Spell failure Rates - Worst luck ever?

[Claw]

I am playing a Human Wizard. I just started the run 3 minutes ago. My spell failure rate on Magic dart is 12%. So... There is a low chance that my spell will fail... right?

Well, I just miscast magic dart against a kobold all 4 times in a row, and I almost died because of it. I have absolutely no potions or scrolls or anything to help me out, because I just walked out of the spawn room. Then, another kobold comes along! It miscasts all 4 times. Again. I must have the worst luck there ever was in the history of DCSS. These situations have happened to me a lot in my early games, and it is getting on my nerves. How come when my spell failure rate is 12% it miscasts every other time? Am I being lied to by the game? I check the text every time, and it says I miscast it. This is starting to make me no longer want to play magical classes because of this stupidity.

Any help? Tips? Has anyone else had this stupid luck? Is this type of thing for magical classes normal?

[tasonir]

There will always be unusual outcomes, and even if they are very unlikely, if they are possible, they will happen eventually. Out of thousands of players and hundreds of thousands of games, eventually a 12% chance happens 8 times in a row. Sorry for the bad luck, just try again...

[VeryAngryFelid]

Has anyone else had this stupid luck?

My personal record is 3 miscasts in a row of Necromutation with 1% failure.

Is this type of thing for magical classes normal?

It is not very different from misses which melee/ranged characters have. Yesterday I had about 10 misses/"no damage" in a row with +0 dagger of electro vs an orc despite having 5+ levels in short blades and 3+ fighting. It hit me just once during those turns too so it was not that bad.

[Claw]

These definitely make me feel better. Thank you!

[ontoclasm]

In case you're wondering, hitting a 12% chance 8 times in a row is a 1 in 23 million chance. For comparison, the chance of being killed by shark attack is about 1 in 3 million.

I dunno if this means you should avoid beaches or not.

[duvessa]

In case you're wondering, hitting a 12% chance 8 times in a row is a 1 in 23 million chance. For comparison, the chance of being killed by shark attack is about 1 in 3 million.

That's not a fair comparison of the chances, though. The chance of any one person being killed by a shark attack is about 1 in 3 million.
The chance of any one specific sequence of eight 12% casts all being miscasts is 1 in 23 million.
But nobody attempts eight Magic Dart casts in their lifetime. Either they attempt 0 because they never play Crawl, or they do play Crawl in which case they probably attempt thousands or even millions of casts. If you make a million attempts at hitting a 1 in 23 million chance, your chance of succeeding (or, in this case, failing) at least once is about 4.25%.

[TheSilverBeluga]

I miscast Bolt of Fire 5 times in a row with a 10% failure once. Play enough casters, and you're bound to have something like that happen at some point.