this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2024
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xkcd
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Xkcd is smart, so I'm likely missing something.
But a random 2 out of 10, just roll two d10s and call it a day.
2d10 would be used if each arrow had a 10% chance of being cursed. But that's not the case. There are 10 arrows, five are cursed, and 2 are selected. Therefore the first arrow would have a 5/10 chance of being cursed, while the second selection would have either a 4/9 or 5/9 chance of being cursed depending on whether or not the first arrow was cursed.
To solve this, requires using combinatorics. There are 10 choose 2 (45) ways to choose two arrows, of which there are 5 choose 2 (10) ways to choose 2 arrows that are non-cursed. This works out to be 2/9 odds to pull two safe arrows. Which means you need to get funkier with the dice.
This is where a LLM might come in handy. Just tell it the parameters and say roll random. I think D&D could really benefit from the LLM. Shouldn't be too hard to just let it be the DM. That way everyone can be in the party ๐
Except an LLM has no way to roll anything random, it will just predict the most likely text for a random roll, which isn't remotely the same thing.
Why couldn't they be paired with a true rng? They can reference outside sources.