#but do it in a way that doesn't annihilate this 6 hp gentle loving creature

[irascibleblackguard]

I once shared a table with a dude rolling a stock standard armored fighter. Not the strongest build, but perfectly serviceable....on paper. In practice this man could not seem to get above 13 to save his life. It was nbd at first when we were fighting unarmored goblins, but as the game went on and the challenges increased he was whiffing way more than hitting. We tried giving him different dice, putting his dice in time out and giving them a stern talking to, changing where he sat at the table, doing that thing where you go "oops the die gently bounced off the pizza box before you got that 2, better reroll." All the standard (nonsensical) rituals.

He was just a sweet and good natured person, and I wanted him to experience success with the rest of us (who were both figuratively and literally just killin it) so I devoted much of my strategy to increasing his chances to hit. I spell buffed, used aid/assist actions, encouraged others to set up flanks, found or created high ground...and still, not above a 13. So no solution, but no problem, at least it didn't get worse, right?

Wrong. As the stack of advantages piled up higher and higher, the fighter's rolls got lower and lower. If previously he was rolling in the 7-9 range, say, now it was strictly 4 and under. I'd like to say there was a happy ending but eventually I was begged to cease my well-intentioned machinations by several players and the DM himself. "He's already got a one in four chance of flinging his sword off a cliff or tripping over his own shoelaces. At this rate, in a month he'll be physically incapable of rolling anything but a critical failure!"

So we eased off the in and out of game rites and rituals, and the fighter found his way back to that safer middle ground, where he rarely succeeded but at least avoided constant catastrophic failure. For what it's worth, *he* never seemed to mind so much how rarely he landed a blow. He was content to spend a Saturday with his buddies playing a game he liked. It was the rest of us who were by turns mystified and maddened by the whole ordeal. I suppose in gaming, as in life, our mindset and the outlook we bring to circumstances beyond our control is sometimes the only aspect of a situation we can change. Whereas our fortune, fair or foul, can come down to a roll of the dice. 🎲🎲

How do I stop rolling natural 1s on all my attacks?

Buddy, if I knew the answer to this question, my whole life would be different.