this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2024
386 points (98.2% liked)
xkcd
8886 readers
53 users here now
A community for a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I have never played ~~R&D~~ D&D (or, I did once, but had a bad experience), so bear with me.
Is it ever allowed to simply do the thing, instead of rolling dice? For example in this case, to place 5+5 tokens upside down, and pick two of them? Or fold pieces of paper, etc?
Edit: I meant D&D of course. Don't know where the R came from.
Dices are only used if there is a fail condition.
Folding a paper doesn't have one.
Folding an crane for an origami competition does.
Absolutely!
The rules are a base framework for the DM to build upon.
Also the scenario in the comic isn’t actual DnD it’s really a math problem phrased in a DnD setting using standard DnD dice. In a real game the DM would probably do something like what you described.
You play the game with humans, you are "allowed" to do what ever you want and doesn't annoy the others. I like your idea with the tokens.
I'd absolutely allow something like that at my table. Something like this isn't going to have explicit rules, so even in a serious RAW (Rules As Written) game, the GM is going to have to come up with something. It's just that we all have dice and may not have the right setup for tokens, etc.
Really, the simple way to do it is have arrows #1-5 be the cursed ones. The player then rolls a D10 to see which ones are pulled, rerolling on repeat "arrows".
You have less arrows to pull from on subsequent rolls. You can't keep using a D10.
That’s why you reroll on already taken numbers. Or drop down a die size every two arrows.
Now someone has to do the math on how many rolls on average it will take to resolve the action given the chance of rerolls.
The dm can make up whatever rules they want! That’s the great thing about it. I’ve never heard of anyone doing that, but in this case it sounds like a great idea to simplify the whole thing.
Edit: that’s also the terrible thing about it and if you have a bad DM they can make you miserable. That could be why you had a bad experience?
I was joining a group of people who I didn't know all that well. I was keen to try the D&D experience, and somewhat follow the implied path by the DM. The others were more into the "sandbox" experience. So we ended up doing little more than burn down a tavern after 4 hours of playing. Probably helps if the DM goes through and figures out people's expectations. We were just kids tho. This was 20 years ago.