The dice calculation range for damage

[Drake]

I know it's appealing for new players not familiar with how the XdY+Z die notation works, but having the precalculated range is actually misleading instead of encouraging people to understand how damage calculations effectively work.

For instance, you might think 4d6 is 4-24 right. Because that's the minimum and maximum damage you can output with it. But what most newcomers might think is that it's an "equal chance" to get any number between 4 and 24.
It's not. It's very far from that.

With how dice work, you are actually more likely to hit between 9 and 19. 20 to 24 and 4 to 10 will be extremely rare (almost as rare as a crit with a weapon, it's about 6% chance to get anything outside 9 to 19, while it's more than 50% chance to get a number between 12 and 16).

And this is even more pronouced the higher the number of dice.

Let's take fireball. The damage is 8d6, so 8-48. Well, Anything outside of 18-38 is basically 0% (getting a 48 will require 10 of thousands of rolls at least), and you're more likely to hit between 24-32.

So 8-48, is not in usage 8-48, and learning what the difference is between the size of the die and the number of dice is actually important if you want to understand how damage works.
Basically the number of dice is better if you want to target an average (the number of dice will reduce the chance of getting values on the extreme), while the size will add more potential damage but won't avoid getting lower numbers.

[ShadowDark3]

Best of luck trying to get anyone in these forums to appreciate statistics, let alone understand them. I admire your effort though.

[Recjawjind]

Strong agree
A great website to actually display the probabilities of every result, it can do a whole lot more too, overall just a great tool if you wanna spreadsheet and minmax a bit :>
https://anydice.com/

[Dre G Writer]

Ah, so im not the only who thinks this.

[Clovis Sangrail]

These people can't even figure out time zones, so the likelihood of them getting dice probability is small.

[shimiku]

I don't think the game rolls a number 8 times for a 8d6 and sums it up I think it just roll once between lowest and highest number

[Drake]

Originally posted by shimiku:

I don't think the game rolls a number 8 times for a 8d6 and sums it up I think it just roll once between lowest and highest number

No it does the rolls properly. Otherwise it would be a serious flaw in balance, as dice rolls are designed around dice probabilities.
There would be no point in even displaying the dice if that was the case.

[LinkToReality.ttv]

You're correct that the probabilities of any of the extremes are very low, but the range is only to show maximum and minimum possible damage, not the most likely damage.

[Drake]

Originally posted by ⎛⎝Link⎠⎞:

You're correct that the probabilities of any of the extremes are very low, but the range is only to show maximum and minimum possible damage, not the most likely damage.

Yes, that's the point. To someone that is not familiar with dice probability, that range can be misleading, for example thinking that since the minimum is low, they have a change of getting that number and do close to no damage on certain rolls, while in practice, some spells will never roll lower numbers (or higher), even if the minimum is extremely low.

Like in comparison, let's say someone comes from an h&s like diablo and is familiar with lightning damage bbeing like 1-100 damage, and knows that sometimes there is no damage becasue they got a less than 10 because of the range. They might apply it here, while it's not the case