Wasting 20s
I’m disappointed in Thief. We always knew that she was greedy, violent, and very possibly evil, but I wouldn’t have pegged her as wasteful.
You see, a single d20 only has so many natural 20s in it. You might have a powerful die or a weak one, but any seasoned adventurer will tell you that there’s a limited supply of luck inside each and every icosahedron. According to widely-accepted theory, if you waste those rolls persuading beggars or searching for traps in un-trapped hallways, those big numbers won’t be available for the more important attack rolls or saving throws later in the session.
In a recent interview, Fighter expounded on his personal philosophy of wasteful rolling.
“You don’t want to spend too much time on skill checks,” said the lantern-jawed dullard. “That’s how you wind up saving, like, three copper on stabling fees when you should be critting for infinity.”
Recent research supports this folk wisdom. Most characters with levels in Expert agree that rolling well outside of initiative order is disappointing and lame.
“Blood,” explained one widely-cited researcher. “Blood-blood-blood.”
Asked about the competing theory of “getting the 1s out of the way” up front, the researcher glowed with an ominous red light and vibrated in his scabbard.
We now turn the question over to the court of public opinion. Have you ever wasted a 20 on an unimportant roll? Do you feel that it negatively affected your subsequent performance? Tell us all about your (un)lucky successes in the ̶l̶e̶t̶t̶e̶r̶s̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶e̶d̶i̶t̶o̶r̶ comments down below!
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Having been a gamer for 20 something years now and having played more systems than I can remember (including some that I never fully learned the rules for because the person running it decided it was easier that way.), I don’t actually subscribe to the “number of 20s in a d20” style thinking. I do believe that people have certain types of luck, and that has held true. I’ve seen a friend roll two Natural 1s in a row for a save vs Dominate because he had an ability that allowed him to reroll and take the better result. I’ve seen that same player Critical Glitch a 16 die pool in Shadowrun (16d6, 8 of them came up 1 with none of them coming up 5 or 6), roll 18 repeatedly in GURPS, and follow a percentile roll of 01 with a 100 in Anima where that maximizes your fumble level. In short, I have a friend who has the strongest curse I’ve ever seen.
I have a second friend who rolls objectively well in every system. In WOD style d10 systems, he regularly breaks half the pool in successes (The math supports a 1 success per 4 dice ratio). He rolls over 90 in Anima frequently, and he is banned from running any system with exploding dice after the number 32 came up repeatedly in Savage Worlds. He subscribes to the “saving up his luck” theory, where he rolls well when he needs to. Having run for him a lot, that’s not true. He just rolls well in general, with the occasional spike when it would be impressive (see the Red Dragon Story from Monday).
I myself roll generally up and down, with ironic spikes of success that seem to be tied to how much work I put into developing the character. Characters who I churn out in an afternoon don’t roll well, whereas a certain Changeling I mention on occasion has done crazy things like 14 successes in a Stealth Contest against her Keeper himself. (Which resulted in the Hedge dumping me in the Underworld, cause it forgot where I was. My GM has a sense of humor. )
Does he complain loudly? I suspect that cursed players are a combination of 1) unlucky and 2) make sure that everyone knows how unlucky they are. It’s how they build their brand.
Nah, he is one of the most longsuffering people I know. He has gotten used to it. He just kinda sighs and hangs his head when it happens. Even the double 1 reroll for his Dominate Person save that resulted in him cutting my partner’s paladin into pieces. There is a flip side to his curse. He rolls great if his rolls would kill another player. He ran a duel wielding crit-fishing build in Rise of the Runelords and still only critted once or twice a fight. He critted and confirmed three times when attacking the Paladin though.
Doubtless the paladin deserved it.
What kind of self-respecting BBEG/dungeon keeper keeps an intimidating, highly secure/durable and magically enchanted door open and ajar?
