I generally allow it to bring the party size up, especially if it's just a handful of players.
I used to dislike it for newish players, but some are quite savvy around the rules and it deals with some of the decisions of "which class" if they can try several at once.
There's clearly no right or...
I'm in your third category. They are expensive and represent a new investment.
(This isn't a dig at WotC's pricing -- most similar hardback volumes are similarly pricey.)
If a humanoid is under a charm person spell, what happens if a subsequent charm person is successfully cast on them? How do other people resolve this? Options I can think of are that the later charm replaces the earlier; or that the later takes no effect; or that both are in effect at the same...
I've found the Labyrinth Lord rules to be fairly accessible to those a bit older than 5 (7 and 10). They had also discovered the old Fighting Fantasy rules: if you have access to those, they're simple enough and fairly good fun.
One that I bought but never tried was RpgKids -- but it seems...
I could see a more abstract game using something like this sort of mechanism. So rather than counting individual rounds or arrows, etc., you have a probability of having expended them. Makes more sense for firearms where you reload an entire magazine at once.
How did you calculate it? My brain's a bit tired, but I got as far as:
g(x) = expected number of rolls starting with xd6
g(0) = 0
Then for n >= 1, solve for g(n):
g(n) = (n! / 6^n) Sum_i=0..n ( 5^i (g(i)+1) / (n-i)! i! )
----
My explanation: g(0) = 0 because you've got no dice.
With n...
So it'd work something like:
10d6 => 1,1,2,3,4,5,5,5,6,6 => 2 6's so down to 8d6
8d6 => 1,3,4,4,5,6,6,6 => 3 6's so down to 5d6
5d6 => 2,2,3,5,6 => 1 6 so down to 4d6
4d6 => 1,3,6,6 => 2d6
?