Idea for a mechanic, (1d6)d6

[Asmor]

Okay, I came up with this idea, and I think it's kind of interesting, could be used for a spell or something. Anyways, it's rolling a random number of dice for damage. I've never seen anything like that in any other game, so I think it's pretty original.

I'll admit that it's really not much of a gain over just rolling the dice straight, but I think it has a real nice feel to it... I mean, let's face it, most people love the feeling of rolling a die, knowing if they roll high something good's about to happen, but if they roll low... not so much... This gives another tiny bit of anticipation and excitement.

One concrete benefit of it is that it weights the average down to the lower end of the spectrum, allowing you to for example design spells that usually have a reasonably predictable damage output but have the potential to really be a lot more powerful.

Anyways, I whipped up a javascript to see what the numbers would be like. I can give you a full list of them if you like, but here's the percent chance of rolling results in a given range if you roll (1d6)d6:

1-5: 19.357%
6-10: 24.186%
11-15: 23.453%
16-20: 19.757%
21-25: 10.567%
26-30: 2.516%
31-35: 0.165%
36: 0% (statistically indistinguishable from 0... 1/279936)

So... What do you think? As a player, do you think you'd find this more fun? As a DM, do you fear that it would bog down combat with an extra die roll? Also, what would you say (1d6)d6 would be roughly equal to in damage? I'm thinking 4d6 sounds about right.

 

[Pbartender]

It'd be a great mechanic for certain types of modern weaponry.

I kind of like the idea.

 

[Thanee]

I've seen something like that being used somewhere, but don't ask me where.

Also, what would you say (1d6)d6 would be roughly equal to in damage? I'm thinking 4d6 sounds about right.

I'd say it's slightly below 4d6 on average... maybe... 3.5d6

Bye
Thanee

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

I've occasionally thought about this, but could never think of a place for it. I saw a magic item called dice of fireball that used it, I think.

 

[Darkness]

The Miniatures Handbook has a magical weapon quality, maiming (+1 equivalent), that changes the weapon's crit multiplier to a die roll: 1d4 for x2, 1d6 for x3 and 1d8 for x4.

 

[CRGreathouse]

The average damage is 12.25, which is like (4.9)d4, (3.5)d6, (2.7)d8, (2.2)d10, (1.9)d12, or (1.2)d20. There's about a 50/50 chance of getting a number in the range 5-15.

It has a large standard deviation, though: 6.78. Probability distribution:
1 2.78%
2 3.24%
3 3.78%
4 4.41%
5 5.15%
6 6.00%
7 4.23%
8 4.47%
9 4.67%
10 4.82%
11 4.88%
12 4.82%
13 4.59%
14 4.61%
15 4.56%
16 4.45%
17 4.26%
18 4.00%
19 3.69%
20 3.35%
21 2.96%
22 2.54%
23 2.10%
24 1.68%
25 1.29%
26 0.95%
27 0.67%
28 0.45%
29 0.28%
30 0.17%
31 0.09%
32 0.05%
33 0.02%
34 0.01%
35 0.00%
36 0.00%

 

[Ferret]

That looks like a good mechanic, it could be added to with (1d6)d4 or (2d4)d6 and all sorts of things.

A questions for you Great House: How did you find all of those probabilities? Did you use a spreadsheet or program of some kind? Or was it manually done?

[edit: I found a program that helps. It can't do the (1d6)d6 trick but it's pretty good.

 

[CRGreathouse]

A questions for you Great House:

1: How did you find all of those porbabilities? Did you use a spreadsheet or program of some kind? Or was it manually done?

Calculating probabilities is easy in a spreadsheet; it's faster to calculate that way and paste the results than it would be to type the answers in directly, even if I had them memorized (which I obviously don't).

The average (mean) is easy to calculate directly; (AdB)dC is A(B+1)(C+1)/4, or the average of (AdB) times the average of 1dC.

 

[Terath Ninir]

This reminds me of an article in a really old Dragon magazine (middle 1e era) that was very interesting but I could never find a use for. It involved divided dice rolls, like 1d20/1d4. You roll a d20 in this case, then divide the result by what you roll on the d4. So you technically have the full range of 1-20, but it's skewed heavily to the bottom end. If I'm doing the numbers right, the average result is 4.2 for that roll.

Your mechanic is similar in feel for me: sounds really neat, but I'm at a loss about how to use it. It's kind of like a d30: pretty, but what do you *do* with it?

 

[Ferret]

I meant specifically the ones you listed. I can do normal probabilities, and the one you gave me for the average, but is there an easy was to get probs on all of the results of (AdB)dC, like your big list.