Different wing of the same dungeon: http://oglaf.dreamhosters.com/trapmaster/
I don’t believe that you can waste crits or gets fumbles out of the way early. I do believe that some characters are luckier than others though, even when played by the same player. In my case that might have something to do with the fact that each character has their own set of dice which I always stick with, so if they’re actually slightly biased it affects the character’s story.
When I DM I re-use the dice of my unlucky characters, to give my players a chance.
Does that generally work?
Well my players seem to be storming encounters at the moment, so maybe?
While dice do of course have a limited number of high rolls stored within them at any given time, it’s a little known secret that you can actually recharge dice mid session. It requires careful management of their positioning and their orientation, and if you’re extravagantly wasteful, it may not be enough to compensate. The most effective way by far is to create a dice tower with the desired high rolls all facing up. Note however that dice, when grouped together, will actually average out all the available high rolls amongst themselves, so if you aren’t charging them all as a group, or if you then go and put them in a bag with expended dice, you’ve just wasted your time and given all of your dice like one extra high roll that wont show up until you’re trying to persuade the innkeeper for an extra 2% discount for keeping the bard tied up overnight.
Depending on the bard, that can be a critically important roll.
Well, I assume you’re keeping the bard tied up regardless of what the innkeeper says. Its just the discount you’re rolling for.
Ah. Then yes. Carry on.
Me: holding a die that’s rolled three 1s in a row
My friend, a dice goblin and superstitious gamer: “CAST IT INTO THE FIRE!!! DESTROY IT!!!”
Me, who’s tested this die’s balance and knows what a statistical anomaly is: “No…”
Username checks out.
Like the old goblin saying goes “luck’s a skill”.
As such like all other skills it improves with practice (or by defeating unrelated monsters if you happen to live in dnd-land).
You should therefore savor your unimportant 20’s as they are valuable test runs for when it really counts!
More seriously though I am generally a subscriber to the belief that humans have oversensitive pattern-recognition brainware, that statistical variance exists and that dice has no memory.
Also on an unrelated topic, while Thiefs pre-door checklist contains all the right steps, I feel that it sadly ignores the importance of the correct order of said step. Always check for traps before you start touching it with your head.
Naw man. You’ve got to let the door have at least some fun. It’s only fair.
Steps not mentioned: Lick the door. Whisper sweet nothings to the door. Steal the door. Kill the door, because it’s actually a mimic.
So sayeth the Handbook: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/mimic
A couple of sessions ago, we were traveling in a forest and doing some perception and survival rolls. Our cleric was the one doing the perception rolls and she kept getting nat 20 after nat 20. And when she DIDN’T, our ranger doing the survival rolls DID. We kept finding lost treasures throughout that whole part of the journey.
And thus the legend of Phat Loot Wood was born!
The GM actually admitted he made the fight encounter we ran into later a bit harder than it was originally going to be. Luckily no one died.
People like to (gently) mock me at the gaming table for my terrible luck with dice rolls. I figure I do okay, but still the hooting and hollering begins every time I fail a critical save or roll. Which is several times a session for me. I started recording my D20 rolls a few years back, just to show them it averaged out. The fact that my average roll over the years is a 6.3 is not helping my case.
Yo… That is not a high number. How many data points on your list?
I had to fudge my first roll as a DM last night because I crit’d a party member at low HP. I had to rebalance all my fights on the fly because real-life plans got in the way of half my group so balance was gonna be wonky no matter what. It still hit though. I’m merciful but don’t want to just hand a win to them.
I’m one of the people who doesn’t subscribe to many dice superstitions. That said, the more vulnerable my party is, the better I roll. My dice have all been saltwater-tested and they’re all balanced. They’re just mean. Funnily though when I play a morally-upstanding character these same dice roll terribly. I think there’s a malicious intelligence in them.
Grats on the first game!
I’ve been DMing this group weekly since August I think. I just haven’t referred to it much here. Before that I’d been DMing intermittently for a while.
