I've always wanted to play D&D before, and recently I finally found an online play by chat group I can play with regularly. I spent a lot of time chatting with them and building up a fun noble bright paladin that I thought would be cool and heroic, and always try to be a shining example of good behaviour even to the party's detriment.

Unfortunately I roll badly constantly and my character just fails at everything. Every skill check, every save, every combat. Just fails and misses. We're about to start our 4th session now usually about 7 hours long and I'm just so bored. I even tried to add some flavour to the game in a non dice rolling form by romancing an npc but another player pushed in and just seduced them away.

What should I do? I really want to play the game and have fun roleplaying my character, but with how awful everything gone for them so far the only progression I can see them going down is going back home to train more. They're currently heartbroken from having their love taken and depressed about their inadequacy.

Its not like she's weak either, I rolled 17 dex and con for her but it just doesn't matter I can't hit anything. we've fought 30+ bandits so far and I've killed one, it took my 5 swings to land a blow with my rapier with thunderous strike.

• All our characters are currently level 3


• We rolled our stats randomly since the gm thinks it more fun that way, I rolled pretty well str 13, dex 17, con 17, int 10, wis 13, cha 15.


• My paladin had an idea of how a fantastical hero should behave and tries to emulate them by charging into battle ahead of the party even if its foolish.


• She an arakokra wearing Chain armor and a rapier. *i know its not Ideal but it fits her nature of wanting to be some dreamy heavily armored paladin striding into battle


• we play on d20 through discord and the gm watches us roll to make sure all the stats are added on correctly, I currently have a +5 to hit with my rapier.

So an example of a fight that went terrible for me. a group of 12 bandits and a boss character attack the town gates killing the guards. We roll intitive and I roll to go first so I plan on jumping into the middle of them to pin the group, until the bandits nat 20 their roll is equal to mine but the dm says its a crit so they win

Half the bandits flank dash past us to rush into the town, I use my turn to cast Shield of faith and dash ahead and block them with some heroic dialogue thrown in my comrades engage the rest of the bandits and the boss as I try to solo the 6 running bandits.

The bandits completely ignore my character and run through me, I fail my aoo meanwhile my characters are slaughtering the boss

I run after the bandits to try and stop them from attacking some npc's and fail completely as I miss my attacks, they run past me and grapple an npc another pc is in love with.

I decide to try and save her but another npc comes from offscreen and does it for me meanwhile my friends have beaten the boss I decide to fight the other bandits and charge in but miss again. the guards turn up and the bandits give up

This was a 6 hour long fight and I did nothing

(I've talked to the dm and other players about it and they feel bad for me but the just say thats how the dice go and maybe you'll get lucky later)

(I guess the main thing I want to know is how can I keep playing this character in a fun way given the circumstances? I like them and really want to enjoy rping as them.)

Here's all my rolls from last nights game logs (all rolled via Roll20's interface):

• cha save 4+4 fail


• con save 8+3 fail


• Initiative 18+3


• attack roll 5+5 fail


• attack roll 5+5 fail


• attack roll 7+5 fail (armored bandit)


• attack roll 6+5 fail


• attack roll 2+5 fail


• arcana roll 7+0 fail.

there wasn't a lot of rolls for me too make last night since it was mainly a dialogue based one and my character doesn't like to use deception and didn't need to persuade anyone. But as you can see the only thing I rolled well was the imitative.

It is disappointing to fail at what you're trying to do in D&D. I think it's one of the hardest things, when starting out, to realize that sometimes, a narratively cool thing won't happen because the dice said no. You seem to have two issues here: one with what your character can do, and one with expectations.

What Your Character Can Do

You said you've failed at everything, and I'm choosing to take this as not being hyperbole, which is absolutely a bummer. You've played four sessions, though, which means it could easily just be a string of bad luck. It could also be a misunderstanding of how your modifiers work, but without seeing your lady's sheet, I can't speak to that.

