It is not unusual that a cool look also brings an unbalanced design. I have seen more than one dice design banned in tournaments.
Also I have played against friends with the irritating skill of always rolling 6
The thing is, if it is getting 19s as well it may very well be balanced, a 20 and a 19 are on opposite sides of the dice, if it were weighted you wouldn’t be getting 19s. He IS using a special mat though, the mat could have a magnet and the dice could have magnets in the right spots. Knowing these characters I wouldn’t put it past them.
Hunter
3 years ago
Calling it now. While their not looking, it’s going to become mouth dice.
Okay, so really. I get the whole notion of possible fragility, cushioned rolling surface to protect it, sure.
There is no way a die will “roll” well on a pillow. Especially if you are aiming for dead-center, and ensuring it does not travel far. That is not rolling, that’s dropping.
Crestlinger
3 years ago
Fear the power of the grabby dice jinxer.
For they are the final argument in all thing superstitious.
We can be more pedantic. Looking at the Ark is fine. Touching it without being a priest of the Aaronic or Levite priesthood is the thing that carries a death sentence.
Hi! I am even less fun at parties, and actually no one can touch it. The priests are just the only ones allowed to carry it around on the poles that are specifically there so that you can transport it without touching it. (This is, incidentally, also the only permissible way of transporting it. Somebody put it on a wagon once, and that ended badly.)
it takes hundreds if not thousands of rolls to test dice bias properly… especially since gemstone and metal dice are too heavy to use the salt water test. Also as stated elsewhere, edge geometry (if you round the edges of desirable numbers, but leave sharp the edges of numbers opposite the desirable ones) and how you roll the die are both much larger factors in how well a die rolls than subtle weight difference. It takes *significant* weight difference to affect die rolls in a way that puts them statistically outside the margin for error. The pillow certainly wouldn’t help… Read more »
Maybe for a proper χ2 test, but rolling no less than 18 four times in a row is already down to 0.05%. You wouldn’t need many more such rolls to justify banning it.
On the other hand, the chance to roll four times and get some result is 100%, so why not have this result be 20-19-20-18? Statistically you have the same chance for this as for 10-10-10-10 or 12-7-18-6
That’s because you don’t really understand statistics it seems. Four rolls is not enough evidence of anything, because odds of getting any specific combination of rolls are all the same. So 12-7-18-6 is equally unlikely, but would not be reason for you to suspect anything.
Lack of normal spread over, like, a hundred rolls — that would be a statistical anomaly, but not over four rolls.
Four rolls is a small sample size, you’re right, but you started talking about specific combinations of 4 rolls being equally probably. When replying to someone talking about “Rolls no less than 18”, which is completely unrelated to specific roll combinations.
I didn’t say four rolls was enough. I even acknowledged that it wasn’t enough for a proper statistical test. I said the chances of rolling at least 18 four times in a row was 0.05% and therefore you “wouldn’t need many more such rolls to justify banning it”.
Out of how many rolls over the campaign? If you only roll 4 times, and get 18+ every time, then yes, it’s highly unlikely, but over 400 rolls, the odds shorten significantly.
I’ve seen more statistically unlikely series of rolls come up in games I’ve run. Even 3 of the exact same number in a row is much lower % and happens often enough. It is a bit suspicious that the random generation happened to be in his favor right when he changed to a fancy die, but it could happen.
Or he could just be cheating more obviously than the other players. You just know everyone in that group is cheating.
As a player of nearly 16 years, i have witnessed and had quite a number of triple rolls. It’s rare but not unheard of. Now if its consistant 10 rolls are leaning on 20-14-8-2 then i ask my player to use different dice until we do a number of tests to the dice. Of the player says no, then i just dont let him ise the dice. Dice are not perfectly 5%. Things like inclusions, voids, factures, and chips all can effect the rolling consistance of the dice. And sharp edged dice are some of the least rolling dice in… Read more »
That’s true for 3 of any number; 3 of a specific number is less likely. But what we are actually looking at the is the probability for a “curious outcome”, one that doesn’t seem random to the human brain. Because a streak of “worse than 3” or “always between 9 and 11” or “always alternating between 20 and 1” or any other similar outcome would equally have lead to a reaction by the players (even though it would have been a different reaction if the die rolled always low). What I mean is that the human brain is particularly good… Read more »
What you should be looking at isn’t “what is the chance of a new die rolling exactly 18-20 four times in a row” No, 18-20 four times is exactly the result we ought to be looking at, because that’s what happened in the comic. Superstition has nothing to do with it. Is Player 1 suspicious because 20, 19, 20, 18 is a “sequence that a human would think is not random”? No. He’s suspicious because those are objectively good results and they are advantageous to Player 2. The question is, “what’s the chance of rolling this well or better with… Read more »
foducool
3 years ago
lest it loseth all its divinity
Popsicle
3 years ago
Noone touches personal dice without express permission! ?
