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Has anyone thought of this or done it in games? In 8th there is now starting to be rounds where you roll 60-80 dice... what if you took the average e.g. hit on 4's thats 30-40 hits respectively.

thinking of ways to speed games up

That's kind of what Assault Dice (ios/android app)was made for.

A great thing about dice games is the swing that a good or bad roll can make. Yes after 100 games you may have averaged out your rolls but in 1 game it can make a difference. I would never use an app or just play the average and i wouldn't play against someone thag did either.

Average on a d6 is 3.5, which is impossible.

Plus, using averages all the time screws over buckets of dice armies; it denies them the opportunity to roll high (denies all players the ability to roll high).

Averages are great for math, but not for games.

Naa. the point of rolling the dice in the first place is for the variables.

I offer to use expected values to my opponents for huge batches of dice. No one has ever taken me up on it.

And if someone is going to have me roll, i'm using my dice. Because I *like* rolling dice. I refuse to use an app.

Another thing to speed up games: Don't be those guys with the dumbass dice that are incredibly difficult to read, with either really small numbers or blobs to represent numbers (like Tzeentch dice). All my dice are clearly numbered, with pictures on the 1.

Nemesis234 wrote:
A great thing about dice games is the swing that a good or bad roll can make. Yes after 100 games you may have averaged out your rolls but in 1 game it can make a difference. I would never use an app or just play the average and i wouldn't play against someone thag did either.

Precisely this. The swing of large dice roles is usually one of the appeals of playing such a game, and they can create some of the most interesting moments in a game. While you can still get such swings by using an app if you are just looking to speed things up, using averages would eliminate this element and lead to an experience that was less fun for most players.

Diceless games or using the average totally kills the point for me. I'd just as soon stick with chess if random outcomes made me that angry that i wanted to go diceless.

If you are using averages why even bother playing? At that point is all mathhammer. Measure one list agaisn't the other to see who mathemathcally wins by averages

 Marmatag wrote:


And if someone is going to have me roll, i'm using my dice. Because I *like* rolling dice. I refuse to use an app.

After playing Wargames I understand why people loves casinos. The act of rolling dice and hoping for the result you want IS fun.

When my slugga-boyz fight I will sometimes, with my opponents permission, replace some multiple of 10 dice with single dice of a different colour. So if I were to roll 136 hit rolls with red dice, I might instead roll 12 blue dice and 16 red dice, counting every blue hit as 10 hits, and proceed to roll wounds the same way. Speeds things up a little.

Unless you are playing with machined casino dice, you won't be playing with fair dice. Depending on your dice set's bias it may be better to roll than take an average. I am also not sure what sample size you need for a d6 to achieve a statistical average but less than a 100 dice seems small?

ntin wrote:
Unless you are playing with machined casino dice, you won't be playing with fair dice. Depending on your dice set's bias it may be better to roll than take an average. I am also not sure what sample size you need for a d6 to achieve a statistical average but less than a 100 dice seems small?

https://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/That%27s_How_I_Roll_-_A_Scientific_Analysis_of_Dice

This game is already simple and fast enough as it is, it doesn't need something like average expected results. Doing something like this also takes the whole chance factor out of the game, in which case I have to question why you choose to play a dice game in the first place. A part of good generalship is accepting the whims of fate and improvising to compensate for bad luck.

 Marmatag wrote:

Another thing to speed up games: Don't be those guys with the dumbass dice that are incredibly difficult to read, with either really small numbers or blobs to represent numbers (like Tzeentch dice). All my dice are clearly numbered, with pictures on the 1.

Oh sweet lord those need to die in a fire. (the tzeetch dice)

 Desubot wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:

Another thing to speed up games: Don't be those guys with the dumbass dice that are incredibly difficult to read, with either really small numbers or blobs to represent numbers (like Tzeentch dice). All my dice are clearly numbered, with pictures on the 1.

Oh sweet lord those need to die in a fire. (the tzeetch dice)

I know a guy who uses both tzeentch AND nurgle dice at the same time. It is absolutely awful to experience

Yo screw those tzeench dice, I just made my own from chessex

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Yo screw those tzeench dice, I just made my own from chessex

Wait, did you like carve symbols into chessex dice?

 BaconCatBug wrote:

ntin wrote:
Unless you are playing with machined casino dice, you won't be playing with fair dice. Depending on your dice set's bias it may be better to roll than take an average. I am also not sure what sample size you need for a d6 to achieve a statistical average but less than a 100 dice seems small?

https://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/That%27s_How_I_Roll_-_A_Scientific_Analysis_of_Dice

That article is obviously bs. They should have made the lie a bit less obvious. If GW/Chessex dice really rolled ones almost twice as often as they should everybody would know it. (They don't.)

To be fair the admech dice giant cube from a while back did roll a whole lot of ones.

Anecdotally.

Rolling lots of dice is part of the fun of the game really.

It can also make a difference for some armies. In some cases special effects trigger on 6's (daemonettes get better AP, sometimes it generates extra attacks). While technically you could also agree, that on average, there will be X number of 6's it just doesn't seem right to claim the bonus without actually rolling dice.

