First Problem: those are some pretty abysmal 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.

Check the Program

A minor note, but one that deserves to come first. Your rolls were extremely low, but they did tend to cluster around 5 (all but two rolls within 2 of five). I think it's possible that something may be set up wrong on your roll20 character sheet.

click on the "gear" symbol on the upper right of your character sheet, then look in the upper right box. It should say "Core Die Roll" and have 1d20 written there. If it says "Core Die Roll 1d10" then that's your problem.

However, since you did roll an 18 for initiative, it's possible that you simply got extraordinarily unlucky. So with that in mind, read on:

Improving your odds/fun in combat

There are three basic ways to excel in combat.

1. Play to your strengths

2. Fit your goals to your circumstances

3. Improve what you need and don't have

Let's talk about how each of these applies to your character.

1. Play to your strengths

Paladins won't attack as often as Monks or (at higher levels) fighters, but when they chose to they can hit hard. As such, they aren't really built for dealing with multiple enemies, but paladins are excellent at dueling single strong foes and dealing "nova" damage (large amounts of damage that can only be done a few times).

In the combat above, it might have benefited you to focus on a single target, like the boss. Even with abysmal rolls, you'd be serving as a "tank" to your team, directing attacks away from allies of yours with lower HP or AC. And you could have benefitted from the actions of your allies as well (such as gaining advantage against the boss if an ally knocks them prone, or casts hold person on them). And you could have used your paladins' Chanel Divinity feature of their divine oath against this stronger foe, which often improves your odds of hitting an enemy (such as the Oath of Devotion's Sacred Weapon feature, which would have let you add a +2 to all your attack rolls).

Running after multiple enemies is exactly the kind of thing a paladin is bad at. You'll spend a lot of resources dashing to keep up with them, and may waste resources smiting them by doing more damage than their total hit points (thus "losing" damage that could have been dealt to a larger target). Also, very few 3rd level paladins have Area of Effect abilities or spells, so they cannot damage a large number of enemies quickly (unlike spellcasters who could use spells like shatter or spike growth to damage several enemies at once). Although there are going to be situations where you should pursue a mob (and this may well have been one of them), know that running after a group as a paladin is like running into melee range as a wizard: there are times to do it, but it's usually a sign something has gone wrong.

2. Fit your goals to your circumstances

You're a righteous paladin in shining armor, with literal wings extending from your back. You look like the angry face of justice from on high, come to earth to punish the wicked. Who in their right mind would stand against you?

Unfortunately, that's exactly what you wanted your enemies to do. You ran in front of them, hoping they'd all stop and attack you. As an aarakocra in heavy armor, you're slower than most standard enemies (walking speed of 25 feet), and you lack the movement advantages of a monk or rogue, so the best chance a minor enemy will have is to simply outrun you: to find an easier target.

If you want to chase these enemies down (which is totally understandable: they are threatening innocent people), your goal can't be to catch and defeat them all: best case scenario, that would take 6 rounds, which is quite a long time. Not to mention the fact that they are faster than you, and don't want to stop and fight if they can help it. So you need to use a tactic which will work at a distance, and use the fact that they are afraid to face you to your advantage.

For example, you could try to intimidate them into surrendering. If that's the goal, then even failed attacks could work towards your goal. If a feathered and armored creature was swinging a sword inches from my face, shouting that I must yield or die, I'd really reconsider my life choices up to this point. These enemies clearly want nothing to do with you (they keep running past you) so use that weakness as a strength. That way not only will you have a greater chance of defeating them all quickly, you'll also feel like you've contributed more to their eventual surrender even if all your rolls fail. (You describe this combat as the town guard convincing them to surrender: but if you'd been shouting at them to yield, maybe it was you who convinced them to give up). With the right goal, you can work towards success even when all your rolls fail.

I'm not saying you need to shout "surrender" in every combat: I'm saying fit your tactics and goals to your enemies and situation. If your enemies are faster than you, know that you can't swing a sword over distance but you can shout very far. If your enemies are afraid of you, convince them to surrender rather than face your blade. If your enemy is overconfident, lure them into a fight that is to their disadvantage. Any enemy psychology or feature of the terrain can be turned to your advantage.

3. Improve what you need and don't have

In this battle, you prioritized attacking enemies that were running from you. But your major tactical advantage you gave yourself was to cast Shield of Faith and increase your AC.

Increasing AC fixed a problem you didn't have: you made yourself harder to hit, but your had excellent AC already, and your enemies do little damage per strike. Besides, your opponents already showed that they would run right past you given opportunity, so standing in front of them and improving your armor didn't really help you stop them. If your goal was to chase them down, what you needed was to hit consistently so you could take down your enemies quickly and move on to the next one. This must have been especially clear after your second round of combat, where none of your strikes seemed to connect.

A spell like bless would have been more effective here, increasing the probability that you land a blow (and helping your allies at the same time). Similarly, using your Chanel Divinity might have been very helpful. If you had the Oath of Devotion (which sounds likely), and if you'd used sacred weapon and bless at the same time, you'd have added an average of 4.5 to every single attack roll you made (minimum 3) which would have likely turned four of your five attack rolls above into hits. It might have even turned your worst attack roll into a hit (2 + 5 dex and proficiency + 2 Charisma + 4 a lucky bless roll = 13, higher than a standard bandit AC).

Looking ahead, you might have noticed that mobility was an issue for you in this battle. You can fix that by swapping out your heavy Ring Mail armor for Studded Leather (same AC next level if you improve your Dex), and gain an extra 25 feet of movement every round through flying. Alternatively, since the aesthetic of your armor is important to you, could invest some money (75gp) in a mount like a riding horse (until you can cast Find Steed in two levels).

