Originally posted by The Gumster
what is a dice for (in the game that is).
oh, ye gods ...you\'re not serious are you?
all RPGs (at least that i know of) are dice based.
what does a dice do? ...let\'s say you hit someone with a sword there\'s only you and he around, to keep it very simple:
you roll a dice for attack (let\'s say your attack is 1-8, again keeping it very simple on one dice): it\'s a 8-sided dice, and let\'s say you roll 6
then the opponent throws his defence dices (let\'s say his armour gives him 1-5 and his helmet 0-3): so it\'s two dices one 5-sided and one 4-sided ...let\'s say he throws 4 and 1
in the end (what you see) your attack has cost him 1 HP ... 6-(4+1)=1
that\'s a very simple example ...most RPGs (and even AD&D board games) have more complex dice throwing
in games the dice are simulated with intervallic random calls (for a 4-sided from 0-3 dice it\'s a random number between 0 and 3)
oh, and when you see things listed as 2d4, the first number means the number of dices that will be used for that roll and the second the sides each of these dices has ...so 2d4 are two 4-sided dices, 3d12 are three 12-sided dices and so on
...why not just use a 8-sided dice instead of two 4-sided ones? ...because it\'s not the same outcome one 8-sided can drop on 1-8, while if you throw two 4-sided ones it\'s 2-8