Urazz
3 years ago
Either the pillow is interfering with the roll or the dice itself is unbalanced in design. I can imagine that it’s the former though and if I was player 1 I’d ban the pillow.
Generally you are supposed to roll on flat surfaces.The exact rules are always up to individual groups, but I don’t know of many people that would allow such a surface, not specifically because it really promotes cheating but because you really can’t tell which side is up.
wkz
3 years ago
There is only one way to combat this sort of dice: “Roll low to succeed” rolls. I still remember a single Space Wolf RunePriest taking out almost everything singlehandedly from a Tyranid opponent back in 6th?7th? edition Warhammer 40k over 4 turns, only because the ability he casted requires all the large bug monsters (and there were a lot of them; “big bug rush” was the meta back then) to make saving throws that would be usually easy to pass… except it seems said Tyranid player was using dice which seem to roll suspiciously high all the time yet needed… Read more »
Last edited 3 years ago by wkz
Daminica
3 years ago
I’m not sure if it’s unbalanced, the 18 19 & 20 on a D 20 are not near each other in order to end up there with an unbalanced dice.
There must be more to this dice then we can see at this time.
And I would add that these dice could have nothing special about them cheating-wise.
I mean : yes, the probability of rolling no less than 18 four times in a row is low but not at all impossible. And as Elan would say it (Order of the Stick another great webcomic) : 10% is pretty unlikely but 1 in a million is a sure thing ! (and we are in a story !)
“Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one. But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.”
Mind you, the odds have to be *exactly* a million to one. Which prompts a group of characters in one Discworld novel to go to ridiculous lengths to handicap a scenario to that precise level of improbability.
21st Century Peon
3 years ago
There may well be actual magic involved – the numbers are rotating around within their faces (see 1, 3, 5, 12).
And arrangement of the numbers themselves is not correct either. On a standard D20 numbers opposite of each other should add up to 21 which it clearly doesn’t do here.
The question is if it is intentional or not 😀
Leon
3 years ago
Two’s kinda douching out…..
Carl Abrams
3 years ago
Long ago, I had a d20 that the DM feared. It’d roll perfectly normal – unless I really, REALLY needed the roll. Then – and it didn’t matter if I rolled it, or I let the DM roll it – it’d roll 20. It did it five times in a row one night in a horrendous combat Absolute rest of the time it’d roll purely random – just a regular, plastic dice.
wakeangel2001
3 years ago
If he won’t let anyone else tough the dice then they could EASILY accuse it of being loaded or otherwise rigged, and tell him he isn’t allowed to use it anymore unless it is tested. Unless it actually IS a divine relic that would take offense to being tested he has nothing to hide. The other players don’t even need to touch it in order to test it.
Robert
3 years ago
Would never let a player throw a dice onto a pillow. Hard surface only.
Croi
3 years ago
I get the reference…but that was only for a movie. If you TOUCHED the arc of the covenant, you’d die, so it would have made for an even better reference.
What do you think sits higher up the ladder in the general public consciousness, the Ark from Indiana Jones, or the Ark from religious history?
Exactly.
So if I’d gone that direction, I’d have a dozen people here saying “Actually, they touched it just fine in the movie, it was only when they looked in it…!” 😉
Allowing players to do all of the rolling has been a homebrew/optional rule for decades. Basically you’re rolling an AC check instead of the opponent rolling an Attack check.
Boogeyman
3 years ago
People seem to think this is unlikely, but I’ve literally had someone roll Nat 1’s (auto misses) 3 times in a session, but ONLY when the character had True Strike (+20 to hit, damn near garunteed success) cast on them. 3 casts of True Strike, 3 Nat ones. Yes, statistically the odds of it are unlikely, but unlikely=/=impossible, and thus no cheating is necessary for this to happen. I have dice i specifically go to for important rolls because they never seem to roll below a 16 on those critical tasks.
