2d6+21

>2d6+21

Whoo.

>8d6

FUCK YEAH THIS SHIT IS AWESOME HA HA YEAH!

I'd take 2d6+21 over 8d6 any day of the fucking week. Why? Because my luck is fucking trash, and having guaranteed numbers, which in this case are even better than average rolls for the remaining 6d6 by the way, is the only way I can ever get anything done.

>The virgin median vs the chad gamble

You laugh but I've gone over an entire campaign's worth of roll20 logs and charted out my d20 rolls and I am about two points below average rolls overall. This of course does not take into account the amount of times I get critical successes when it doesn't fucking matter but critfail when it does.

So what? You subjectively enjoy median results rather than outliers because of cognitive bias and risk aversion? That's nothing special.

I had a player tell me the reason he likes playing D&D is picking up a bunch of many colored dice and rolling them all at once. Some people like the thrill of gambling without the risk of money.

>Cognitive bias
Yeah, you would think that, but you could ask any of the people in the 3 groups I recently played with and they'd tell you my luck is trash.

There's no such thing as luck. You had the same RNG algorithm as everybody else.

Ok guy whatever you say

>muh luck
Just pray to the luck gods and blow on the dice and rub them with a rabbit's foot and surely a little leprechaun will pop out and uncurse your terrible luck.

In most situations, 23-37 is way better than 8-48. You're trading the 11 potential maximum damage for 15 less minimum damage.

Maximum damage feels nice, but less tactically significant than minimum damage. It's easy to demonstrate why:

Think about a basic scenario. If a kobold has anywhere between 9-23 hp, you are in a situation where if you had Played Safe 2d6+21 you can be absolutely certain your attack will kill them. However with the Gambler's 8d6, there are scenarios where you hit it and it lives.

Looking at it from another angle, you have an enemy with 38-48 hp. You know Plays Safe WILL kill it in two attacks, but can't kill it in one. However, Gambler's 8d6 might kill it in one hit, but also might take up to six attacks.

So even in the scenario where you'd expect Gambler's to have some merit, it really doesn't.

All this math aside, the rule of RPGs is to do what is fun. Sure 8d6 is worse than 2d6+21, but if you have more fun rolling lots of dice go for it my dude. There's no rule in ANY RPG that says you must maximize your damage. All any RPG game wants is for you to roleplay well and have fun and help your friends have fun.

actually just a small correction, going to fast. in teh second scenario, 2d6+21 is only guaranteed to kill in two hits on an enemy from 38-46*** health, not 48.

Tom, is that you?

Maybe

They're going to average the same damage per turn (28). I'm not sure why this is being debated. The reason that 8d6 is "FUCK YEAH THIS SHIT IS AWESOME HA HA YEAH!" is because it is more enjoyable to roll more dice. Statistically you're going to get the same result if you are using decent dice that aren't flawed and roll low regularly thanks Game Science!

The Virgin Median
>plays it safe
>always cooks with thermometers
>doesn't use propane because it can explode
>wants to know a girl for at least a year before moving into anything serious
>waits for movies to come out on dvd to pirate before committing to buying
>plays purely by stat array or point buy

The Chad Gamble
>is a risk to himself and everyone around him
>trusts his white blood cells to do their job
>was trained to be a chef by michael bay
>throws his seed at several potential mates, worries about picking a good one later
>sits on set recording everything on a nokia
>builds his character by slamming the first six females he comes across, using their age as his scores

Averaging the same damage does not make them equal. Thanks for not reading my post at all and ignoring everything it contained.

Averaging the same damage over a long data set doesn't change the scenarios I described.

>but also might take up to six attacks.

This is considerably more unlikely than killing it on one, two, or three attacks. To the point where anything beyond three is kind of bordering on someone needing to have some of the worst luck imaginable.

>sits on set recording everything on a nokia
kek

>Man Chad, your character this week has got pretty low scores overall.
>I had to stop by an elementary school on my way here, shit happens.

I certainly agree with this. Talking about statistically likely rolls, both would take 2 hits on average.

But it is possible to get upwards of 6, and anyone who has played RPGs has usually seen something dumb like that happen, often at a very inconvenient time!

Of course we also see the opposite, rolling max damage on tons of dice or a crit or whatever and just obliterating something that was supposed to be tough.

>8d6

Eh.

>20d6

OH GOD I CAN'T STOP CUMMING

I hate rolling more than four dice.
I hate it even more when the guy who's bad at simple addition rolls more than a few dice.