Combination Die Rolls (d120, d40, d60, etc)

[Killer Cyborg]

Okay, that kind of works, but I don't like your d40 and such, because a roll of 3 and 0 should be 30, not 40.
It's just not intuitive.

Instead, try rolling 1d4d10.
Roll a d4, and whatever number comes up, that's how many d10s you roll.
range of 1-40, without counterintuitive number-swapping.

Same technique works in a lot of other areas, pretty much any time you have a number that's divisible by 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 20, 30, or any other die that you have.
You actually already do this above with your d16; it nets out the same as if you're rolling d2d8.
You could also roll d4d4 to generate from 1 to 16.
d10d20 would give a range of 1-200.
d10d30 would give a range of 1-300.

If you include a d3, that opens up the range a bit, because now you have an odd number to work with.
d3d3 gives a range of 1-9, for example.

Other odd numbered dice can be used by rolling standard dice and ignoring/rerolling the highest number.
A d5 would be "roll d6, reroll any 6"
A d7 would be "roll d8, reroll any 8"

So d3d5 would give you a range of 1-15.
The only downside is that you could end up rerolling a lot of dice if you keep getting the high numbers:
d5d5, for example, might have you roll a 6 to start, so you reroll.
You get a 4, so you roll 4 dice, and then have to reroll some of them because they come up sixes, etc.


Personally, I think the die manufacturers need to just start making a wider variety of dice.

[bigbobsr6000]

I actually have the following dice:

1d2 - A d6 with 3 ones and 3 twos.

1d3 - A d6 with 2 ones, 2 twos and 2 threes.

1d16 - A 16 sided die.

1d24 - A 24 sided die.

1d1,000 set - A d10 with 000 to 900 + 1d100 or percentile. (If all roll zeros = 1,000).

1d10,000 set - A d10 with 0000 to 9000 + the 1d1,000 set (If all roll zeros = 10,000).

It sure makes my GMing easier when I need those random numbers as above. Plus, it increases the the number of die/dice combos as discussed earlier.

[EricvonEric]

For random time, use a d12, d6, d10 and d4
D12 gives you the hours
D6 gives you the tens digit of the minutes, threat 6 as 0 or subract 1 from the roll
d10 is the ones digit of the minutes
1 or 2 on the D4 is AM, 3 or 4 is PM
I actually have no idea why anyone would use this, but it's just something that popped in my head one day and I thought I'd share.

[drewkitty ~..~]

For D21 - D99 I just use a d100, throwing out the rolls over the die number.

However, up to D50 you could stack the options. Example: for D30 1-30 would be 1-30, 31-60 you would subtract 30 from the roll to get 1-30, and 61-90 you would subtract 60 from the roll to get 1-30.

However, sence I ussuly play on-line and the dice rollers I use you define what type of die you are using, so you could easily roll a D35 or D4672310526737820578901, or anything in between.

[Killer Cyborg]

Okay, that kind of works, but I don't like your d40 and such, because a roll of 3 and 0 should be 30, not 40.
It's just not intuitive.

Instead, try rolling 1d4d10.
Roll a d4, and whatever number comes up, that's how many d10s you roll.
range of 1-40, without counterintuitive number-swapping.

Same technique works in a lot of other areas, pretty much any time you have a number that's divisible by 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 20, 30, or any other die that you have.
You actually already do this above with your d16; it nets out the same as if you're rolling d2d8.
You could also roll d4d4 to generate from 1 to 16.
d10d20 would give a range of 1-200.
d10d30 would give a range of 1-300.

If you include a d3, that opens up the range a bit, because now you have an odd number to work with.
d3d3 gives a range of 1-9, for example.

Other odd numbered dice can be used by rolling standard dice and ignoring/rerolling the highest number.
A d5 would be "roll d6, reroll any 6"
A d7 would be "roll d8, reroll any 8"

So d3d5 would give you a range of 1-15.
The only downside is that you could end up rerolling a lot of dice if you keep getting the high numbers:
d5d5, for example, might have you roll a 6 to start, so you reroll.
You get a 4, so you roll 4 dice, and then have to reroll some of them because they come up sixes, etc.


Personally, I think the die manufacturers need to just start making a wider variety of dice.

There are some serious problems with your statistics here. Rolling a d4 to see how many d10s to roll doesn't result in all values from 1-40 being equally probable.

I never said it was.

Getting a 40 would happen only 1/40000! Your alternative is pretty much totally useless.

Maybe.
Show me the math.

The best way to solve the problem is to think of the max value on the first die as a zero rather than a 12, a 20, or whatever.

If by "best" you mean "irritating."

[lather]

More statistics and die.
Statistics is pretty much useless on the RPG die rolling scale.

[Killer Cyborg]

Show me the math.

Basic Probability 101

1d4d10
1d4 to determine the number of d10's roll (1-40).

1/4 chance to roll 4 + 1/10 chance to roll 10 + 1/10 chance to roll 10 + 1/10 chance to roll 10 + 1/10 chance to roll 10

.25 * .1 * .1 * .1 * .1 = .000025 which is 1/40000
<generates a wide bell curve with steep percentage chance for highs and lows>

4d10
4d10 (4-40)

1/10 chance to roll 10 + 1/10 chance to roll 10 + 1/10 chance to roll 10 + 1/10 chance to roll 10

.1 * .1 * .1 * .1 = .0001 which is 1/10000
<generates a standard bell curve >


1d4-1+1D10
1d4-1determines 0X-3X+1D10(1-40)
1/4 chance to roll 4 + 1/10 chance to roll 10

.25 * .1 = .025 which is 1/40
<generates a flat graph>

Great!

Now explain the math.

[sasha]

nooooooooooooes!