Hot answers tagged dice
64
Buy some. The best "replacement" for not having Fudge dice is to buy some! Grey Ghost Press (maker of Fudge) sells a tube of four Fudge dice for about 5 bucks, or a bag of twenty Fudge dice for about 15 bucks, but a lot of places are sold out. However, Indie Press Revolution just started carrying Fudge Dice (four or twenty) to support the FATE-based games ...
59
There are two different styles of pyramid-shaped d4 dice:
The purple d4 on the left is read by having the number at the bottom be the result of the roll (in this case, a 1). The light blue d4 on the right is read by having the number at the point be the result of the roll (in this case, a 4).
In both die types, the result is the number that is right ...
37
Okay, so...
You want to measure values from ~0 - ~90. You want even distribution, and high granularity (i.e. as many distinct values as possible).
Well, that's easy.
(Ceiling(1d6 / 2) - 1) * 36 + (1d6 - 1) * 6 + (1d6 - 1) AnyDice
Provides values of 0 to 107, with even probability, and each value represented exactly once.
Notes:
Ceiling(1d6 / 2) is ...
33
First off, those little +1s and +2s are going to be much more important. Being flanked is suddenly a matter of, say, a 50% increase in their chance to hit you rather than a 10% increase. You noticed this with Aid Another, but it'll come up other places as well. Any power that forces an enemy to grant combat advantage becomes much, much more powerful. Being ...
33
I experimented with the methods proposed (except liquid white-out; couldn't find any), with the following results:
Paint: I used acrylic paint to fill in the numbers and paper towel to remove the excess. Very good opacity with this method, but I could not get enough paint to stay in the numbers during the removal of the excess. I tried various drying ...
31
Before original D&D was published, but after its invention and they'd started playing it, the story I've heard is that a Dave Wesley found these odd dice in an educational supplies catalogue and thought they might be good for the game. Gary Gygax had a love of statistics and probability, and that probably had a lot to do with his quick adoption of the ...
25
There are plenty of alternatives to using dice. Gnome Stew has an excellent article on replacing a dice system in a survival-horror game called Dread (by Epidiah Ravachol) with a Jenga tower; every risky action requires a block pull, and the game continues until the tower -- representing the player's sanity -- falls.
Sometimes the more creative alternatives ...
25
Hmmm, the rewording of the question makes my and other's discussion about diceless systems mostly off topic... Rather than deleting that part I'll just expand on "Approaches/schools of thought on when to not roll or ignore dice in a dice-based system."
Techniques
Step one is don't require rolls when they shouldn't be necessary. I've had GMs that have ...
25
A good way to analyze the differences between the two distributions is to imagine a head-to-head contest between characters.
First, suppose you have two identical characters, A and B, rolling off against each other with d20. They tie 5% of the time; 47.5% of the time one wins; 47.5% of the time the other wins. In contrast, if you use 3d6, ties occur 9.2% ...
24
No.
Unfortunately, superstitions about dice do not actually impact probability. However, a die can be unbalanced and thereby generate uneven results.
What your friend is experiencing is confirmation bias, wherein he is looking for bad rolls, and finds them, and then looks for good rolls and finds them. In order to falsify the claim of "exhausting bad ...
24
There sure is!
Pick a size of a pool of d20 dice. The bigger the pool, the stronger the results.
Next grab a d6, d10, a different colored d20, or even a coin.
Roll the die pool and roll the extra die.
If you got an even number on the die, pick the smallest roll from of the pool of die and use this as a result. Odd? You pick the largest die value from the ...
22
According to Wikipedia, this is called zero bias notation, and you simply use a "z" instead of a "d". I.e., your example would be written as 3z8. The only reference provided for this is an RPG.Net post. I've never seen any signs that the notation caught on anywhere, but I do like it as a system.
22
Any well written dice roller will give you perfect random rolls (well pseudo-random - the difference doesn't matter for gaming).
Some dice rollers are not well written, or depend on the underlying OS/language's source of random numbers, which itself can be well written or not.
The vast majority of the time you will find dice rollers more random then actual ...
21
I'l go against the grain here…
Don't ever fudge rolls or help the player. It will rob them of their agency, and it will probably piss off other players. Besides, not having risks and consequences will make them into careless players at best or actually turn them into murderous cretins.
Changing the system may help with the probabilities of having to deal ...
20
"Natural" means an unmodified roll.
The number you see printed on the die when you just throw it. Not adding or subtracting bonuses, penalties or rerolling. Just the number you see.
Terms will differ in individual games and groups, but usually the total result (natural roll plus any modifiers) is just called your "roll," or we'll say "I got a 25." In some ...
19
If you forgive me, the odds are that this is a perception thing, not a reality thing - unless you own biased dice.