You know, its actually amusing that this was Monday’s comic, because I played D&D that night, and I shjt you not, I only rolled below a 16 on initiatives all session.
Tim
3 years ago
This is exactly why I 3d-printed a dice tower. Let the D20 enter the randomizer that is an enclosed spiral staircase and may the gods be merciful.
With no chance of losing there are no stakes and therefore no fun.
Last edited 3 years ago by Tim
TRwolf2k
3 years ago
And then he looked down, and it was already in 4th’s mouth……
Epsilon
3 years ago
That cushion it too thick for that thing to roll. It’s just going to stop on whatever was on top when he dropped it. Like I understand that it’s there for the bit, but like it bothers me a little.
Hightecrebel
3 years ago
Eh, I’ve had streaks where everything I roll that session is 14+, and I’ve had streaks where everything is single digits That last one had my character stuck as a wolf for three weeks. Actually, considering we never continued that campaign due to deployments and such, I suppose he’s still a wolf…
BakaGrappler
3 years ago
Good stylistic choice having the number appear with a halo of light to indicate the result. Made it easy to decode at a glance.
A common variant rule is rolling for defense as well. A target’s AC is typically a flat value + armor bonuses, in 3.5 it was 10 + bonuses, I don’t know if that changed in 4th or 5th. Essentially you ‘take 10’ on defense. The rule simply replaces the flat value with 1d20.
24
It’s either a holy relic, or it’s not balanced.
Or 2 is on an incredible run of luck, which is statistically unlikely but not impossible.
It is not unusual that a cool look also brings an unbalanced design. I have seen more than one dice design banned in tournaments.
Also I have played against friends with the irritating skill of always rolling 6
The thing is, if it is getting 19s as well it may very well be balanced, a 20 and a 19 are on opposite sides of the dice, if it were weighted you wouldn’t be getting 19s. He IS using a special mat though, the mat could have a magnet and the dice could have magnets in the right spots. Knowing these characters I wouldn’t put it past them.
Calling it now. While their not looking, it’s going to become mouth dice.
Girl’s gotta eat……….
Okay, so really. I get the whole notion of possible fragility, cushioned rolling surface to protect it, sure.
There is no way a die will “roll” well on a pillow. Especially if you are aiming for dead-center, and ensuring it does not travel far. That is not rolling, that’s dropping.
Fear the power of the grabby dice jinxer.
For they are the final argument in all thing superstitious.
*Ark
While you may be technically correct (which is the best kind), I’m going out on a limb and assume you are no fun at parties, good sir.
We can be more pedantic. Looking at the Ark is fine. Touching it without being a priest of the Aaronic or Levite priesthood is the thing that carries a death sentence.
Hi! I am even less fun at parties, and actually no one can touch it. The priests are just the only ones allowed to carry it around on the poles that are specifically there so that you can transport it without touching it. (This is, incidentally, also the only permissible way of transporting it. Somebody put it on a wagon once, and that ended badly.)
Or like me, they have the VHS sitting on a shelf where they can see it from their computer when at home.
Conflict set, roll for initiative.
I wouldnt trust those dice either. Dm absolutely should do a series of teats to check the dies bias.
it takes hundreds if not thousands of rolls to test dice bias properly… especially since gemstone and metal dice are too heavy to use the salt water test. Also as stated elsewhere, edge geometry (if you round the edges of desirable numbers, but leave sharp the edges of numbers opposite the desirable ones) and how you roll the die are both much larger factors in how well a die rolls than subtle weight difference. It takes *significant* weight difference to affect die rolls in a way that puts them statistically outside the margin for error. The pillow certainly wouldn’t help… Read more »
A nice slab of genuine leather makes for a good cushioned surface to protect both the dice and the table.
Or a mousepad.
leather mousepad for win
Maybe for a proper χ2 test, but rolling no less than 18 four times in a row is already down to 0.05%. You wouldn’t need many more such rolls to justify banning it.
