Killing the d20-The Bell Curve roll

[billd91]

Personally, I like the d20 because it's so easy to work with and the effect of modifiers is easily predictable. But if I were to go with added dice for task resolution, I'd probably go with 2d10. As pointed out above, it's closer to the same range and it's a bit easier to estimate the effect of modifiers. It's not going to hug the mean as much as 3d6 will, though, if that's what you really want.

 

[MerricB]

You'd make brutes a lot easier to hit, and soldiers a lot harder to kill. As my players already find soldiers frustrating, I don't think this is a good thing.

4E isn't built around the average roll. You don't need a 10 or 11 to hit everything. It's built around a range of numbers - probably 6 to 15 is where most of the rolls need to be. Once you start tampering with the probabilities, things are likely to go haywire quickly.

Cheers!

 

[ggroy]

If I was to use 3d6's for attack rolls, most likely I would be using to-hit tables which have all the numbers worked out. Precomputed tables are easier to use, than to figure out how modifiers change the 3d6 probabilities in a nonlinear manner.

 

[Stuntman]

Recently I have considered replacing the d20 roll with the 3d6 roll, at least for a few sessions to see how it feels.

I would like to know the reason for why you want to try 3d6 instead of d20. Are you doing it just to be different? Out of curiosity? Is there something about the d20 roll that you do have an issue with?

I have played the Hero System (that uses 3d6) briefly (a handful of sessions) and I found that at least in that system, it makes it easy to make yourself really hard to hit if you already are a difficult target to hit. A single +1 would be more amplified using 3d6 than d20. Also, critical hits will be much harder to come by. Rolling a natural 18 will occur only 0.46% of the time instead of 5% of the time. There are many effects that happen when you crit and changing to 3d6 will make these effects 11 times less often.

If you convert to 3d6, I just do not see it really improving the game. You just skew things here and there. What is it that you see is of great benefit to moving to 3d6?

 

[Nymrohd]

Well the reason is that recently I have come to suspect that both mine and my players' forefathers must have commited a most heinous act against the gods of luck. Our rolls suck on both sides of the table very consistently. Crits are annoyingly rare, especially considering we have a daggermaster and both sides miss a lot not because of imbalance but because we cannot seem to cross to the double digits. I know this seems ridiculous, and it is considering how many d20s are rolled on a gaming session, but it just happens to us a lot and really slows the game down. So I was trying to think of a way to reduce RNG and saw the bell curve rolls on UA. I get the argument about 4E expecting the entire range of the d20 roll and it does have me worried that this may likely fail. But consistent bad die rolls can really detract from the fun (though we do have fun making jokes about it to each other).

 

[arscott]

Nymrod, the gods of luck aren't going to like you any more because you started using d6s.

In fact, it might make them angry: If the luck gods are withholding 18s, 19s, and 20s from your dice, then your average result is still 9. but if they switch to withholding 5s and 6s from your d6 rolls, then your average result becomes 7.5

On a more serious note, drastically alterning the probability curve hurts a lot worse in 4e than it does in most other games. in a 3d6 curve, you only have about a 25% chance of rolling above a 12--something that 4e seems to call for a lot more than most games. It turns that extra +1 bonus from useful into necessary, and means that a lot of more interesting choices are gooing to go by the wayside.

If you're having serious "bad roll" problems, then I suggest one of the following instead:
1) Buy new dice!
2) Free +1 bonus to all rolls
3) Give players free rerolls or implement 3e style action points
4) Read through some of those threads on reducing combat grind--your problem may be less about your ability to roll well and more about the tactical choices that you and your players make.