a lot of dice

[sankoff]

Hi all!
Please, give me an advice for when there is a monster with MR 500 and i should roll 50 dice!!
;D newbie question ;D

thanks

[quoghmyre]

Yes, LOL. That's T&T. There are lots of "House Rules" to get around this problem. I call it a problem as it takes the GM away from story telling and turns him into a dice rolling machine. My method is use personalised Monsters and a laptop.

Others use 3.5 as the base roll and multiply it by 50, another method is roll 10 dies then multiply by 5.

I'm sure you will hear of other methods :-)

[ragnorakk]

Assume 3.5 average for 25 of them and then roll 25 more?
Roll them in batches of 10?
Use a computer?

[uburoi]

From Ken St. Andre's personal House Rules:

The Many Dice Problem When Monster-rated foes have big monster ratings--like 300--I
usually don't have 31 dice to roll, although that can be fun. I'm more likely to divide by 10,
or some other convenient factor and calculate monster hits that way. In this case, ten Orcs
with monster ratings of 30 each would roll 3 dice getting 6, 4, 4 for 14 times 10 = 140
weapon hits plus 1 die (its 31 dice total) = 143 weapons hits and 150 adds for a combat
total of 293. There was one 6, and times 10 makes 10 sixes for 10 points of spite damage if
the Orcs lost that combat round. (Actually rolling 31 dice, I got only 117 for the Orcs' dice
roll. As you can see, factoring will produce a wider variety of combat results than mere
die-rolling or averaging is likely to do, and thus make the game more exciting.)

Of course, as I'm sure he would tell you, you don't need to do it that way just because the author does it that way... but it's a good idea.

Other option, of course, is to use one of the lovely T&T utility programs you can download, which enable you to use as big an MR as you need...

[djacknh]

I'd use a laptop like Quoghmyre and use the Cyberboard wargame program which will randomly roll as many dice of as many sides as you like. Search engine, Google: Cyberboard
Program doesn't take up much space.

[sankoff]

thanks for your suggestions.
maybe i will solve the problem with a computer

[karluush]

I like to convert any dice over a certain amount into adds (multiply excess by 3.5). My preference is 10, so something with an MR of 200 would have combat roll of 10+139. I used to convert the by multiplying by 5, but I think that's a little to high. For monsters that have attacks that are triggered by spite damage, you'd have to convert appropriately.

[zanshin]

Multiply dice (as above by Ken St Andre)

OR if you will enjoy it (once in a while) convert all your polyhedral dice to equivalent d6's

I did a treatment on this called Polyhedral love in(i think) Combat.

Here we go


trollbridge.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=combat&action=display&thread=1176

I may do an article for Trollzine about it...

[zanshin]

And now I have - i have drawn on the uboroi quote of Ken, quoghmyres/karluushs average dice method , and djacknh cyberboard suggestion. Please PM me with real names if you want credit under those rather than forum id.

[mahrundl]

Just roll that many dice. Mainly because it will freak out the players when they see how many there are... ;D

(Not practical, nor does it really solve the problem, but it is fun!)

[feldrik]

Roll that many dice to freak them out but use a short cut method...don't tell them. The players will be amazed at your genius level dice adding powers.

There is a thread about 2 dice combat started by Hogscape.

trollbridge.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=combat&action=display&thread=484

[machfront]

Wow! Why would anyone have a monster with an MR of 500 or anywhere close to that?......why?... *cries*

[ProfGremlin]

Dec 30, 2009 19:30:16 GMT -5 machfront said:

Wow! Why would anyone have a monster with an MR of 500 or anywhere close to that?......why?... *cries*

I spent some time in physical therapy this past year to help with migraines. On the top of my chart I saw 'MR1630'. I was flattered that the therapist thought of me that highly...

[uburoi]

Dec 30, 2009 19:30:16 GMT -5 machfront said:

Wow! Why would anyone have a monster with an MR of 500 or anywhere close to that?......why?... *cries*

Back in the day, evidently, big MRs were considered a valid way of "challenging" players... much like the Balrog riding a Red Dragon listed in OD&D Greyhawk. Rat On A Stick has a monster listed at MR 1000, I think.

At least it's d6s, which are simple enough to find in quantity. One thing I learned back when I was playing Champions (another game requiring tons of d6s) was to look for those packets of tiny tiny dice, about 1/8" across. Rolling 30-40 of those little babies is impressive, even if they are small.

Oh, here you go - Noble Knight (my favorite on-line store) has 48 d6 for just $6.95. Heckuva deal.

[ragnorakk]

Dec 30, 2009 19:30:16 GMT -5 machfront said:

Wow! Why would anyone have a monster with an MR of 500 or anywhere close to that?......why?... *cries*

Then, of course, there's this solution to the many-dice problem, which is the one I favor too. I don't think I've ever used a MR greater than 150...