I see that I was mistaken. As such, I rescind my congratulations.
In general with the exception of last session I don’t fudge dice. If you’re not gonna let the dice fall where they will then why are you even rolling. If the players learn that you’re fudging then all tension is gone. Players will know that they can’t die/baddies will make crucial saves. At that point they’re not playing a game, they’re just cruising along your narrative. The only reason I fudged was because I had to do some unplanned rebalancing so it was gonna be clown-shoes no matter what.
I try to have my dice rolled in the open. Unfortunately table-space is limited and I’m juggling books so I find the easiest thing for me to do UI-wise is to stand the books up in front of me. This creates an impromptu DM screen, which since once again my space is finite, means I have my roll-tray behind it, forcing me to roll in secret. I try and print out the pages from the monster books ahead of time to prevent this, but sometimes they deal with something I hadn’t thought to print out.
I have never do such a thing, because i can’t!!! There is no finite supply of 20’s on any given dice, you can’t roll out the ones of it. I, for one, make a call against this dark tide of ignorance and superstition, let the light of math, reason and mechanical probability shine upon the table to cast out this shadows. We live in enlightened times, were now the wisests among us have revealed the secrets behind how dice work. Let the sleeping gods, luck, fortuna and rngesus, lie and be forgotten. Don’t believe the lies of those who in their greed for success try to warp the very reality that binds us together. May the enlightenment of Science shine upon you.
-Message sponsored by the Technocracy.
“Only Reality Deviants need luck to crit” 🙂
Glorious science, comrade!
http://i.imgur.com/zEfRB44.jpg
Red Alert: Commie detected, initiating sanitation procedures!!!
Commie scum, wait here while the napalm is being heated please 🙂
lol
well, as I mentioned in the crit range discussion: My D20 has no shortage of 20s but a suspicious lack of 19s and 18s to make a rapier really worth having, and certainly not enough 17s to 15s to invest in making it keen.
Maybe I should write down the rolls next session to check it it’s attention bias. rolling it at home just for statistics feels like sacrilege (sort of wasting numbers)
Attention bias? That sounds like a bunch of silly pseud-scientific mumbo jumbo to me. Probably your die has gremlins.
I understand enough statistics to know that, barring defects/uneven weight, really there’s no rational reason to believe a set of dice might be cursed.
Still, if one of my players asks for a different set because they’ve been rolling terribly, I see no reason not to humor them.
But secretly, in your heart of hearts, you know them for fools (damn fools!) too weak to recognize their own simplistic biases. 😛
so after they rolled all the bad numbers out of the first set of dice, they ask for a fresh set to start the process again?
FOOLS!
I’ve certainly wasted nat 20s in the sense I’ve gotten 20s on things I didn’t need them on. It’s always frustrating to roll the highest result and be not get anything out of it.
This is why when I GM I at least try and add a bit more information or something. Though I’m pretty lenient in that regard anyway and secretly despite what I tell my players I pretty much never have a set DC in my head for a lot of things and it’s just a “eh, this seems good enough for X amount of information I wanted to give here” or “oh that’s a lot better than I was expecting, what I was planning to answer with doesn’t cover it…. hmmmmmm, let’s see if I can think of something more to add”.
Sometimes I will very obviously cheat in this way if it’s a nat 20 (or just very high result) on a skill check that has nothing to do with information gathering. For example: “Ok wow you got a nat 20 on Perception to try and spot….. a thing you were expecting that I had not planned on happening at all. So…….. here’s what you learn instead.”
I personally find the whole idea of dice curses and the like silly. However, despite my beliefs about physical dice I am fairly convinced forum dice rollers love screwing with me. Especially when it comes to character creation stat rolls. I unreasonably often get some of the worst stat rolls of anyone rolling during the recruiting phases of games and its very aggravating. Which is why when I run games I don’t have people roll at all, I just make up a few different pretty generous stat spreads and say “ok pick whatever you want from these”. Because to me chaining people to how good their luck on the first set of dice rolls in the game doesn’t seem to be an overall positive for the hobby. (And people are generally pretty excited to get to have high overall stats for once and focus on picking up those feats they so rarely have the opportunity to feel like they can afford to take. And if people wind up “too strong” it’s fairly easy to compensate by just throwing in a few more monsters sometimes.)
