What to do when one player misses every roll?

Read up on "success at a cost" and "failing forward" in TTRPGs, it lets you make failures more interesting.

What do you do when players make every roll? Do you penalize them and say, "Listen, you are rolling too good."?

You need to do nothing. As a player, I played in a game where I didn't make a successful roll the whole game two months ago. It sucked, but that is the way things go.

If the focus of success in your game is totally dice dependent then you are going to have these types of issues. Try to move the focus into role-playing for some of the game where rolls aren't so important.

You laugh loudly (out of game), put the dice in the penalty box, give them new dice, and continue on.

We laugh about it. Any game adjudicated with dice includes in the probability space the chance to simply fail or roll crap every single roll for a session, and unless the game has some kind of mitigation mechanic for this like Fate points or such, you just have to lump it. Shit happens.

I make sure the only thing people roll for are consequential actions. After that, it's just part of the game; the dice are there to provide adjudication and if we start ignoring the dice or fudging then we shouldn't be using dice.

Is the player missing because they just got horrific luck on the rolls, or because their character is underpowered compared to the rest of the party? I'm guessing it was just bad rolls, but something to possibly look into if you're not positive. It also could be their character is better at others things and not so much combat, and if that's the case, maybe you can work in scenarios where their character can shine.

this is one of the reasons I love for failure-based-advancement. Sure, it stings to miss rolls, but it stings less when you know you are building up whatever currency your system uses to make the character advance quicker (experience, etc.)

Might depend on the system, but there are a few things you can do.

First, make sure that even on a failed roll the narrative still makes the character look and feel at least competent, if not outright awesome. A failed roll should never make them look like someone who's never tried the task before. Narrate how close they came to success, how they just missed through a twist of fate, how there was a complication nobody could have foreseen, how they struck several hard blows but the foe parried each one with increasing desperation.

Always fail forwards. Make sure the situation changes as a result of the attempt such that it is meaningfully different to how it would be had they not tried to do anything. Make them feel that they still had an impact despite not getting what they'd hoped for.

Allow a missed roll to still succeed, but with some horrible fallout or collateral damage. Something bad to sour the victory and complicate the situation. This will allow them to succeed whilst making things more interesting for the group as a whole.

Make consequences mechanically null but dramatically interesting. Use them to complicate their lives, possibly in ways that don't have an immediate impact but will come up later. Turn friendly NPCs against them, have some equipment start to fail or degrade, have them temporarily subject to an intense emotion that they can roleplay the hell out of. There are countless ways to make failure suck for the character but not for the player.

I've had sessions where a particular player was feeling the pain of unlucky rolls. Instead of trying to "go easy" on them, I leaned into it and had the enemies focus on attacking him. He got downed twice in the session but came away with everyone kind of pointing out "what a badass" having been dealt a raw deal and still survived. Obviously be careful not to make it seem unfair, I knew I wasn't going to kill his character in these encounters for various reasons (the party did not know this).

I wouldn’t fudge rolls just let it play out. Depending on the game the player may have hero points or bennies to help boost the roll. Maybe someone in their party has the ability to boost rolls through a bonus.

By fudging rolls now there’s a good chance you’ll cause confusion later on. Seriously, players keep mental notes on the consistency of the game. When that consistency fails it can be frustrating to players, and cause headaches for you as you try to explain the inconsistencies in your rulings.

Not much you can do. Sometimes the dice fuck you over. You ever have a really shit day? That's what the character had. What system was it you were playing that every roll failed?

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As a general rule I don't always treat failed attacks as 'misses' like you may well have missed, if the enemy was very nimble and actually dodged your strike, but I make a point of always presenting it as the adversaries competence rather than the players failure

And in general an attack that fails is more 'ineffective for some reason depending on the current fiction we're trying to support' so failing this seems less removed from the current events, treating it more like an interaction than a binary state

Bad days happen even to heroes.

Why does something need to be done?

What do other GMs do when one player seems cursed by the dice for the whole session?

Change the dice. There might be imperfections that favor a certain side and lower numbers.

Sometimes you just can't roll. Don't think about it too hard and try again next time.

In a VtM session a few months ago, I managed to roll zero successes on 12 dice and then the more fails on a willpower reroll. 15 fails on something my character is expert in. Our ST allowed another player to save my mistake and we roleplayed it as a sign of the characters stress.

I found it hilarious. My dice hating me is a constant theme in our games but it doesn't bother me, what is important is the story.

In my opinion, it's something that happens. Law of averages your guy crits every roll next game.

So I was in PF game once playing a ranged paladin type. The first two sessions I failed every attack roll. It sucked. I felt that I wasn't pulling my weight. We get to the sort of end boss at a dungeon and after a two missed shots I end up in a sort of narration of getting super-frustrated, and having a sort of in character crisis of confidence or faith, leading up to him closing his eyes to take the next shot. That's when I rolled a crit.

Totally changed the arc of the character both mechanically and narratively. Four stars; would roll shit again. It also never would have happened if the DM had decided to take pity on me and come up with something to make me feel cool and competent.

There's plenty of games out there where you're not beholden so much to rolls out of philosophy and game mechanics. The storygame method has been explained, but of equal note is things like Traveller, or games in the OSR sphere, where there's a greater emphasis on player-side description and discovery to avoid the roll ever coming up. If you plan a superior ambush, you win at it. No need to consult dice.

But if you're in something like that, what I think the course of action is to be engaging with the player and talking about what's going on, like what they see as the cause or what it means in some sort of storytelling sense. Get support and give it. Because the player probably has good ideas of what could be going on, and if you look at the dice as giving you a gift to play with, you can get places you'd never imagine.

I guess let the player know it was just some jammy dice rolls and you felt bad that they didn't get to do more. A casual chat out of game (just them) might get you some helpful feedback about what they'd like to do with the character.

What aspects of ttrpg does this player enjoy most? If he enjoys being in the spotlight you could always have it that the failures in the fight leads to him being separated from the others and managing to learn things or ultimately to achieve things that will help the whole party. Or perhaps he notices something about the attackers, or is told about an object on the ground that he might choose to pick up. Another idea is that he suffers an after-effect that's quite interesting, such as magic gone wrong, or contamination from the enemy creature leading to a temporary power. This is something that's been used in Buffy and Angel. He might overhear the enemy say something in a language he understands.

When we've had the same PC repeatedly mess up at the same kind of skill in the same context we've used it as a character trait. Sometimes it makes sense when you put together an explanation as to why the character is good/bad, lucky/unlucky, inexperienced/experienced or has issues over something, such as a fear. Botches really are a gift for the GM/DM in the way that they take the story off in an unexpected but fun and dramatic direction. Poor but meh rolls aren't so interesting. So perhaps a fumble or success reflects an existing character trait, skill or weakness. It could be added to the character sheet. Or maybe it is the start of something new if the player decides that their character is concerned, scared or pleased about what happened in the precious session and gives them food for thought. They might decide to improve their equipment, work on their skills or it might make them more determined to prove themselves or scared next time. Of course, that's a player call.

Everybody at the table, the person in question included, that sometimes there are bad rolls, and it being our chance, is more than likely to be like that only very rarely. Remind him that it was just some bad rng and it's possible he could succeed all his rolls next session.

It's all chance. If the game were rigged, that would be something else entirely, but I'm sure he knows it's not, and one night of bad rolls shouldn't detract from the larger game