Dice suck

Why are you still using dice and other RNG to determine the outcomes of your games, Veeky Forums?
I'll list the reasons you shouldn't
>They don't let you properly play your concept, either by rolling stats too high or too low in the wrong places
>Le ebin nat1/nat20 maymay
>Succeeding when you shouldn't
>Not succeeding at the simplest shit because you rolled terribly and getting surpassed by even a random NPC even if it's in shit within your wheelhouse
>Damage goes from 1-4 or at best 1-12, too big of a spread

>not winging it
I haven't rolled a die in almost a year and my players haven't noticed yet

I agree that most GMs call for rolls *entirely* too much, but dice are still fun so long as you know when not to use them.

Ever tried not rolling dice for tasks PCs are expirienced in if there is no risk in the situation? Ever tried saying to your players it is impossible and no roll would do it?

Even plenty of systems have no ridiculous failures if you fumble and don't allow to fly to the sun if you roll a 20.

>Destroy all sense of tension by getting rid of the possibility of failure
>Implying memes are an indication of reality
>Implying the DM would let you roll for something you couldn't succeed
>Implying the DM forces you to roll for simple shit
>What are STR/DEX dmg bonuses?

Shitty thread, reminds me too much of the "Why do you still play DnD" threads

if we go with fixed damage, fixed to-hit, fixed etc.
we end up with a game with fully fixed outcomes, and it develops into a rather stagnant game

like chess, which has a very rigid metagame until you are an absolute master
the predictable gameplay makes victory or defeat visible from a long way off, and you simply countdown until it comes true

an element of randomness makes every match different and adds a degree of improvisation

you may not like it, but adding a degree of randomness makes it more fun for most people by making the outcome of every action less predictable and adding a degree of thrill
as for natural ones, unadulterated BS does happen surprisingly often in real life, sometimes a grandmaster does get a mote of dust in his eye making him miss a stationary target
hell theres a story of a guard shining his light on a thief, and the invisible DM of life rolled a natural one on his spot check, and simply ignoring the man and continuing on

Assuming 5e d&d because I'm sure this is just another "when did you realize d&d was shit" thread
>They don't let you properly play your concept, either by rolling stats too high or too low in the wrong places
Then don't roll for stats, it's an optional rule that some dm's don't allow. While I do like rolling for stats, you should be rolling for them before you even have a sentence of a character idea down
>Le ebin nat1/nat20 maymay
Only shit dm's actually follow this, rules explicitly state that nat 1/20 do nothing special out of combat and are only a guaranteed miss/critical hit in combat.
>Succeeding when you shouldn't
Sometimes people get lucky, however as a dm I have the right to rule certain skills to be impossible to be done by untrained people, for example anything to do with magic, knowledge, if it's anything beyond a "basic" DC I won't let you do it without being trained because there's no reason why a 6 int barbarian would start doing arcana checks or a 7 strength wizard would be first up to push a boulder out of the way. But it's all situational, if his life depended on it he could do those checks
>Not succeeding at the simplest shit because you rolled terribly and getting surpassed by even a random NPC even if it's in shit within your wheelhouse
What is take 10. Also the books say that if the task is easy and the PC's aren't in a hurry to just give it to them, figure out however long it takes them to do it but since it's such an easy task he is guaranteed to get it done at some point
>Damage goes from 1-4 or at best 1-12, too big of a spread
That's not really an issue unless you look solely at the dice roll. People wielding weapons that do 1d12 typically invest in feats and take fighting styles to be better at damage output with their chosen weapon (great weapon master for example) while the ones who are carrying the 1d4 either generally don't rely on it (arcane casters) or have other effecta that make them useful with extra damage sources (rogues)

And that's why George Washington lost the revolutionary war in its initial years before French aid, was captured and hanged by the British because he simply shouldn't have succeeded against such ridiculous odds.

That's why Malta fell to the Ottomans aver three months of bombardment by 100,000 men against a pitiful garrison of Hospitallers lead by Jean. Because there was no way he could have conceivably succeeded.

Stop using "thrill" or "fun" or "tension", they're merely buzzwords that don't indicate the actual quality of a game.

