The Unseen Servant forums

Oh, right.

Do strength and magic weapon bonuses still apply to the attack, or is it straight up d20 roll? I'm hoping that since Grothnaks's not trying to hit Telkis, his bonuses wouldn't apply.

Worth a shot, anyway.

Magic weapon bonuses: yes.

Strength bonuses: no.

Thanks.

Vadok vs. Telkis: [1d20+1] = 17+1 = 18 [1d10+1] = 1+1 = 2

That could have gone worse.

I've edited my IC post.

Zhym wrote:Vadok vs. Telkis: [1d20+1] = 17+1 = 18 [1d10+1] = 1+1 = 2

That could have gone worse.

Indeed!
Thanks.

Whew!

Starbeard wrote:Moogeye, who clearly has never cared much for snakes, finds it difficult to regain her footing in the soggy mud and strike with confidence. She throws a halfhearted thrust forward, knowing that to do so before she had recollected her wits was a mistake.

Glaive-guisarme To-Hit [1d20] = 1 Damage (small) [2d4+1] = 4+1 = 5, Damage (big) [2d6+1] = 4+1 = 5 …definitely a cursed room.

Cripes, this is unbelievable.

Please go here, roll a d8 and find out what happens next.

What's up with the dice roller? It's clearly evil! I can think of no other explanation.

Evil indeed. Blame the atmosphere! As I understand it, the dice roller pulls its numbers from random.org (can't find the reference for this but seem to remember seeing that somewhere), which uses "atmospheric noise" as the source of its random numbers.

Funny, no one ever complains about the dice roller being biased when we get a bunch of good rolls in a row.

I'm too lazy to look up the sources, but what we think of as "random" isn't actually what randomly-generated numbers look like. Although it's possible that something in random.org is wonky, it's vastly more likely that we've just been unlucky lately.

Yeah, confirmation bias and all that.

I like the random.org site because it's (IMO) as close to random as one can get. True, most programming functions aren't really 'random,' but this site pulls from the observation of an unpredictable physical phenomenon (again, as I understand it).

Nerd that I am, I rolled my d20 at home hundreds of times over a few weeks and did the same on random.org. Results were that my dice are more biased than the website. Need to get new dice.

Oh, yeah. Most physical dice are actually really bad at randomly generating an unbiased uniform distribution of numbers. That's especially true of nearly all polyhedral dice. The only exceptions I'm aware of are the six-siders casinos use.

A while back, I looked for polyhedral versions of the balanced, sharp-cornered casino dice. As far as I could find, they don't exist.

Have you heard of these, originally developed by Louis Zocchi? Not sure if they are better than 'normal' dice or not:

http://www.chessex.com/Dice/Raw/raw_dice_home.htm

I still have a set of the original Gamescience dice. I remember seeing the ones you link to, but I also saw some discussion on the Internet that the quality of these had dropped. Or maybe availability wasn't great back when I was searching. Or someone did randomization tests on these too. I forget. Might be worth trying out, however.

Any dice you buy or use you want them to be transparent. A lot of opaque dice you can't see the flaws hidden inside. I have found to be true with two tone dice. Has anyone tried testing their dice by floating it in salt water?

Ah dice.



There was a dice thread here with pictures which I found entertaining - viewtopic.php?f=40&t=1664

Help! I'm surrounded by dice nerds!

My favorites are still my circa 1983 multi-colored opaque dice. Black, Orange, Red, Green Yellow, Blue, White.


Unrelated DM question: is there any penalty for point blank missile discharge? I think it may be time to switch to 2 attacks per round with better to hit chances... before we all die by giant snake.

Or by fumbling Grothnak!

Zhym wrote:Or by fumbling Grothnak!

Or that, yes.

ChubbyPixie wrote: Unrelated DM question: is there any penalty for point blank missile discharge?

There are no penalties BUT if you try it in this case, you are "firing into a melee" as per the DMG, so your target is randomly determined. You could hit friend or foe.

Inferno wrote:

ChubbyPixie wrote: Unrelated DM question: is there any penalty for point blank missile discharge?

There are no penalties BUT if you try it in this case, you are "firing into a melee" as per the DMG, so your target is randomly determined. You could hit friend or foe.

That's why I asked. Didn't think the firing into melee would apply if Telkis was in the front rank. He'll just use his melee weapon, then.