D&D Blog : Dice Tricks

[Hassassin]

This is only a useful measure for the case where you are aiming for DC10. If you are aiming for DC20 or DC 2, then the highest of 2d20 is more like a +1 bonus. DC 11 is exactly a +5 bonus and frankly, it shocks me that modern game designers can't fully grasp probability distributions and only focus on summary statistics.

I don't think they actually missed anything, but only used a simple measure. As [MENTION=78255]Truename[/MENTION] shows, if the original chance is 25-75% the number 4.5 is a good rule of thumb.

There are obviously other differences, but the chance to make a typical DC is important.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

You say it's poorly written. How would you describe the effect of 2d20 in a single sentence? (And yes, a single sentence is appropriate. The blog is a layman's discussion of a variety of dice tricks, not a detailed discussion of dice probability.)

The equivalent bonus on a single roll if you instead roll 2d20 and taking the highest value varies between +1 and +5, depending on the target DC.

I might add: The bonus is lower for the most difficult and the easiest DCs and +5 for the 'middle' DC of 11.

If, in the eventual rules, you are only ever hitting DCs 10,11,12 then that sounds like a very bland game indeed.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

I don't think they actually missed anything, but only used a simple measure. As [MENTION=78255]Truename[/MENTION] shows, if the original chance is 25-75% the number 4.5 is a good rule of thumb.

There are obviously other differences, but the chance to make a typical DC is important.

I understand why people think that's ok, but my opinion differs because I'm a stats-nut. By 25% / 75% you're already down to +3 rather than +4.5. Perhaps the most important facts are that critical chance doubles and critical fail chance is 1/20th what it is with just one dice.

 

[Hassassin]

I understand why people think that's ok, but my opinion differs because I'm a stats-nut. By 25% / 75% you're already down to +3 rather than +4.5. Perhaps the most important facts are that critical chance doubles and critical fail chance is 1/20th what it is with just one dice.

At 25/75% it's 3.8 so closer to 4. The average of those values is 4.5something.

Are the typical readers of that article stats-nuts?

 

[FireLance]

Are the typical readers of that article stats-nuts?

Regardless, it would be better not to make yourself look foolish to the stats-nut demographic, as they can be a Poisson-ous bunch, ready to Regress into Mean Mode when they perceive any Variance or Standard Deviations from the Normal.

 

[Raith5]

Don't like the sound of this.

Procedure is more important than mechanics.

Spending hours fiddling with "dice tricks" which ultimately barely affect play is a fantasy heartbreaker thing.

It just doesn't matter that much.

In all cases where it doesn't matter that much, go with tradition.

This sums up my view. Surely the designers have bigger issues to deal with than working out dice tricks? I mean I like elven accuracy and some of other roll twice mechanisms but they are hardly a big stake issue.

 

[BryonD]

Then why were you claiming, in your previous posts, that they got the maths wrong?

Remember this:



You made a claim, it was wrong, own it.

Ok, I did. and yeah, I own it. The last post was a quick quip.

I'd simply reached the point that either way the quality of what should have been an extremely childishly simple post was terribly lacking. If you read what was said, nothing more and nothing less, then the math remains wrong.

If I'd spent a bit more time thinking about my last post I would have said: if you do bend over backward and say that your presumptions are correct then they did not just a bad job of expressing it they actually were very effective in making it misleading and confusing.

One thing I think we can all readily agree on is that no matter what there will be a lot of rules in 5E and there will be a lot of debates and discussion over what was meant. If they can't even clearly write a description of "maths that a 12-year old kid can do" then how are they going to do at writing a high quality game?

 

[BryonD]

This quote is correct. It does equate to "about" a +4.5 for most DC's.

Now all you need to do is offer ANYTHING actually from that blog that says anything about the comparing to DCs approach.

Why? It's not wrong. It's not very precise, true, but it's accurate enough for a single sentence.

You say it's poorly written. How would you describe the effect of 2d20 in a single sentence?

The average result of D20 is 10.5 and the average result of 2D20 drop the lowest is 13.825.

(And yes, a single sentence is appropriate. The blog is a layman's discussion of a variety of dice tricks, not a detailed discussion of dice probability.)

Actually, when speaking to laymen it can often require a bit more effort to speak clearly.

But regardless of your target audience, you should always say enough to clearly express the point.

 

[Kingreaper]

One thing I think we can all readily agree on is that no matter what there will be a lot of rules in 5E and there will be a lot of debates and discussion over what was meant. If they can't even clearly write a description of "maths that a 12-year old kid can do" then how are they going to do at writing a high quality game?

I don't think that they couldn't write a description, but rather that they chose not to.

The article was four paragraphs long, adding an extra paragraph of statistics explanation would be bad writing IMO.


Game writing is not about going into detail explaining how everything works.

In fact, if 4e has shown anything, it's that a lot of people don't want to know how things work because it breaks the illusion.

To many people, 4e is bad because it tells you how powers work clearly and concisely, and it tells you what your character's role is clearly.

 

[BryonD]

I don't think that they couldn't write a description, but rather that they chose not to.

The article was four paragraphs long, adding an extra paragraph of statistics explanation would be bad writing IMO.


Game writing is not about going into detail explaining how everything works.

In fact, if 4e has shown anything, it's that a lot of people don't want to know how things work because it breaks the illusion.

To many people, 4e is bad because it tells you how powers work clearly and concisely, and it tells you what your character's role is clearly.

They could have clearly expressed themselves in a single sentence.

Yes, it is possible that they *could* have done what I'm suggesting and it still been bad writing. But it also could have been done clearly and efficiently. Hypotheticals about other way they may or may not have done it are not important and red herrings about writing whole paragraphs are not helpful.

What they actually wrote was misleading and far from clear.