Re: Please prove the math behind Dungeons and Dragons ???

From: Glen (glenbarnett_at_geocities.com)
Date: 11/18/04 

Date: 17 Nov 2004 16:07:25 -0800

A crossposted D&D post? Sounds like a troll to me. ;)
I'll assume it's meant as a legit question for now.

Groups reset to sci.stat.math only.

mallet_riveter@yahoo.co.in (Hans-Marc Olsen) wrote in message news:<e1cc8b8.0411162343.7bb4e3f8@posting.google.com>...
> I always lose against the monsters although my damage is 2D6+8 and the
> monsters have only 1D6+10.
>
> What is the problem?

The answer to your question doesn't involve proof.

You shouldn't assume that anyone here necessarily knows the details of
D&D (you should supply the directly relevant game mechanics) -- heck,
not everyone here will necessarily even see that 2d6+8 means "roll two
six sided dice and add 8 to the total". Even if everyone did know
exactly what you were talking about, your question also doesn't
involve enough details - damage is not the only determinant of who
wins.

Note that average damage given a hit there is 15 for you and 13.5 for
the monsters. That's close enough that the other factors are very
likely important explanations.

Possible explanations:
1) different hit points at the start of the fight
    - can they take more damage than you?
2) different armour class - are they harder to hit than you?
3) are you fighting more than one opponent at once?
4) do they tend to hit first? - if you don't have a lot of HP that can
matter
5) might they be using magic or specific skills/abilities that are
affecting combat effectiveness (changing damage, effective skill, HP,
AC - yours or theirs) without you realising??
6) could you possibly be mistaken about "always" losing, and are in
fact only losing about as often as you should, but only recalling the
ones that you lose?
7) another possibility is your dice or your rival's dice aren't
rolling fairly. The easiest remedy for this is to roll the same dice
(use the same d20 for the to-hit and use the same d6 as they do for
damage in your own damage roll).

There are still other possible explanations.

You might get better answers if you try posting to the relevant group,
which for this question would be rec.games.frp.dnd - try it out. Come
back if you have a specific statistics or probability question (like
if you wanted to test your dice for fairness, for example).

Glen

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