This post relates back to the ‘Forget polyhedrals – Cubism is in !!‘ post I made recently. The original idea of that blog post was how to make a (linear) die using 2 dice – so a D12 or D18 using 2 x D6.

In that post I had throw away remark saying you could use this general idea to make D&D like stats – anyway I couldn’t quite help myself, and so I thought I’d try this out to see how well it could be used to generate D&D type stats – seems it works quite well (but I can’t really see anyone really doing this) :

Typical D&D stat rolling methods (orange line = 3D6 method and the blue line = 4D6 drop the lowest method) shown along side using this method where one method is D6 + D12 (where the 1 and 2 are replaced by 6 and 7 – the green line) and D6 + 12 (where the 1 to 4 are replaced by 8 to 11 -the brown line)

The two dice give a result that looks quite like the result from using 3D6 – the main differences being that the 3 result is excluded (hardcore players can frown now), the 10 and 11 scores are slightly lower and the 15+ scores are slightly higher. Other than that, surprisingly close!

The two dice give a result that looks quite like the result from using 4D6 drop the lowest – the main difference is that you don’t get any 3 to 5 scores (players using this method would probably be happy with that!). Other than that difference, surprisingly close!

Hopefully, I’ve got the maths correct!

:O)

This post relates back to a ‘composite dice‘ post I made a little while ago.

Recently, I got thinking there is another way to generate composite dice in a similar way. I figured, let’s do this with D6 first (to explain the thing), and then back it out to all dice.

“Composite die” I hear you say?

As you will know percentile dice (D100s) are made of two dice: a tens die (with faces: 00, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90) and a units die (numbered 1 to 10). But, this idea can be done with any two kinds of dice, not just with 2 x D10s.

So, for example, a D36 can be made of 2 x D6s, with one die labelled one to six (1 to 6) and the other labelled 0, 6, 12, 18, 24, and 30 (i.e. going up in 6s, not 10s like a precentile) – roll both and add them together.

Recently, I realised that you don’t need to go up in even intervals of 6s for each face on the equivalent of the 10s die. For example:

Option 1 to generate a D12 using two D6s: One D6 is a standard D6 (1to 6), and the other D6 is labelled 0, 0, 0, 6, 6, 6. Roll both and sum the result.

D12

I faintly recall that the DMG might talk about making a D20 in a similar way from a D10 …?

Option 2 to generate a D18 using two D6s: One D6 is a standard D6 (1to 6), and the other is labelled 0, 0, 6, 6, 12, 12. Roll both and sum the result.

D18

Option 3 to generate a D36 using two D6s: … again, you are back to the ‘standard composite die’ I originally blogged about – One D6 is a standard D6 (1to 6), and the other is a D6 labelled 0, 6, 12, 18, 24, 30. Roll both and sum the result.

D36

The trick of these ‘new composite dice’, of course, is to make sure that the ranges do not overlap (and each number has the same probability of coming out); otherwise, you start getting into bell-curve-like situations or uneven results (so no 0, 6, 6, 6, 12, 12 etc. – unless you are trying to generate something like a pseudo-bell curve for something resembling a D&D type character stat roll)

So, just using the humble D6, you can generate a D6, D12, D18, and D36.

If you make the D6 cube a D3, you can also generate (I believe) a D3, D9, and D33 (in addition to the above options).

And if you make the D6 cube a D2, you can also generate a D2, D4, and D14, I believe (in addition to the above options).

So, using the simple cube, you can make (unless I’ve made a mistake) D2, D3, D4, D6, D9, D12, D14, D18, D33, and D36 (who needs a percentile anyway?).

Of course, you are not restricted to D6s. You can use D8s, D10s, D12s (just noting that D12s are like 2 D6s), etc., and also mixtures of those dice, so D6 and D8, to generate lots of further different composite dice.
:O|

That’s it.  I’ve thrown it out there in case anyone finds use for it.