D&D General Do you have any table rules regarding die rolls?

[el-remmen]

Was it someplace in upstate NY...

Depends on how far upstate. Central NY/Southern tier?

 

[el-remmen]

I feel like cocked dice is only an actual thing that happens when you’re rolling on uneven surfaces like carpet. The die wants to land flat, that’s what designed to do. If dunno, I’m just always leery of re-rolls due to “cocked” dice when we’re playing on a wood table and everyone has these fancy dice trays.

Not in my experience; dice got cocked against pencils and pens, within the spines of books, on a napkin by the chips, etc. . . No one in my current F2F group uses a dice tray. Me and one other person use dice towers, but his is made out of his son's LEGO and spills the die out onto the table anyway.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

In my high-school-to-college group, if one of your dice was cocked you had to reroll them both. (We very nearly only played 2d6 games.)

 

[DND_Reborn]

Depends on how far upstate. Central NY/Southern tier?

IT WAS YOU!!!

 

[aco175]

The biggest problem was when players would roll and the dice would land all over the minis and such. Bought my father a dice tray and he still manages to get 25% of the dice the jump out and scatter, but mostly on his papers. My son and I can share a silent laugh after the third or fourth time.

Used to have more problems with players fudging rolls when we were teens, but today we all trust each other. I try to let the players roll as many dice as they can. Some is to speed up combat like having them roll damage against themselves. If I use lots of bad guys, I even have them roll against another PC to hit, but generally I do that part.

 

[AtomicPope]

Everyone rolls in the open and leaves their dice untouched.

No one rolls another for another person, except with expressed permission.

No botting other people's characters. If you miss a session or you're late and we start without you, then something bad happens. Usually you're pimped out as a sex slave and everyone rolls 3d6 and gains that many gold pieces, while the missing PC is off getting Cure Disease cast on them (hence missing the session). Also, we make fun of you.

If you're on a hot streak I will "up the ante." Something like, "roll another nat '20' and you'll kill the Giant instantly, all remaining monsters will run in terror." If you fail, I express my disappointment.

As a DM, I play "no gotchas", and will ask a player if they're sure they want to do that. Something I know from years of gaming is if it seems the players missed something, they probably have. It doesn't hurt to get clarification.

 

[Maxperson]

1. All rolls have to be in front of the group.
2. You have to be consistent. Meaning that if you tell us that roll on a particular book, there's no deciding to take the natural 20 that time it rolls off the book. You can change your particular taboo, but you need to tell the group before game play begins.

 

[CleverNickName]

Dice etiquette at my table:

• All rolls are witnessed, even my own.
• Cocked dice are always rerolled
• Dice that don't land on the table are rerolled.
• "Rolling completes the action." Once the die is rolled it's too late for the Help action, the Guidance cantrip, etc. Ask for help before rolling, not after.
• We always roll hit points, even at 1st level (but we reroll 1s when rolling hp)

 

[Charlaquin]

Cocked dice, in my experience, are WAY more common in dice trays than the open table, particularly when there are multiple dice. They really can jam each other up against the sides. This is more common with d20s than probably any other die because of the relative smallness of the sides. I very rarely had issues, personally, in my GMing space at the table before I started using a dice tray. It's still not common, but it is considerably more frequent.

They also come up in situations with crowded gaming tables. Books, sodas, notebooks, etc. Again, not hugely common, but I see enough of it in those circumstances that I have no reason to question it when the problem comes up.

Yeah, if it’s like stuck in a crevice or propped up against some kind of obstruction or whatever, for sure,

 

[MNblockhead]

I try to arrange my gaming group and environment so I don't need many rules. The only that come to mind for the campaigns I run:

1. Everyone rolls in the open. Even the DM.
2. No extra small or highly stylized dice that are hard for other players to read.
3. On the floor is not in the open. Pick it up and roll again.

In terms for setup, to avoid many of the problems other talk about:

For in-person games I have a used conference table I bought from an ad on Craigslist, from a company that was closing an office. I don't worry about coasters, dice trays, heavy metal dice, etc.

The map area is a verticle TV in a Collabrewate case. I connect it to my laptop for digital maps, or put the Chessex battlemap, titles, terrain, on top of it if going analog. I don't have to worry about dice knocking over terrain or miniatures. Also don't have to worry about spells ruining dungeon tiles or paper craft items.

The one issue we do have sometimes is dice going off the table, but because of how my gaming area is, more times then not that means it is going under the freezer, a counter, or my dog grabs it. It is often a huge hassle to retrieve a die the goes onto the floor so the issue becomes self correcting as the players are careful when rolling their dice so they don't have to get on their hands and knees to fish it out of somewhere inconvenient or wait for my dog to pass it in a day or two.