There’s just something about the old 6 vs. 9 argument. We’ve all had it. The dice tumble, the orientation shifts, and we peer nearsightedly in search of the telltale dot. I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but this biz activates of my gamer nostalgia like nobody’s business.
Reach back in the memory banks. Recall those early sessions. Remember how strange it was that all those platonic solids were really necessary to play. Once upon a time, someone had to explain to you that a d6 was “the one that looks like a normal dice.” Then someone had to correct that guy by pointing out that “die” was the correct singular.
Or what about this one?
“My rolls suck! I never seem to get above a 12.”
“Weird. It’s almost like you’ve mistaken a dodecahedron for an icosahedron.”
Or this one?
“Roll percentile dice.”
“I got a 100!”
“No genius. You got a 1.”
Or this one?
“You activate the trap! You’ll be taking 4d8 fire damage.”
“What? I don’t have anywhere close to 48 hit points!”
And so it goes. We all had to go through this early phase of learning the ropes. And that’s why, for today’s discussion, I thought it might be fun to swap tales of our bygone campaigns as confused newbies. We’re talking spell levels vs. character levels. Attacks vs. attack actions. Trying to figure out what the crap a “hit dice” was. So whatever flavor of bafflement your suffered, tell us all about it down in the comments!
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isn’t die like kilt, a die is single the die is plural?
Any way most newbie issues are from not being fluent in english in the early years and not much was in finnish so nlt fully comprehending language led to some funny gringe takes on wording… never mind our teen brains not fully unerdestanding royal-metric differences.
As far as I know, dice is the plural, and both die and dice are correct for singular in modern english, in the same way as “you” and “they” can now be used as singular.
Plural they is as old as Old English. Far outdating singular you.
I think you’ve got one up on the rest of us for being able to translate the system in the first place! I know I definitely would struggle to play a game written in a second language.
That’s actually the letter g, sorry.
Or it might be б.
Or I just forgot my glasses again.
Okay, is the blue ten the 1’s place, or is it the red? And is 00 rolling “0” or a “100” ?
In middle school, our Forever DM (the guy with the basement and who owned the box set) had a little brother, Johnny. Their mom would insist that we include Johnny in whatever it was we were doing. Cue the following conversation.
Us: “Johnny, it’s your turn. What do you do?”
Johnny: “I cast my INVASION spell!!!”
Us: (examining his paper) “That says ‘Infravision,’ you doofus.”
Johnny: “Well, what does *that* do?”
Us: “It lets you see in the dark.”
Johnny: “But you said I’m a dwarf. I already see in the dark.”
DM: “Yup.”
Johnny: (crosses arms) “This game sucks.”
Reading comprehension goes down when excitement goes up, I find. 😀
if you’re old enough to remember when THAC0 (pronounced thhaay-koh) then you’re old enough to understand the confusion of a system that did make some kind of sense at the time, but also… WTF were the devs thinking?!
I have heard some people say old rules were better, but as a person that got into this strange little hobby when satanic panic was at its peak and this game was the center piece of so many mothers ire (my own included), I can say that from 1st edition to 5th edition, older was definitely not better.
And why exactly do fighters get a weird 18/% for their strength score? What the hell does that even do or mean?
I’m sorry, my elf lives longer that all of you and so my level is LESS than all of yours?
Remember when class balance just meant some classes capped sooner than others because the devs didn’t want to actually try and maths the balance?
Oh those bygone days, seen thru rose tinted glasses… even drunk, you can’t possibly look back and say things were better.
the latest editions may have their own issues, the various game systems have changed, some companies have made massive mistakes over the years (some very recent… OGL), but on the whole, each new iteration brings with it theoretical attempts to make the games better and bring in new players to the hobby, and I for one prefer NOT to look back, unless it is to smile and maybe giggle at my youthful edgelord rogue self and say “what was I thinking… ”
Now just stay out of those steam tunnels, because really, that is properly stupid.
Hear! Hear!
Do not cite the deep magic to me witch! I was there Gandalf, I was there three thousand years ago…
Yeah, AD&D had some weird nonsense. But remember, todays d20 to hit system is just THAC0 sensibly reversed.
THAC0: Players are not supposed to know monster stats. So THAC0 is basically the DC to roll for to score a hit, right? So player rolls, adds strength and magic if applicable, then tells the DM.
Now the DM ADDS the target’s AC to the roll and checks if the player hits his THAC0. You don’t want to help your enemy to hit you, so lower AC is better…
But a +1 ring of protection means you *deduct* 1 from your AC, because why not.
There is no Y in there so pronounced as writen, 0 being O naturally and C soundin like K,Thako.
Sorry not sorry, eternally sore over whole colonel-curnal thing and equivalencies for ruining my exam scores.
I really don’t miss THAC0, despite it being my introduction to D&D as well–I was a much happier camper when we switched to 3rd edition.