I think we all do this from time to time, especially on Perception checks:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/spot-check
Just be careful about letting the players know what’s up! For example, if you use the phrase “that’s just enough that you manage to” after they’ve dropped some crazy-high check, they might begin to cotton on. (Personal experience on that one.)
Indeed. Only use language like that for low checks. It’s more believable there.
I’ve found that summary execution of traitorous dice with the rest watching can handily ‘inspire’ them to start rolling better.
What’s your preferred method? Microwave? Hammer? Drill and tongs?
I‘d say: use a hammer and keep the pieces in the dice bag as a reminder.
Oh gosh all the time!
It’s funny though. We actually use Roll20 so no real dice, but we noticed that some GAMES feel like they crit more.
We actually have a running joke about my play-test for the diesel-punk WWII mech campaign that had SO MANY crits in it, we couldn’t actually test anything well. If those rolls had been part of a low level combat, there would have been some player deaths. It was bad.
But on the other end and back to the question, yeah we just had a session where I crit on a perception check with a +1 bonus on my skill. This last time though I rolled two 1’s in a row on important checks, so I don’t mind crit-ing a skill myself.
Spoiler warning, but critting Perception checks is the subject of the third and final installment of “Thief Deals With Crits” due out tomorrow. 😀
I don’t subscribe to that theory of x 20’s in a die. I’ve seen someone who rolls terribly in general, a dice god rarely rolled under a 12, and a man who kept trying to use dice that hated him (any other dice was fine, just his dice hated him). For me, funnily enough none of this is true. My dice don’t roll particularly bad or good, they roll to tell a story. They roll well or roll badly based on what makes the situation more interesting, as I’ve gotten a crit fumble so bad that it tore the weave asunder (it was a wierd system) and come out of the entire party being basically vaporized and revived with only my lucky hat surviving (dm rolled for all items to see if they survived on a d100, it rolled the 100). I’ve got no control over it but it’s a fun ride to be on.
*glows with an ominous red light and vibrates in scabbard.*
Hey now, no need to get slash happy! I’ll certainly say that part of it is that I often play online, so there’s no real “dice” to blame for any rolls. I could blame algorithms and rng generators, but that isn’t nearly as satisfying. 😛
Real talk? I got a buddy who does just that. Swear Roll 20 is out to get him.
I’ve just had my first session in a Pathfinder 2e campaign, and something like this happened.
Druid: “I use my Tempest Surge Focus Spell!” rolls 20 “Yes!”
Me: “It’s an auto-hit spell. You don’t have an attack roll, the enemy just has a Reflex save.”
Druid: “DAMMIT!!!”
That was the only 20 he rolled that day.
lol. Just bought a crit deck for Starfinder. Last session the operative rolled the only nat 20 of combat to Bluff. I read the “what you could have had” crit card anyway, because 1) I wanted my players to get a sense for the new mechanics, and 2) I am a bastard.
“Pfft. That’s not ajar, it’s a door.”
Dammit Dad, get off my webcomic! My internet friends don’t want to hear your lame jokes. 😛
Woah, geeze, how superstitious can you get? No die has a LIMIT on how many 20s it can roll, it just has a set amount of charge time needed for 20s to be available again. Crappy rolls can actually be GOOD because it raises the odds of being able to roll higher later.
This is all basic science.
Honestly, the “planning to backstab a beggar to steal their alms when said beggar probably couldn’t even win a grapple contest against Thief to hold onto them,” pretty much serves as an example of all 3 “greedy, violent, evil” examples rolled into one.