Lore (-1) check (I think). On a success, gain a spell. On a failure, gain two clue tokens but you are delayed. Since she was the spy, and wanted to accomplish her personal story, she wanted to fail. Roll 4 dice, and failed, just like she wanted! After that, things continued as normal (me messing up, her racking up successes).

Which makes me wonder: are the dice jinxed? And is there a way to magically control the dice like my sister?

Perhaps you guys could give me some words of wisdom, or share stories similar to this one.

She's a witch !!!!!

I once had a character fighting a Maniac... +1 combat rating, 1 toughness and 1 Stamina damage. She had 3 Fight and no weapons so it was going to be 4 dice for the combat check. Should be no problem, right? 4 dice rolled, no successes. Okay, no big deal... take the Stamina hit and go again. No successes. Again. No successes. Again. No successes. Spend my only Clue token for one more roll... No good. So that was seventeen dice rolled with no successes! So I thought long and hard about the odds of that while recovering at St. Mary's.

Grudunza said:

Wow, I guess I'm not the only one who suffers from this curse.

I do have doubts about my sister's luck, however. Before she rolls for skill checks, she would actually ask me to "look away, so I don't give her bad luck." I trust her, as she is known not to cheat, but who knows? She might be making a fool of me all along...

Yep, this sometimes happens on the most crucial rolls.

Funny story:

1. An environment that reduces the sealing cost of gates enters play. Amanda Sharpe with only three clue tokens takes advantage of this and enters the nearest gate. After one enconter in an Other World she casts Find Gate and returns to Arkham. She spent the first three turns trying to close the gate rolling four dice each turn, using her Lore stat. No successes. On the fourth turn Joe Diamond enters South Church and blesses her to increase her chances.

She faiils the roll twice more while blessed. On the sixth turn the environment changes, and she loses her blessing after a bad upkeep roll. And only then she succeeds at closing the gate.But she can no longer seal it.

During the same game Amanda rolled twelve failures in final combat. We lost.

zealot12 said:

Ha, that's classic! And it sucks at the time, but when it's that atrociously bad, at least it's memorable.

And the thing is: we were doing so well up to that point. 4 sealed gates on the board, and all, victory at hand, but no! Oh, well-Arkham fights back. Zhar was very pleased with the outcome and satiated.

It's not just the dice. That game has a serious tendency to screw with people. Sometimes, I even think it's alive, and tell people not to insult it or we shall feel it's tentacled wrath.

For example: quite a ways back, my group and I were introducing a new player to the game. She was fairly into it, it seemed, and the game was actually going rather well for us. When the end of a turn came, I drew the mythos card, and all the players stared in mock-horror as they waited for me to read it's dreaded contents...except the new girl. She just said, "I don't get what the big deal is with the Mythos card. They don't seem to do much."

Next turn came around, drew a mythos card. Prohibition. All investigators with whiskey are immediately arrested. Guess who was the only one at the table with whiskey? That's right, the new girl.

Next turn, The Great Ritual rumor card showed up. Oh how we hate that ritual.

Turn after that was an environment. Gates cannot be sealed, but they can still be closed. The environment didn't change after that...and, ultimately, it cost us the game.

I warn you, reader: DO NOT OFFEND THE GAME! IT WILL FIGHT BACK TO RECLAIM ITS HONOR!

I heard if you say "Arkham Horror" in a theatre you will suffer a horrible game-related accident. And if you place your investigator's base on the seam of the board, you might actually break your mother's back.

The game is alive! Alive!! If you lose, it shall mock you as you despair. If you win? It shall be watching and waiting for a chance to crush you once and for all...

Yes, I have learned that the game is truly EVIL. Just saying that I lost against cthulhu four times in final battle is so shameful. My rolls just don't seem to get successes whenever I battle against him. Still, cthulhu rocks. But, really, I have no idea how to fix your jinxed dice problem, but a possible solution: get your sister to roll all your dice for you

cthulhurocks said:

Haha, I do that from time to time. "Oh god, I need to seal this gate! Help me! (hands dice)" And yup, it works.

Yeah...I don't use the pre-packaged dice. I bought a set of gaming dice that are...scientificly engineered...to roll more evenly.

Grudunza said:

Phrase most commonly heard around my games: "Out loud."

"We should be fine if ________...and I can't believe I just said that out loud."

"So where are you planning to go?"
"I'm not telling you out loud."

"WHY DID YOU SAY THAT OUT LOUD???"

The superstition is so thick that one of my players will begin to speak about a non sequitur topic while shaking his dice...to distract the game from his roll.

It doesn't matter: the game knows what we're doing. We still lose. But at least we're entertaining?

Well, today the game was on our side.It was such an exhilirating session.

Vincent, Ursulla and Akachi bested Rhan Tegoth in regular final battle with slightly above average equipment. All three started the batlle with 3 stamina, and Rhan Tegoth had one Cultist on his sheet.

The thing is: Akachi participated only in one round of combat, because the only thing she had was the Powder one-shot item, and she had the Harried card which kept her focus at 0 for the rest of the battle.

Ursulla and Vincent were blessed; she had 6 Clues, the Enchanted Knife and the Cane, he had 3 Clues and two Wither spells equipped. We purposely kept their Stamina low, because we figured we'd get more chances to roll all successes on fewer dice. And the gamble paid off: for two rounds Rhan Tegoth was unable to drain anyone's stamina and that cost him dearly.

zealot12 said:

You can revel in your victory, but the don't think you shall do well the next time. You have now made the game your worst enemy...

zealot12 said:

Well, Atlach Nacha can be easy if you stockpile allies, but that's a hard thing to accomplish(I only beat him once in final combat).

Today we tested our strength against Chaugnar Faugn for the third time in total. Now, this pink elephant is just unfair. No wonder his slumber ability doesn't have much impact. We only cleared half of his doom track.

CF: 3 Investigators: 0.

It's been a fun session though. That's why I love this game: even when you lose, it's hardly ever sour

I'm 1-1 against Chaugnar. A victory by sealing and a defeat during Final combat. But it still was the time when I thought each investigator had to discard 3 clues AND one Ally, which was wrong. Nonetheless, I'd probably have lost even playing in the correct way.

zealot12 said:

Even if you do, it's difficult to defeat him. Especially if you stockpile 8 allies and see them all destroyed in one turn by the Web of Death. Ouch. A very slow, painful death after that.

mi-go hunter said:

Eh... Just make sure you have an attack cancelling unique item and block his first sinister plot attack. Then there's no real risk left (beyond cursed dice).

Avi_dreader said:

And how exactly do you make sure you have one of those?

avec said:

Don't you know Avi is a BIG fan of Daisy + Alchemical Process ?

Avi_dreader said:

And sure enough in this more recent game, the second card was the Web of Death again. Only this time I only had one ally left anyway, so it didn't really matter. The funny thing was that this was the ally that you can sacrifice to negate the Ancient One's attack for one turn