Sometimes it is tempting, for a variety of reasons, for a DM to want to roll the dice for the players.

Shocking?

Absurd?

A good idea?

In general players love to roll dice.  It is part of what makes the game fun.  Watching those little bits of plastic roll across the table give the game a tactile sensation that is just plain lacking in a computer RPG.  It really enhances the suspense.  Shaking those dice, hoping, wishing, praying that it isn’t a 1 or that you may get that desperately needed 20.

But then you have people cheating or completely incompetent or who just seem to never have their own dice.  It would be so much easier just to do it for them.

This is probably not a good idea.  Cheaters generally get caught by other players and players have ways of enforcing rules.  Those who lack the interest in the game to get (or remember) their own dice will eventually quit anyway.  Bide your time and they will disappear all on their own.

The one situation in which you may wish to consider rolling dice for players is when it doesn’t make sense for the character to know the result.  If they are searching, you may not want the players to know if anything can be found or not.  If a character rolls high and the search result is that they found nothing then they will quit because the player knows that a high roll means there was nothing to be found.  Likewise if they roll a 2 they may metagame a bit and decide to have thier buddy go over the area again because they know the die result.

You may wish to consider making a house rule to make these rolls yourself.  You may wish to consider search, listen and sneak attempts under these rules, but certainly nothing which has an obvious result like jumping or opening a door.  If you do decide to implement such a rule, be consistent.  Make the rolls all the time, not just when there is something to be found.

Like all house rules this is something to be implemented with care and thought or perhaps not implemented at all.

Have fun gaming!

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4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons has made a fairly strong move away from randomness at the gaming table.  From the point buy system becoming the character creation standard to a leveling system which defies random encounters the dice have become a less necessary tool.

For those who really do enjoy rolling the dice more than necessary, are there ways of injecting randomness into the game without breaking it?  Of course there are.

Here are some ideas.

•  Roll random characters.  Roll a die to determine your race.  Roll a die to determine your class.  Roll dice to determine your ability scores.  Roll dice to determine your powers, skills, background and even equipment.  This can lead to some extremely wacky combinations that can turn out to be very fun.
•  Make up a random encounter deck per the instructions in the Dungeon Master’s Guide.  Or just make up a list of monsters of the appropriate level and then roll dice instead of drawing cards.
•  Roll random NPC reactions.  Not just favorable or unfavorable, but a nifty chart like:

Friendly Reactions
1-3 Tells a knock-knock joke
4-5 Invites PC’s to dinner
6-8 Offers healing
9-10 Offers most valuable possession
11-12 Shares childhood secret

•  Roll a d8 instead of choosing the direction your character moves during combat.  Not the best strategically but definitely fun for chaotic minded types.
•  Roll to determine which power to use.

Naturally there are many other ways of injecting some random fun into your game, but these are some ideas to get you started!

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According to me, probability is the chance that something will happen.  Look it up in a dictionary and you may find three or four other definitions.  If you play a tabletop RPG, then you should have some bit of understanding of probability.  Because dice are involved, probability is involved.

If you get onto the forums, you can find some pretty in depth discussions of the topic.  Not surprisingly, Dungeons and Dragons attracts some pretty bright mathematical minds.  Actual statisticians and mathematicians play the game and in their off time they go through studies to determine various outcomes of various theoretical D&D situations.

For the average player this level of discussion is not necessary.  However, some understanding of probability is necessary.

For example, what is the difference in damage between something that does 1d8 damage and something that does 2d4 damage?  On average they will both do 4 points of damage per hit.  However, the item that does 2d4 damage will never do only 1 point of damage.  This means that in general your lower damage limit will be higher using the 2d4 damage.  But what about maximum damage?

This is where probability does come into play.  For something that does 1d8 damage, the probability that you will get max damage is 1 chance in 8 (12.5%).  For something that does 2d4 damage, the probability that you will get maximum damage is 1 chance in 4 times 1 chance in 4 or .25 x .25 or 6.5%.   Because you are rolling more dice, the chance that both dice will come up at maximum is actually less.  The trade off becomes dealing slightly more damage more consistently with less chance of doing maximum damage.

The concept here is to pay attention to what is actually going on when you are rolling all those dice.

Two key principles to watch are the law of averages and the gambler’s folly.

The law of averages says that the more dice you roll the more likely you are to get the average value of those dice.  This means that a 10d6 fireball is more likely to get 30 as its result than anything else and that it will be rare to find anything more than 40 or less than 20 as a result.  It also means that the difference between a 10d6 fireball and an 11d6 fireball is 3 points of damage, not 6.  Take it up to 20 dice and you start to get closer to that average number even more consistently.

This also means that over time the damage that your character deals will also average out.  If your character wielding her longsword is going to make an average of 50 damage rolls per level (10 encounters with an average of 5 hits per encounter) then he or she is going to do 50d8 damage during that level.  There are enough dice here to fully invoke the law of averages, so the character will do about 200 points of damage – not much more and not much less.  Kick this up to a Battleaxe and you’ll do another 50 points of damage during that level.

The gambler’s folly is nearly the opposite of the law of averages.  It says that each roll of the die is independent of all other dice rolls.  So just because you rolled 3 20’s in a row doesn’t affect the chance that you are going to roll a 20.  In essence it says that all the superstitions about dice rolling are just bunk, but I’ll leave that up to you to decide.