>not playing a game that uses playing cards

its a form of gambling
nothing wrong with fixed degrees of success or failure, some people get a thrill of seeing their clockwork moves slowly build up to an inevitable conclusion
games like chess and checkers work on this

dice games rely on the thrill produced by not knowing what you are gonna get, you can make it more likely but never a sure shot

this does indeed not affect the quality of the game, but they are not inherently inferior or superior to one another

i am using thrill, and you cant stop me, its just that randomness does include an element of thrill to a game, just not to you

game devs routinely use elements of luck or chance for the game because it has been shown that for most people, especially those who are not tourney fags, do want an element of uncertainty built into the game
it prevents simply doing the same thing over and over again
when going with fixed initiative, suddenly glass cannons are the optimal choice, and your only way to win is to use a hard counter (can take the hit and return it) or be a better glass cannon
with random initiative, a glass cannon can find himself not going first occasionally and not dominating, this is unfun for the glass cannon as he is no longer perpetually winning, but more fun for everyone else, since it makes more ebb and flow (yes i am using fun, because a lot of people find this sort of gameplay fun, not everyone mind you, but a lot)

it isnt perfect, and you can still overpowerthe system if you try hard enough, but the overall gist is that every match up is a different one, sometimes you lose your best swordsman because he slipped on a banana peel, and now you have to improvise

Listen, buddy, I get it. We've all been there, we've all wanted to have the opportunity to repeat /v/'s "fun isn't fun" line, but the fact of the matter is that it's all empty glory. People just glaze over you personally and just attribute it to the meme. It's pointless.

Now, if you'll leave this to me, let's leave the real baiting to the professionals, shall we? I know this crowd, and it's all to easy to get them to dance for me.

Dice as they are now are completely pointless without proper degree of ascension. Polyhedral dice with an odd number of faces should be included in the standard spread, leading up to lucky number 1d13.

This. When I GM, I usually only make a roll when the players do something unusual or crazy or it's close to impossible to do something without a struck of luck.
If the actions are sensible and the situation is clear, then no need for a roll.

The answer to this thread is just "stop playing DnD" or "stop rolling your stats."

>Le ebin nat1/nat20 maymay

d20 systems are legitimately trash but that doesn't mean all dice are shit.

Games need a bit of randomness. Real life has a bit of randomness too.

How else are you going to emulate stuff like misfires or worn out equipment breaking?

>The answer to this thread is just "stop playing DnD"

That's an answer to almost everything.

I still can't believe this garbage is the most popular system in USA. Fucking retarded burgers.

user, it's not nice to put your low self-esteem on display. I can clearly see you're a Filthy American.

>They don't let you properly play your concept, either by rolling stats too high or too low in the wrong places
Don't roll for stats you spastic.

>Le ebin nat1/nat20 maymay
At least attempt to pretend you're not a spastic.

>Succeeding when you shouldn't
You've got a shit DM.

>Not succeeding at the simplest shit because you rolled terribly and getting surpassed by even a random NPC even if it's in shit within your wheelhouse
And I mean a really shit DM.

>Damage goes from 1-4 or at best 1-12, too big of a spread
Have you tried not playing DnD?

Apocalypse World and most of its derivatives let the GM play without ever rolling a single die.

I play GURPS.
I don't have a problem with dice.

1) You don't roll when stuff is impossible
2) You don't roll when you can't fail.
If otherwise -your gm is shit and removing RNG won't fix the problem

Best post

People almost always seem to forget that most of human history is based on impossible odds. Quite simply if taken as a single instance, life, humans, and civilization should not exist. We should be dead multiple times over, the formation of nations should have fallen flat many times over. But it all happens because probability ultimately demands that the impossible odds succeed once.

The great men and women of history are not the most intelligent, charismatic, or zealous. They are the luckiest of us. The guy who gets shot by a gun at the right angle so the bullet simply deflects off his naked skull with minor injury.

>Have you tried not playing DnD?
Probably the only time I've ever seen this meme used in a good context

because gambling costs money
this user is clever

Hi virt

What's the name of the game where you roll first before you decide if you want to continue with the action or not?
Heard some people talking about it but never saved the name. I wanna say it's a board game?

>I still can't believe this garbage is the most popular system in USA. Fucking retarded burgers.


Its not about being garbage or not, its about stopping to assume its the only system that exist.

Its about the fact that if you have an problem with system X, you can play another system, you are allowed to do that

Too bad the fact is that 90% of the issues people complain about are not actually system based.

Because if you don't have some mechanics in place everyone basically does whatever they want and it stops being a tabletop game, instead becoming a glorified chatroom RP.

>Not succeeding at the simplest shit
Good GMs have always ensured this never happened by simply letting people succeed at anything considered trivial for their skill set.
Recently, it looks like people have started including this in game rules either implicitly or explicitly, but the idea is as old as the hobby itself.