It stands out to me immediately that her Charisma is lower than her Dex, which isn't going to do her any favors as a Paladin; their spells are Charisma based. I am by no means an expert on character building, but from what I've seen, most Paladins focus on either strength or dexterity, and then charisma. From what you've said about wanting to be the idealistic paladin leader, and what you've said about trying to romance people, this might be useful from an in-character perspective.

I understand wanting to make a character for RP purposes, even if it's less effective. (I wound up with a drow cleric in the Light domain, once.) However, it doesn't sound like it's working—meaning, it doesn't sound like it's fun for you. I had the same realization recently: despite my love for writing and character building, I'm not an RPer in D&D. Instead, I'm much happier as a min-maxer who wears heavy armor and hits people really hard. These reasons are actually why I play paladins. I favor the heaviest armor I can get, and strength-based weapons. I suppose things might vary in your specific setting, but giant armor and big heavy weapons and occasionally shields is what says "archetypal paladin" to me.

If I were you, I would swap the rapier for a longsword (depending on which fighting style you picked, I'm assuming dueling), and ask the DM if you can swap your dex and charisma. This will make you more effective in combat, both with hitting and with spells. I wouldn't recommend dropping the strength, because that'll mess up your options for armor down the road.

Generally, running ahead is a bad idea, especially if alone. However, paladins are pretty decently set up to survive that. In fact, this might be an aspect you've overlooked about your character: if she has enough armor and can put herself in the way of the bandits, she's providing the invaluable service of being a tank. Of course, this doesn't generally work well in D&D if you aren't putting out damage, but it's still a vitally important party role.

Expectations

There was a red flag for me immediately when I clicked this question:

...that I though would be cool and heroic and always try to be a shining example of good behaviour even to the parties detriment.

This is not a good mindset for D&D. This is also why a lot of people have a bad notion of paladins. No one player is always gonna be cool and heroic. It's a group game. Everyone will have their moments. Adjusting to this is really hard when first playing.

Trying to solo 6 enemies at once is not possible. No matter how cool or how in character. You don't have any of the awesome AOEs that some classes (and races, if you're a dragonborn) have.

In general, player characters in D&D do not have plot armor or special main character privileges. They exist in a world with rules that govern how events play out (generally), and you may need to adapt to them.

What You Can Do

I have been in your shoes. I made a character with a loose idea of his personality and goals, with little subtleties that I thought would be fun. And then, none of them came up, the DM threw half the rules to the wind in ways that favored spellcasters, and my human fighter wound up feeling pretty useless. After an especially tense situation, I decided to take a step back. I was at a crossroads: I could stubbornly keep trying to make him the character I designed, and constantly butt heads with the party, which was not fun for me, or I could go with the party atmosphere, multiclass into warlock, and go with the flow.

I chose the latter.

Now, I see a few options for your character, but I think all of them require some overhaul for both you and for her.

First: You need to let go of the idea of being the big hero. Your character doesn't have to. But you, the player, do. This means no more charging off. Play it as your character learning her lesson. Keep the party together. Sorry if this sounds harsh, but the lack of fun in the bandit fight is partially your own fault. Stick. With. Your. Party.

Second: Figure out what you want her to be to the party. It seemed to me like you wanted her to be leading from the front, so I'll go with that.

Third: Get, or save up for, the best damn armor you can get. If you're gonna be at the front, you have to be able to take those blows, or avoid them altogether.

Fourth: At level four, either bump up your charisma, or, if the DM permits it, take the Inspiring Leader feat, which lets you give your party a little pep-talk in exchange for some temporary hit points.

Fifth: Right now, arrange your spells so you have at least one smite, and take as many buffs as you can.

This answer is assuming that you may very well continue to be unlucky with your rolls. So, instead, make a character that avoids rolling as much as possible.

First Problem: those are some pretty abyssmal rolls

It's not surprising you had a bad experience with this session: nobody would be able to succeed with d20 rolls like what you got. Your one good roll was in initiative, arguably the least important roll you made (for your character, anyways), and not one of your other rolls was above an 8. The odds of rolling that poorly are pretty low; about 0.04% probable, or about 4/10000.