I can’t remember any real specific muck-ups thanks to being new as I often played with other people who were equally new. But that did lead us to our first D&D session, a 3.0 game when it was still new, gamesmastered by the book’s owner, who was also the only one who’d read it. I don’t know how long we played, but it was probably a full “campaign,” though in this case that may have only been a dozen sessions, played to completion in only a week or two, instructed in how to play by the GM at every turn.
Until it was time for the next game, which I guess I wanted to master, so I decided to read through the rules myself, and discovered we had been playing it completely wrong in so many ways the entire time! Our GM friend wasn’t much of a stickler for details, you see, so he basically got the gist of it and then misremembered or made up whatever rules he wanted from there. It was so hilariously in character for him all we could do was laugh, really.
Hey, as long as you all enjoyed it, he did a good job!
This strip just made me realize that my d8s do have a little dot under the 6, despite rolling a 9 not being possible with them…
…now I want to go check my d8s as well.
Early when I started playing, I had arguments with my group on whether 0 and 00 on my percentiles meant “10” or “100”. The more experienced players said it made more sense to treat the single 0 as a “ten” to make simple addition, while it was easier in my head to treat all zeroes as the one exception, and treat the literal “0” as it was presented. Still never truly resolved those, but nobody ever complained about the results.
As long as you’re being consistent, it works for you!
“Trying to figure out what the crap a “hit dice” was.”
Hit dice are the dice you hit people with, it’s right there in the name. 😛
I mean, it does make more sense that way.
It’s a “g” 😛
They should keep using the bowl to watch the shadow demons 😀
They’re rolling off to see which demi-plane they’re watching tonight.
I don’t have a D&D story, but I do have a story about one of the systems that I’ve played.
So, the game’s skill check system works like this: every roll cares about two numbers, one dynamic and one static. The static number is the stat you’re rolling for, your dexterity or your strength. The dynamic one is the difficulty, how much of an ask is the thing you are trying to do. You want to roll ABOVE the difficulty and NO HIGHER than the stat.
I immediately intuited this as “oh, so it runs on Price is Right rulings, got it.” The problem of course, came when I was explaining it to players because naturally I was the only one at the table aware of what “Price is Right rules” meant. Oops.
Pop culture knowledge comes up a lot at the table! I missed out on a lot of stuff growing up, and there have been definite moments where I just have no clue what people are talking about.
Isn’t Oracle blind? Shouldn’t she be using a Scrying Braille instead?
Maybe the bowl’s got a text to speech feature!
…why is the blind oracle scrying through a visual medium?
She’s not fully blind. A previous strip’s rant mentioned she has the Clouded Vision curse. She can’t see very far, but still distinguishes things at close range.
I don’t remember what strip that was in, but we’ll go with it.
I’ve said multiple times “That’s a cool-looking die, but if it’s not easily readable, it’s a bad die.”
Yep, there are a some cool-looking dice available — but a great many of them aren’t actually usable as dice, given how hard they are to read. All of my dice sets have been carefully chosen because they look good *and* offer legible high-contrast markings.
The older I get, the wiser this advice is.
I was lucky enough to be eased into D&D 3.5 through the “Basic Game” set (the black dragon version specifically), learning a simplified version of the rules first. then getting the core rulebooks once I’d adjusted to them. That’s not to say I had no difficulties at all, of course – negative levels took some time to wrap my head around, and I at first assumed level adjustments for monstrous characters already accounted for racial hit dice rather than being added to them.
Now, for more recent confusion, I first picked up PF2e before the remaster and got confused when I first saw the phrase “negative damage”. “Wait, so does it make you gain HP? …Oh, it’s from negative ENERGY.” It’s a good thing the remaster renamed it to void damage so no one else has that problem.
I got confused by the negative damage thing on the first read through as well!
My local game store’s current crop of kids keeps needing to be reminded to add their attack bonuses to attack rolls, and their damage bonuses to damage rolls, and that those are two separate numbers. They’re all in elementary school, sure, but after a couple months I wish they’d internalized those basics.
They’ll get it eventually! There are plenty of adults who don’t fully grasp the rules either.
Side tracking here, but I must ask.
I can read with ease the word on everyone’s shirt (Sorcerer’s ‘fireball’ shirt somewhat with hindsight) except Oracle.
What do you think her shirt say on it, let the debate begin!
– I for one think it should be something like:
‘If you can read this you’re close enough to Bane’
I actually didn’t design her shirt this time around since it was completely covered, but I will save this idea for the next sleepover feature 😀
It’s a bit off topic but I just bought a set of dice that has Japanese kanji on them instead of English numbers. They’re pink with red flowers around the writing. They’re so pretty and I will never be able to use them. lol
Use them only in rare case. Final Boss, rool to see if your PC live or die, PG generation ecc….
Japanese numbers are easy to learn to read, though! You can do it!