I dole out level-ups somewhat more sparingly than most, operating under more of an actual-play cadence of one level-up per ‘chapter’. The adventure structure that has come out of this mini-boss midway through the adventure, mid-boss guarding the adventure goal, and then adventure boss after level-up.

This time, they beat the dungeon boss, gathered the treasure (a relic crossed with a spell heart, giving them access to higher ranked spells than they ‘should’ have), and now they’re facing… basically all of the enemies (and potential allies) in the dungeon that they bypassed.

This isn’t an easy fight. This is a custom-tooled run of the Forge of Fury. They wiped out the Orcs on the main floor, by bypassed almost all of the Troglodytes, and almost all of the undead.

They befriended the Duergars, at least.

I’ve given everyone control over the Duergars (9 in total), so everyone is playing 4 characters this fight. They got through a couple of rounds of combat last session just fine, and everyone was into it.

Then last night, one of the players – my partner – managed to roll a 1 on every. Single. Damage roll. Like, her dice just decided they could not stand the sight of her anymore. It got to the point where I started to let her just re-roll her first roll if it was a 1, and about half the time it still came up a 1.

So, near the end of the session, as this well established itself as a giant cosmic joke, I pitched cascading damage dice to everyone, triggering off of a 1. They all agreed – though one of the kids was sharp enough to ask if enemies would get the same benefit (of course they would) – and we finished off the session giving it a try.

My partner rolled a lot of additional dice in the last halaf-hour of play. I let d4s trigger a second d4, but didn’t let the secondary die explode. The mood at the table lightened considerably. The damage output increased negligibly, as 1s begat more 1s.

I’ve never played with exploding or cascading dice before. I don’t have the bredth of system experience to have come across it organically. I was pleasantly surprised with how it added tension to damage rolls, and everyone else really loved how it softened the disappointment of rolling strong on their d20 only to find that they actually struck their enemy with a wet noodle.

I’m looking forward to next week, where I’ll get to see how this plays out over a longer period of time. I think the kids are going to get a lot out of it, if they ever start rolling 1s.

    • Kichae@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      Indeed. Though, it’s a little more complex than that for spells or attacks that use multiple dice. The interactions aren’t linear, and the overall effect when using large dice pools is actually subdued.

      Inner Radiance Torrent, at Rank 2, does 4d4 damage, and E[4d4] = 10. But E[4d4c1] = 11.5, rather than 12.5.

      Things get even weirder with larger dice, since cascading provides the potential for more rolls, but done at lower dice sizes. E[1d6] = 3.5, and so E[4d6] = 14. But E[1d6c1] works out to be about 15.9, so we’re gaining less than 2 damage. A Rank 3 Fireball has E[6d6] = 21, while E[6d6c1] = 23.875, a gain of less than 3.

      And this is lower than the naive expectation, because E[1d6e1] = 4.083 and 4*E[1d6e1] = 24.5.

      Compare this to increasing the die size. IRT would have an expected roll of E[4d6], which, again, is significantly higher than 11.5, while Fireball at 6d8 has E[6d8] = 27 (vs 23.875). So, this is providing a comparatively small boost.

      But, of course, this all assumes fair rolling. When you see what’s happening at my table – which I believe is mostly caused by less than vigorous rolling – the difference gets even smaller. Assuming a 50% chance of getting a 1 (so weights of [3, 1, 1, 1] on a d4, or [5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1] on a d6), we end up with E[4d4c1*] = 11, and E[6d6c1*] = 23.25.

      The game-impact:enjoyment ratio winds up being quite high. Much higher than I had expected.

  • collapse_already@lemmy.mlEnglish
    3·
    3 days ago

    Is the die fair? I once saw a large run of 3s on a d6 and eventually rolled it a thousand times keeping a histogram of the results. Even 100 rolls in, it was obvious that the die in question wasn’t fair (46 3s in 100 rolls, 7 4s). We swapped it out.

    • Kichae@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      3·
      3 days ago

      Almost certainly not – it’s a hand-made dice set that I got her from a local maker – but to get the kind of results she rolled with a weighted die would require a significant offset on the centre of mass. It’s way, way more likely that she’s picking it up with the 1 facing up, resulting in a 180 degree turn in her palm, and then rolling it too gently, so that it’s only pulling off two 90 degree rotations on its roll. She’s only rolling d4s and d6s, and the d4 is crystal shaped.

      I know it’s not an issue with uneven grinding/polishing, which is where a lot of rolling bias is actually going to be generated, because they’re sharp-edged dice. But that’s also what makes me thing the dice just aren’t rolling enough once they hit the table.

    • Kichae@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      1·
      3 days ago

      Not that I’ve seen, but again, my breadth of experience isn’t all that great. You’d have to define the number of dice, the number of faces, and the cascade trigger though, so something like [N]d[F]c[T] could work, e.g. 1d6c6 or 2d4c1.

      A similar notation with e instead of c could be used to denote exploding dice.

          • shnizmuffin@lemmy.inbutts.lolEnglish
            2·
            3 days ago

            Here’s the whole list for FoundryVTT with tons of examples. Excerpt:

            Roll five ten-sided dice, and if any of the individual results are a 10, roll another ten-sided die add the result to the total.

            /r 5d10x10

            Roll one twenty-sided die, rolling additional dice if the result is less than 10, until one of the dice is ten or better, which is the only result it will keep.

            /r 1d20x<10kh

            Roll six ten-sided dice, and roll one additional die for each 10 rolled, but do not re-roll 10s on the additional die, adding them to the total.

            /r 6d10xo10