I've been told before that "the goal of war is to find a fair fight and make it unfair." If you find yourself having trouble with something (rolls to hit, mobility, whatever), look for resources that can improve those things. And you don't need to only look to your character either. Maybe your team's wizard will cast magic weapon on your sword before the fight begins, or your teams druid will cast entangle on the fleeing enemies and give you advantage on your strikes.

Sometimes, nothing will work

You were insanely unlucky in this last game. The odds of rolling below a 10 (naturally) on 5 attacks is about 1/32, and you managed to roll abysmally for another three rolls besides. This kind of bad luck will happen once in a blue moon: but it's worth acknowledging that it will happen.

This will happen sometimes, even if you pick all the right tactics and have optimized your build. Every now and again, Gimli gets stuck under a warg, or a stealthy smuggler steps on a dry twig. No matter how good you are, sometimes everything will go wrong.

If you follow the guidelines above, then hopefully these times will be few and far between, and they will not last very long. My biggest advice is "use it." Are you getting frustrated? Then so is your character. Let that rage and frustration fuel them to train even harder, to search or that next magical item, to learn that new spell which will make them more able to turn a miss into a hit, a failure into a success. Do you feel like this is ridiculous? Then laugh. Reframe the misses as comedic, and imagine how funny it would be to see the mighty paladin spout justice and hellfire, but then miss.

In the words of Maya Angelou: "you should be angry. You must not be bitter." The role of random chance in your successes or failures is more on display in a role playing game than in real life: you can always see how there are elements of the game that our out of your control. But just because some things are out of our control doesn't mean everything is. Every situation has something you can do to turn it to your advantage, some way to improve your odds. And if you do all that and still fail, let it motivate you to do even more in the future: to make your character even better. And the better you get (and the more you use tactics that work to your advantage), the more often you'll find even mediocre rolls resulting in a success.

It's super disheartening when RNG is beating you up. You made all the right decisions, and your character is built effectively. The DM was not screwing you over, and the bandits were acting normally. 99% of the time, you would absolutely have dominated that situation.

If you really are expecting a lot more terrible rolls, like you broke a mirror with a black cat, you may look into Crowd Control spellcasting more. Usually CC spells require the enemy to roll, so it takes less burden off your cursed dice.
You could also take the tank roll, focus on spells that force combat like compel duel, or charm the enemies. By being the damage taker, it mostly relies on enemies to surpass your AC, and the rolls are on them.

Honestly though, you had an abnormally bad string of luck, but your character is worth saving. It has a good backstory and is built properly as a close quarters brawler. Don't let this setback color your experience of D&D.

I am going to leave to the other answers suggestions about how to maximise your chances within the rules and how to deal with unlucky throws.

I'm going to focus with the more serious problem: you are letting superstition interfere with your expectations.

Many gamers have superstitions about their favourite and least favourite dice, about having hot or cold hands, rituals about how they roll the dice, all to improve their chances.

Normally, this is just a bit of fun and adds to the interest of the game. [To a degree - if someone is blowing on and shaking a die in their hand for more than about three seconds for some important roll, I am internally screaming at them: JUST ROLL IT ALREADY!]

However, in some cases it seems people take it too seriously. This case seems to be one of them. It's time to step back and understand that this set of beliefs about the dice is all bunk. This is just a symptom of natural human biases - that try to spot and extrapolate patterns, that remember some events more vividly that others, that try to give a reassuring sense of control where none exists - all going too far.

Yes, you have had a string of unlucky rolls. No, that doesn't mean your future holds a higher number than expected of unlucky rolls. To believe that the dice are biased against you or your character is irrational and paranoid.

Once you can discard these beliefs, your question looks odd:

How can I keep playing this character in a fun way, given the circumstances?

There ARE no circumstances here. You had some bad rolls, and it is very unlikely you will suffer them again. Next time, it is very likely to rolls will be better. Sometimes you might get a bad run, and not have as much fun, but they will be counteracted by times where you roll better than expected. Get back on the horse, go play and have fun.

Roll with the punches when the dice are bad, and punch with the rolls when the dice are good.

Sounds like a night of bad rolls

It sounds like you're new to DnD, so welcome to the game. There's a lot to be had in the setting and source materials, but far more based on what you make of it.

You have an idea for a character: an Aarakoa paladin whom is courageous, as well as a bit foolhardy. You, the player, are having a night of terrible rolls, hence your character is having a bad night.

If your only stance on enjoying yourself are the rolls going your way, then you might need to pick a different hobby. Anyone who's played DnD has had a night of cursed dice, you seem like you may've had more than one. On the other hand, you can have a night of straight up blessed dice wherein your d20 only seems to respond with one number and that number is 20.

Your question is buried in there, I think it's how do I keep playing this character and have fun doing so? The answer depends on what's fun for you. It seems you enjoy your character concept and I venture to guess you'd have fun dedicating your character to a god and them trying to figure out how they've displease said deity. Be unnecessarily dramatic about it, when you do hit, roleplay seeing symbols that indicate your actions the desire of your deity.

In short, we all have bad nights with dice, what you do with that bad night is up to you.

Role play

This character is someone who clearly is not lucky. Play him like it! Your paladin won't take risks or tries to minimize them because he knows he will fail. Any point where you cannot just "Take 20" have your paladin not take the risk.

I rolled up a cleric that had near perfect stats except for one poor roll (7) and I role played them as if they blame everything on their poor stat.
Failed initiative? I was not smart enough to join the fight.
Failed healing? I forgot to target my ally.

This can be fun, just change your perspective!