So while this encounter was frustrating, you can also take solace in the knowledge that it was an aberration... probably.

I would double-check the rolls you were making, to make sure you weren't accidentally using a d12 for your non-initiative rolls. It sounds like you were using something like Roll20 to make your rolls, so that's pretty unlikely, but still something to check for.

Despite your bad rolls, you may want to adjust your tactics

Right off the bat, in 5th Edition D&D, trying to fight more than one creature at once is extremely dangerous, even when they're substantially weaker than you are. As a third level character, you're only marginally more powerful than an "average" other creature in the game, and a group of 6-12 Bandits, each a CR1/8 creature capable of dealing (on average) 4 damage per hit, could have buried you very quickly on the heels of some lucky rolls on their part.

Even with your terrible rolls (which should not be ignored!), this combat encounter was probably not going to go that well for you even in more normal circumstances

When a combat encounter features a very large number of enemy creatures, the smartest tactic is to let them come to you; running into the middle of them is bad for multiple reasons:

• They can surround you, cutting off your ability to retreat


• It might be difficult for your allies to heal you—most healing spells operate in touch range, and the ones that do operate at range often have pretty pitiful healing capabilities


• If you do try to retreat, you'll have to use Disengage to get away from them without injury; if they try to retreat, only you will get to make an Attack of Opportunity, and only against one of them; the rest won't be required to disengage.

Unless you have a powerful AOE control spell (as a level 3 Paladin, you do not), you don't have the tools to manage a pack of enemies that numerous. You can't prevent them from simply running past you, you can't soak up all that damage on your own, and if things go badly for you (which, arguably, they did), you don't have any recourse to fall back on.

So my advice is two-fold. First, stop walking under ladders, and stop breaking mirrors. Maybe stuff some four-leaf clovers into your pockets before the next session.

Second, work with your allies to form a better battle plan that doesn't involve sending one solitary person to try to stop twelve people from simply running past them. Find a battle plan that keeps your character with the party, better able to maneuver and respond to changes in the circumstances of the battle.

Try a new d20. Yours seems to defy the laws of probability. It may very well be unbalanced towards lower numbers (unlikely in this case of digital dice, but theoretically possible) or cursed (if you're the superstitious type).

Otherwise, just keep playing. Odds are that you'll have better rolls the next time, so says math.

What went wrong?

• You had consistently bad luck. It happens. The average of a d20 over a sequence of rolls should be roughly 10.5, whereas your d20 consistently rolled below that. Unfortunately, other than finding ways to get advantage on your rolls, there's not much to be done here.




• The combat had slow pacing. You had ~6 turns across a 6 hour combat, and spent most of the encounter watching other PCs and NPCs. I would be bored too! Perhaps there were too many NPCs (you mentioned 12+ bandits) or players were taking too long with their turns. Either way, this is on the DM - it is the DM's job to keep the game moving.




• Your choice of tactics, to rush in by yourself and use the Attack action on almost every turn. Encounters are generally meant to be handled by groups. Plus, you had a number of character options (Help, Disengage, healing, etc) that you may have neglected.

What can you do to participate more and have fun?

• Focus more on the roleplay aspects, which you seem to enjoy. If you want to pursue certain roleplay goals, like romancing NPCs without competing against your allies, then try informing your fellow players (possibly out of character) what you would like to do. Maybe they can even assist you in the roleplay.




• Change up your tactics. As a paladin, your character has a number of support-focused options that you could leverage, such as using the Help action to assist an ally, or using your Lay on Hands or casting one of your spells. Some of these options don't require rolls, so they can remain effective despite having bad luck.




• Talk with the DM. Whether it was the slow-paced combat, having too many enemies, or having NPCs appear to upstage you, your DM seems to have certain stylistic choices that don't sit well with you. Have an out of game conversation with your DM to see if you can come to a compromise; maybe they can adjust their style, and you can have clearer expectations about the type of game they want to run.