The sane way to determine which is true is test, test, test: take a dice, and roll it a thousand times. Keep a tally of how many times you roll each number.
That will do one of two things:
Most likely, it shows that there is no substantial ...
16
Fudge dice are good for generating a nice bell curve centered on zero. Each die is six-sided, with two minus (–), two blank ( ), and two plus (+) sides, which correspond to -1, 0, and +1 respectively. You roll them and then add up the pluses and minuses to get your result.
For example, 4dF will get you a result from -4 to +4 with a mode of 0 and a narrow ...
16
If I had to design a notation from scratch, I wouldn't use the zero bias notation (3z8) at all. The "z" is a little arcane for my tastes.
I'd prefix the die size with a zero: 3d08.
ETA: But, you know, 3d8-3 also works.
Geeky stuff, in case you're looking to write a dice roller or something:
For more power, use a range operator: 3d[0-7].
For even more ...
16
As a fellow GM of Earthdawn, and former GM/Player of DnD 4e I have some good news and some bad news:
Your player is being somewhat silly if he's actually hardcore about statistics: It's easy enough to perform a numeric analysis on Earthdawn mechanics if you really want to. There's even an article that RedBrick wrote on their website. The guy uses basic ...
15
Short answer: there's no real difference between the two types.
The type of dice you're calling crystal are also known as rolling-pin or rolling-log style dice. They're actually just n-sided prisms with the ends tapered so they never land on them. Rolling a prism die like this is just as fair as any other die.
To see why, take a look at a picture of a ...
14
Without any prior knowledge of any such system existing anywhere, I'll just share my thoughts on a system that may be good for getting the dice off the play. I have not tested this but it may be fun to try.
Bargain for success
This system uses a currency of some sort(call it karma, chi, clout, mojo, energy, mana etc. Whatever fits your campaign world. I'll ...
14
Nope, not in the WotC books, anyhow. It's possible that someone slipped a percentile dice requirement into a third party supplement, but there aren't even tables that use percentile dice in WotC's stuff. The new red box Starter Set comes with six dice -- no d10 with extra 0s after the digits to serve as the 10s digit.
14
I'd suggest getting some self-sticking felt and placing it on the shelves and the bottom. The felt is soft enough to minimize the clattering noise of dice, yet firm enough to allow the dice to continue rolling to the lower levels.
EDIT: as mentioned in the comments below, here is a place to find the self-sticking felt. Thanks to Stephen Furlani!
13
Fudge dice were originally used for the Fudge role-playing game. The basic mechanism is a "ladder" or "scale" of adjectives:
-3 Terrible
-2 Poor
-1 Mediocre
0 Fair
+1 Good
+2 Great
+3 Superb
Fudge dice have two sides with a plus, two sides with a minus, and two sides with a blank. A typical roll consists of rolling four Fudge dice (4dF) and ...
13
My personal recommendation is to use a dice roller. If you have an iPhone, I recommend Dicenomicon ($5), dynamicDICE ($1) or Dice Bag (free). I have heard that Pip ($1) is also pretty good. I have found that the luck associated with physically rolling dice is dissociated from digitally rolling them.
If you find that you still think that a dice roller is ...
13
This shouldn't be too hard to cobble together. Here's an attempt:
You as the GM privately make the die choice for all of your NPCs. Do not reveal the outcomes.
Each player then privately messages you their choice. I'd recommend numbering your combat rounds and having that be part of the message for clarity.
Everyone's now made their choices without being ...
13
Talk to the players.
There are mechanics and practices you can use to soften this up, but randomization will inevitably lead to occasional failure. I've got some links at the bottom of this post that you might be able to use in specific situations, but ultimately this is just a hazard of the dice-based RPG experience. It's not an experience to be ...
12
From the wikipedia article on dice.
The full geometric set of "uniform fair dice" (face-transitive) are:
Platonic solids, the five regular polyhedra: 4, 6, 8, 12, 20 sides
Catalan solids, the duals of the 13 Archimedean solids: 12, 24, 30, 48, 60, 120 sides
Bipyramids, the duals of the infinite set of prism, with triangle
faces: any even number above 4
...
12
Have a look at: d6, or d6/d10. However, you could always adapt this method of making the dice themselves. This site amongst others can give you the kanji for the numbers.
The following sites do custom dice, so you can send them your kanji et voila.
Crystal Caste
Chessex
Game Station
Q Workshop
Credit goes to AceCalhoon in a meta thread ...
12
Alternatively, you can:
Roll an odd number of dice (3d20 is easiest).
Add the highest and lowest values, and compare the sum to 21.
If it's less (than 21), use the lowest value. If it's more (than 21), use the highest value. If it's equal (to 21), see whether the median (middle) value is high or low (1-10 or 11-20) and use the highest or lowest value, ...
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