The hang-up that players get caught in is when they try to circumvent probability with probability.  Doing more damage by adding more dice is deceptive.  Doing more damage by adding bonuses – by eliminating probability is generally better.  Players read the PHB and when they see an entry like 2d6 they immediately think 12 damage.  The way they should read it is 6 damage with an equal chance of doing 2 or 12 damage.  Only when they roll a 7 damage 6d6 fireball (yep, it happened at my table) do they realize that the odds swing both ways.

On average something that does 1d4+2 will do more damage than a regular old longsword (1d8).  Though it will never do 8 points of damage, it will always do at least 3 and usually 4 damage, and the odds of doing maximum damage are 25% instead of 12.5% so it may not be a bad choice.

Math behind probabilities of chances to hit are a bit more complex, but only because you have to also understand the probabilities of different opponents having different defenses.

What does this all mean, and why should you care?  It means that if you want to get the most from your character you need to look at more than just the numbers in the book.  Think about what they actually mean during play and what they will mean during session ten and twenty.

Or just skip the math and have fun!

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In the d20 system it is impossible to run a game entirely without dice.  Dice are, afterall, iconic to the game.  To think of sitting down at the gaming table without them is unnatural.  However it is entirely possible to run a game with a grand total of 1 die.

Why would anyone want to do such a thing?  The answer is that players deserve the DM’s attention.

Rolling dice takes time and is a distraction.  Being able to provide players with immediate feedback to their actions and immediate information about the actions of the NPC’s means that players know that they are the entire focus of the DM’s efforts.  That is an excellent feeling.  Everyone wants attention (people even go so far as to say they don’t want attention in order to get attention).  At the gaming table a player wants to feel like the DM cares what they say and what they do.

Let’s cover the situations that a typical DM needs dice - and then we’ll see which of those can be easily and safely eliminated.

1. Attack rolls
2. Damage rolls
3. Skill checks for NPC’s
4. Skill checks for Players
5. Random encounters
6. Recharge abilities (4th edition)
7. Random outcomes of drastically wild events

Ok, so lets start with attack rolls.  I haven’t figured out how to get rid of these - I don’t think they should go.  So keep your d20 around for making those.

Damage rolls - yep, you can get rid of them.  How?  Use fixed damage.  On average it works out anyway and the players, in my experience using this rule, prefer it.  Just take the average roll that the beast would get and use that as its static damage.  Crits are still max damage, but otherwise a dagger does 2 damage - period.  If you think of it in terms of the number of hits to kill a PC, then given that your average PC has 22 HP at first level, it will take a creature that does 3-7 points of damage an average of 5 hits to kill that PC.  Statistially speaking that number of 5 hits will change roughly only 15% of the time or so which means that even at level 1 (DnD 4th here), nothing about the outcome of the fight has changed - except that it goes about twice as quickly.  I also noticed that players liked knowing exactly how many hits they could take - they didn’t seem to charge in so recklessly as often.

Skill checks for NPC’s - ok, there are 2 ways of getting rid of these rolls.  The first is to have them take 10 on everything.  Again the law of averages says this is the result you’re going to get anyway - so that is what I do most of the time.  The second way is to cheat.  Pure and simple decide if they succeed or fail.  Be careful with this one, but if you know your group and how they will react, then go for it.

Skill checks for Players - Same answer as for skill checks with NPC’s.  Though to be honest I cheat a lot more for the players.  If they try something ridiculous like using stealth to sneak past a couple of guards while wearing full plate and carrying a lantern, I may roll the die behind the screen but you can guarantee that it is going to come up a 1.

Random Encounters - If you’ve read this site at all then you know I don’t use those tables.  I make up balanced encounters ahead of time.  The order in which those encounters appear is drive 100% by the actions of the players, but you won’t find me rolling dice to figure out what happens next.

Recharge abilities - Roll a d6 to see if it recharges.  Or decide does it recharge or not.  More often than not the recharge ability gets used at the first opportunity - usually somewhere around round 3.  If the monster is still standing somewhere around round 6 then sure it recharges.  On average the ability will recharge only once during the combat so I like to give it 2 rounds of rest then use it again if the situation makes sense.  If the PC’s forgot to bring donuts, it may well recharge on round 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 and automatically go off again when they deal the killing blow (just kidding).  Recharge abilities come up so rarely that I forget to roll for them anyway - a design flaw if you ask me about 4th ed. (but I understand why they did it).

Other Random Outcomes - this is a favorite trick of DM’s everywhere.  PC says I do amazingly stupid thing to try to save party from ultimate death or suffering which is clearly not covered by any rule anywhere.  DM rolls a die behind the screen while trying to figure out what might possibly happen.  Usually some weight is applied and a random result is calculated, giving the appearance of sagacity on the part of the DM for knowing the obscure rule which covers said action.  Not a bad ploy and I won’t condemn anyone for using it.  For my group, however, since we are all experienced gamers I like to say - roll a d20, putting it squarely back in the players lap.  1=fails miserably in a very funny way 2 -10 = fails in a moderately funny way, 11-19 = succeeds, 20 = succeeds gloriously in a very funny way.

Truthfully my nice ruby dice my wife bought me have done little but collect dust, but at least they still look pretty.

Until  next time have fun!

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