I love dice, but I really want to try out some of the diceless systems out there (FLOW, Amber etc), but it seems people are afraid to try them out. Why is that?

Because people like rolling dice

>No dice = no mechanics

> it's an optional rule that some dm's don't allow

Properly speaking, 4d6 drop lowest is actually the 5e default method, actually. Pic related, straight from the PHB. You determine your ability scores randomly, THEN, if you don't like the results (or want to save time), you can instead use the default array. But the basic way of doing things is still presumed to be 4d6 drop lowest.

As it should be.

>What is take 10

...also not actually a thing in 5e, sad to say. I think there's a take 5 rule or something though, can't remember.

You can't take 10 if there's even the slightly distraction. That's why most GMs don't let you take 10

Damnit I forgot my pic.

>Elite array
Elite array is a scam, they tell you is the average rolls you'll get with 4d6 drop lowest but it's false, the average is 16,14,13,12,10,9 not 15,14,13,12,10,8

Ah, but you forget, the Elite Array originates from 3rd Edition, and 3rd Edition had as an ironclad rule that you always round down fractions no matter what. So even 15.9999999999999 is rounded down to 15 rather than rounded up to 16.

It's not mathematically kosher, but it is at least consistently applied across the entirety of 3rd Edition.

Keeping that in mind, the actual average rolls are 15.95, 14.45, 13.23, 12.02, 10.66, and 8.72, meaning that - sticking to the ironclad 3e rule - the average result really is 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, and 8.

Then subsequent editions have kept this because it looks nice.

>always round down no matter what
False, rounds down for players only, npcs and monsters don't follow this rule

>You determine your ability scores randomly, THEN, if you don't like the results (or want to save time), you can instead use the default array.

That's not how it's written. You choose those numbers instead of randomly determining ability scores, because you don't like the idea of randomly determining ability scores.

>15.95 = 15
I'm an engineer and this triggers me

Have you tried not playing DnD?

Nope, it's consistent throughout 3rd Edition. I've checked. The Monster Manual, for example, builds every single monster in it out of 10s and 11s (or if you prefer, 15 point buy, just with everything being brought to either 10 or 11) except where it specifically notes otherwise, where it instead uses the Elite Array.

One of the things I liked about 3rd Edition D&D was the complete PC/NPC transparency, that both were built according to the exact same rules.

>I'm an engineer
I'm so sorry to hear that man.

Incidentally, the reason why the Monster Manual builds monsters this way is because the 3.5 DMG had a simple formula it used to determine the "racial modifiers" of a monster so as to let a player play as that monster if the player wanted and the DM allowed; basically a way to convert any monster into a standard race. The formula wouldn't work as intended, however, if monsters were built differently from PCs.

Yeah, totally not worth a shit, I studied way to much to be unemployed for a few years and then get a shitty job. Add to that I'm European, fucking awful.

Like what

>What is: using a point buy system, or creating a character with the hand you've been dealt with.
>What is: taking memes to seriously, and adding some randomness because 24/7 power fantasy with no chance of failure is just stupid (like playing a video game on the easiest difficulty because you don't like challenge).
>What is: not having a shit GM.
>What is: taking a 10 or 20 (or similar game equivalent) or did you just never actually read the rules?
>What is: having damage scale depending on how hard you were actually able to hit someone, because stabbing someone in an artery in the leg is different than stabbing their leg fat (or just use the set damage rules for damage, but again you probably never actually read the rules to begin with).

Nice bait thread.

The alternative is freeform. If you do that with more people sometimes there are disagreements.
Basically, just roll whenever someone at the table doesn't agree some action will happen.

5/7 bait OP. Needs work.

That's some shit bait senpai.

>Damage goes from 1-4 or at best 1-12, too big of a spread
Don't use dice because OP is a faggot who can't imagine games other than D&D

Stop using "buzzword", it's merely a buzzword that doesn't indicate the actual quality of an argument.

> Dies suck
> Use d20 as a basis

Try systems with not as wild a result range. Go with 3d6 base systems like Fragged Empires. This way, your decisions have a lot more impact if the margin close (from needing an 11 to needing a 9 on 3d6 is HUGE), while things that should be outright impossible rather remain so (from needing an 18 to needing a 16 on 3d6).

In the same way, some systems use multipliers with MoS (e.g.: Dream Pod 9) meaning a more precise shot is ALWAYS better, compared to rolling a natural 19 to-hit, and a natural 1 to damage.