On the other hand, the chance to roll four times and get some result is 100%, so why not have this result be 20-19-20-18? Statistically you have the same chance for this as for 10-10-10-10 or 12-7-18-6
I don’t see what that has to do with my comment.
That’s because you don’t really understand statistics it seems. Four rolls is not enough evidence of anything, because odds of getting any specific combination of rolls are all the same. So 12-7-18-6 is equally unlikely, but would not be reason for you to suspect anything.
Lack of normal spread over, like, a hundred rolls — that would be a statistical anomaly, but not over four rolls.
Four rolls is a small sample size, you’re right, but you started talking about specific combinations of 4 rolls being equally probably. When replying to someone talking about “Rolls no less than 18”, which is completely unrelated to specific roll combinations.
I didn’t say four rolls was enough. I even acknowledged that it wasn’t enough for a proper statistical test. I said the chances of rolling at least 18 four times in a row was 0.05% and therefore you “wouldn’t need many more such rolls to justify banning it”.
Do you at least agree with the 0.05% figure?
Out of how many rolls over the campaign? If you only roll 4 times, and get 18+ every time, then yes, it’s highly unlikely, but over 400 rolls, the odds shorten significantly.
Four.
So we agree.
I’ve seen more statistically unlikely series of rolls come up in games I’ve run. Even 3 of the exact same number in a row is much lower % and happens often enough. It is a bit suspicious that the random generation happened to be in his favor right when he changed to a fancy die, but it could happen.
Or he could just be cheating more obviously than the other players. You just know everyone in that group is cheating.
3 the same is a 1 in 400 chance. That’s about 5x more likely than 18 or higher four times in a row.
As a player of nearly 16 years, i have witnessed and had quite a number of triple rolls. It’s rare but not unheard of. Now if its consistant 10 rolls are leaning on 20-14-8-2 then i ask my player to use different dice until we do a number of tests to the dice. Of the player says no, then i just dont let him ise the dice. Dice are not perfectly 5%. Things like inclusions, voids, factures, and chips all can effect the rolling consistance of the dice. And sharp edged dice are some of the least rolling dice in… Read more »
That’s true for 3 of any number; 3 of a specific number is less likely. But what we are actually looking at the is the probability for a “curious outcome”, one that doesn’t seem random to the human brain. Because a streak of “worse than 3” or “always between 9 and 11” or “always alternating between 20 and 1” or any other similar outcome would equally have lead to a reaction by the players (even though it would have been a different reaction if the die rolled always low). What I mean is that the human brain is particularly good… Read more »
What you should be looking at isn’t “what is the chance of a new die rolling exactly 18-20 four times in a row” No, 18-20 four times is exactly the result we ought to be looking at, because that’s what happened in the comic. Superstition has nothing to do with it. Is Player 1 suspicious because 20, 19, 20, 18 is a “sequence that a human would think is not random”? No. He’s suspicious because those are objectively good results and they are advantageous to Player 2. The question is, “what’s the chance of rolling this well or better with… Read more »
lest it loseth all its divinity
Noone touches personal dice without express permission! ?
Either the pillow is interfering with the roll or the dice itself is unbalanced in design. I can imagine that it’s the former though and if I was player 1 I’d ban the pillow.
Hmmm, the pillow….. some magnetic shenanigans maybe?
That swan jump over the spike pit cuts the cake! You should have that panel made into a t-shirt!
What makes you think that wasn’t the intention of that panel ?
Donut assume my thinking. Biggot!
I kind of wondered if it was allowed to roll a die on a pillow and not a flat surface.
Is it maybe the pillow that”s rigged>
Generally you are supposed to roll on flat surfaces.The exact rules are always up to individual groups, but I don’t know of many people that would allow such a surface, not specifically because it really promotes cheating but because you really can’t tell which side is up.
There is only one way to combat this sort of dice: “Roll low to succeed” rolls. I still remember a single Space Wolf RunePriest taking out almost everything singlehandedly from a Tyranid opponent back in 6th?7th? edition Warhammer 40k over 4 turns, only because the ability he casted requires all the large bug monsters (and there were a lot of them; “big bug rush” was the meta back then) to make saving throws that would be usually easy to pass… except it seems said Tyranid player was using dice which seem to roll suspiciously high all the time yet needed… Read more »
I’m not sure if it’s unbalanced, the 18 19 & 20 on a D 20 are not near each other in order to end up there with an unbalanced dice.