 Desubot wrote:


Oh sweet lord those need to die in a fire. (the tzeetch dice)

Yes! Burn them all!

The Death Guard dice, Howling Banshee dice... GW make some really atrocious dice.

My friend once shot my knight with 240 laz gun shots. You bet you'd buttered biscuits j made him roll it all

Say, you need to roll 100 4+ dice. Instead of rolling 100 4+ dice you pick 2d6, roll them and for every 1 away from 7 you get the disparacy part. If you want your result to be around as random as it would have been with you rolling 100 dice, get a 1-4 step.
Than take the average:
Number of dice (100) * Success Rate (1/2) = 50.
Take the disparacy part which is the result of 2d6 - 7 (in our case it's 2) and multipy it by the disparacy step which, let's say, we chose to be 3 (2 * 3 = 6).
Add the result to an average roll and get the number of successes:
50 + 6 = 56

This way you still get a random swing and don't have to roll 100 dice. Just do some basic math that takes around 10 seconds tops and roll 2d6.

You can easilly manipulate the disparacy rate and step if you want.

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
It can also make a difference for some armies. In some cases special effects trigger on 6's (daemonettes get better AP, sometimes it generates extra attacks). While technically you could also agree, that on average, there will be X number of 6's it just doesn't seem right to claim the bonus without actually rolling dice.

Why? If you agree that rolls on average then it's just as right to claim you get 6 4+ on 12 dice as 2 6+ on 12 dice.

Better reason is what happens when you roll amount of dices which is NOT dividable. 86 dices. Okay how many hits you agree with 3+? Should be 57.33. So 57? Robbing them of hits. 58? Too effective. Average only 84 dice and roll remaining 2? Starts to slow down if you start doing maths how many to average and how many roll. Add in 6 to hit effect. Now you hit into realm where say 89 dice you average 87 dice due to hitting on 3+ but 84 due to 6 so you need to do it 84 dices averaged(14 6's, 58 hits including 6's) and 5 dice you roll.

I can forsee that NOT being as fast as initially thought.

App works BUT apart from fun of rolling dice that requires phone battery to not short out, can still be rather clumsy(I haven't found it to be that useful) and of course being app means it's fakeable. I can make app that gives me slight almost impossible to notice advantage. Would take me less than an hour. Willing to trust any app I use on my phone?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 koooaei wrote:
Say, you need to roll 100 4+ dice. Instead of rolling 100 4+ dice you pick 2d6, roll them and for every 1 away from 7 you get the disparacy part. If you want your result to be around as random as it would have been with you rolling 100 dice, get a 1-4 step.
Than take the average:
Number of dice (100) * Success Rate (1/2) = 50.
Take the disparacy part which is the result of 2d6 - 7 (in our case it's 2) and multipy it by the disparacy step which, let's say, we chose to be 3 (2 * 3 = 6).
Add the result to an average roll and get the number of successes:
50 + 6 = 56

This way you still get a random swing and don't have to roll 100 dice. Just do some basic math that takes around 10 seconds tops and roll 2d6.

You can easilly manipulate the disparacy rate and step if you want.

And how identical this is with real dice rolling bell curve?

I thought about running a game using averages rather than dice. I'm surprised competitive players don't do this frequently to remove randomness from games. But for me it would remove a bit of the fun and excitement. I like that every thousand games Dave the Guardian might take down a Bloodthirster.

 Galas wrote:
If you are using averages why even bother playing? At that point is all mathhammer. Measure one list agaisn't the other to see who mathemathcally wins by averages

Exactly this. 8th ed already has minimal tactics and decision-making during the game. If you remove the only other factor that elevates the whole exercise beyond comparing army lists, there's no point in playing in the first place.

Chess can get away with dispensing with randomization. 40k can't. The game doesn't have enough substance to make up for it.

I've done quite a few games "by averages" (but including expected amount of "meaningfull" 6's and 1's where applicable so nothing is lost) but I do this only in very specific case of creating a homebrew units or altering core rules and only to speed up the process of evaluating cost-vs-efficiency. Plain mathammer is good starting point, but cannot account for terrain and real-game situations (I play on diorama terrains using custom scenarios exclusively). But once this part is over I switch to normal diced games as having even one or two odd units resolved by averages can change gameplay significantly. Playing whole games by averages is good for educational purposes, but terrible for replayability - Eternal War missions played by averages are quite easily solvable.

I *LIKE* rolling buckets of dice. It's part of the fun of the game, and it takes less time than the movement phase in a horde army.

I do have the GW 128 dice box, so counting the dice out takes very little time. (96 rolls? take away 32 at the start, and leave them aside) (you shot 10 of my boyz? take away another 20/30/whatever according to loadout)

It doesn't HAVE to be difficult.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
P.S. SInce Orks are one of my armies, it's FUNNY when all of them hit - or more likely - none of them....

The point of the dice in a war game is to represent the vagaries of war. The things outside of your control. Rolling all of those dice is part of what makes the game so fun.