Dice percentages off

[sophistroland]

Our group has been playing in Fantasy Grounds for almost two years now; we play about once a week. In the last four sessions (a little less regular play due to the holidays) we have been seeing WAY more fumble and critical hits than seems to be reasonable. We thought maybe it was just dumb luck, but it has been too many sessions that this has been occurring. In the past four sessions we think we have had more critical and fumble rolls than in the past two years total. In one session, I had counted 16 fumble/criticals out of 30 rolls. HELP!

[damned]

roll 50 dice and see what you get?

[sophistroland]

I decided to roll 100 instead. 16 out of 100 rolls either crit or fumble. Which seems much more reasonable than when we were rolling in our session. This was on my computer, not the GM's though. Does anyone know if the dice tables are able to be modified? We didn't know if he had accidentally changed them, though he thought that was unlikely.

[Trenloe]

Does anyone know if the dice tables are able to be modified? We didn't know if he had accidentally changed them, though he thought that was unlikely.
There are no dice tables in Fantasy Grounds - the results of the dice are taken from the 3D dice rolling dynamics you see on the screen.

[Zeus]

There are no dice tables in Fantasy Grounds - the results of the dice are taken from the 3D dice rolling dynamics you see on the screen.

Trenloe is correct. Rolls of 1 or 20 on a d20 roll are dependant on the physics of the actual dice rolls themselves.

However.

Check the Fumble and Critical Hit tables, its possible that the GM changed the range of effective Critical Hit and Fumble Effect rolls from the default 2 in 6.

i.e. by default on results of 1-4 = automatic Miss or Critical Hit, on a result of 5-6 = Critical/Fumble Effect.

Changing this to example to 6 in 6 would result in Effect rolls everytime a fumble (1 on a d20) or Critical Hit (20 on d20) is rolled.

[sophistroland]

Is there something that can be done to modify this? Having gone so many sessions where we are having this just seems like too much of a coincidence. If it isn't something that we are able to change, is it something that has been updated recently?

[sophistroland]

Hmm...

In response to DrZeuss, it isn't the effect roll that has changed, but the percentage of times that we roll a 1 or a 20 with a d20.

If there isn't a way to change the physics of the rolls, which is what it sounds like, then maybe it is just an improbable event? I searched the forums and couldn't find anyone else with the same issue. It just seemed odd to have it happen so many sessions in a row.

[Trenloe]

Is there something that can be done to modify this? Having gone so many sessions where we are having this just seems like too much of a coincidence. If it isn't something that we are able to change, is it something that has been updated recently?
Just to confirm - what ruleset are you using? When you say fumble/critical you just mean a 1 or 20 on a d20 or low/high 5% of skill for Basic Roleplaying/CoC?

You're not talking about the fumble/crit tables that Dr Zeuss has mentioned?

Also, ask the GM to send you the campaign chatlog and you can go through and work out the exact statistics of your rolls to see if this is very skewed towards crits/fumbles or it is just a perception that it is.

[sophistroland]

We are using ruleset 3.5E.

When I say critical or fumble, I just mean a 1 or a 20 on a d20. The critical/fumble tables appear to be fine.

The GM posts all of the chat logs for story purposes, but cleans them up to make it easier to follow the story line. I emailed him to see if he has any copies that still have the dice rolls in them so I can verify that this is not just a perception.

[Callum]

The GM posts all of the chat logs for story purposes, but cleans them up to make it easier to follow the story line. I emailed him to see if he has any copies that still have the dice rolls in them so I can verify that this is not just a perception.
If he hasn't, ask him to keep them from now on - they take up very little space, and are easy to mine for the data. I have all my logs going back for over six years.

[sophistroland]

He did have the chat logs. There was one session that the chat log was erased, because his computers had problems syncing and he had to recover to the last save point. After going through them, maybe it was just us convincing ourselves. The criticals and fumbles did seem to all come together when we were playing. I wish I had that other session to look through as well. The numbers are below.

Date - 12/06/2012, Rolls: 170, 20's: 5, 1's: 2, Percentage of total: 4%
Date - 12/15/2012, Rolls: 177, 20's: 7, 1's: 11, Percentage of total: 10%
Date - 12/20/2012, Rolls: 4, 20's: 0, 1's: 0, Percentage of total: 0%
Date - 01/03/2013, Rolls: 6, 20's: 0, 1's: 2, Percentage of total: 33%
Date - 01/14/2013, Rolls: 61, 20's: 2, 1's: 6, Percentage of total: 13%

[Trenloe]

It can very often seem that you're getting a lot of certain rolls - especially with fumbles and crits as you remember them more.

And, just like in real life, sometimes the dice roll well and sometimes they don't. There's been a Pathfinder Society game reported recently where the party didn't complete the mission because they were just rolling terribly - couldn't hit a thing even once in one combat I think.

[Callum]

The human mind naturally looks for patterns. It's hard to think of any reason for a reportedly high incidence of 1s and 20s together other than misperception or pure chance.

[JohnD]

He did have the chat logs. There was one session that the chat log was erased, because his computers had problems syncing and he had to recover to the last save point. After going through them, maybe it was just us convincing ourselves. The criticals and fumbles did seem to all come together when we were playing. I wish I had that other session to look through as well. The numbers are below.

Date - 12/06/2012, Rolls: 170, 20's: 5, 1's: 2, Percentage of total: 4%
Date - 12/15/2012, Rolls: 177, 20's: 7, 1's: 11, Percentage of total: 10%
Date - 12/20/2012, Rolls: 4, 20's: 0, 1's: 0, Percentage of total: 0%
Date - 01/03/2013, Rolls: 6, 20's: 0, 1's: 2, Percentage of total: 33%
Date - 01/14/2013, Rolls: 61, 20's: 2, 1's: 6, Percentage of total: 13%

Looks a little on the low side actually when you consider that between the 1s and the 20s you're looking at 10% of all rolls.

Total rolls = 418
Total 1s = 21 (5.02%)
Total 20s = 14 (3.35%)

Nothing to see here... especially with the relatively small sample size.

[Trenloe]

Looks a little high but nothing outside the bounds of plausibility...
4%, 10%, 0%, 33%, 13% - the "chances" of rolling a 1 or a 20 on a d20 is 2-in-20 which is 10% so this is pretty much on the par - taking all the rolls across all the days give 8% of the rolls being 1 or 20, very close to the statistical average.


your 01/03 results probably stood out like a sore thumb.
Yeah, but there was only 6 rolls - no statistician is going to allow 6 samples to be counted as a valid test. :)

[JohnD]

Sorry for the ninja edit. :)

[Trenloe]

Sorry for the ninja edit. :)
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