There must be more to this dice then we can see at this time.
I was about to say that exactly.
And I would add that these dice could have nothing special about them cheating-wise.
I mean : yes, the probability of rolling no less than 18 four times in a row is low but not at all impossible. And as Elan would say it (Order of the Stick another great webcomic) : 10% is pretty unlikely but 1 in a million is a sure thing ! (and we are in a story !)
That sounds almost like a quote from Terry Pratchet
It’s very close, actually.
“Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one. But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.”
Mind you, the odds have to be *exactly* a million to one. Which prompts a group of characters in one Discworld novel to go to ridiculous lengths to handicap a scenario to that precise level of improbability.
There may well be actual magic involved – the numbers are rotating around within their faces (see 1, 3, 5, 12).
And arrangement of the numbers themselves is not correct either. On a standard D20 numbers opposite of each other should add up to 21 which it clearly doesn’t do here.
The question is if it is intentional or not 😀
Two’s kinda douching out…..
Long ago, I had a d20 that the DM feared. It’d roll perfectly normal – unless I really, REALLY needed the roll. Then – and it didn’t matter if I rolled it, or I let the DM roll it – it’d roll 20. It did it five times in a row one night in a horrendous combat Absolute rest of the time it’d roll purely random – just a regular, plastic dice.
If he won’t let anyone else tough the dice then they could EASILY accuse it of being loaded or otherwise rigged, and tell him he isn’t allowed to use it anymore unless it is tested. Unless it actually IS a divine relic that would take offense to being tested he has nothing to hide. The other players don’t even need to touch it in order to test it.
Would never let a player throw a dice onto a pillow. Hard surface only.
I get the reference…but that was only for a movie. If you TOUCHED the arc of the covenant, you’d die, so it would have made for an even better reference.
What do you think sits higher up the ladder in the general public consciousness, the Ark from Indiana Jones, or the Ark from religious history?
Exactly.
So if I’d gone that direction, I’d have a dozen people here saying “Actually, they touched it just fine in the movie, it was only when they looked in it…!” 😉
But then you dont get to correct some one who is WRONG on the internet. I’m afraid I dont understand.
There are rolls to dodge attacks in this game? This version is even better than I thought!
Allowing players to do all of the rolling has been a homebrew/optional rule for decades. Basically you’re rolling an AC check instead of the opponent rolling an Attack check.
People seem to think this is unlikely, but I’ve literally had someone roll Nat 1’s (auto misses) 3 times in a session, but ONLY when the character had True Strike (+20 to hit, damn near garunteed success) cast on them. 3 casts of True Strike, 3 Nat ones. Yes, statistically the odds of it are unlikely, but unlikely=/=impossible, and thus no cheating is necessary for this to happen. I have dice i specifically go to for important rolls because they never seem to roll below a 16 on those critical tasks.
You know, its actually amusing that this was Monday’s comic, because I played D&D that night, and I shjt you not, I only rolled below a 16 on initiatives all session.
This is exactly why I 3d-printed a dice tower. Let the D20 enter the randomizer that is an enclosed spiral staircase and may the gods be merciful.
With no chance of losing there are no stakes and therefore no fun.
And then he looked down, and it was already in 4th’s mouth……
That cushion it too thick for that thing to roll. It’s just going to stop on whatever was on top when he dropped it. Like I understand that it’s there for the bit, but like it bothers me a little.
Eh, I’ve had streaks where everything I roll that session is 14+, and I’ve had streaks where everything is single digits That last one had my character stuck as a wolf for three weeks. Actually, considering we never continued that campaign due to deployments and such, I suppose he’s still a wolf…
Good stylistic choice having the number appear with a halo of light to indicate the result. Made it easy to decode at a glance.
Its a super prodigies dice. Dice 101.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87F-Ind9BaQ&ab_channel=ZeeBashew
Why is he rolling to avoid an attack? I thought you just had a passive number, Armour Class, for those?
A common variant rule is rolling for defense as well. A target’s AC is typically a flat value + armor bonuses, in 3.5 it was 10 + bonuses, I don’t know if that changed in 4th or 5th. Essentially you ‘take 10’ on defense. The rule simply replaces the flat value with 1d20.