Anyone know the in-game mechanics for dice rolls?
sandmanCCL
Member Posts: 1,389
I believe it's hard-coded to not let you roll any number lower than 5, and that any dice roll where the total sum of stats is less than 75 is thrown out and it automatically generates you a new one.
If anyone knows ( @AndreaColumbo: have any insight to the mechanics?), I'd really appreciate it.
I'm trying to figure out the statistical probabilities of rolling a total net worth of stats. I was going to track down a math major at my school to figure it out, but turns out I don't even know where the math department is here as I did all my undergraduate stuff at a different college.
I know that rolling all 18s is like a 1 in 5 or 6 billion probability normally. I aim for 84 total points bare minimum when I roll guys and it takes me awhile to hit that (that'd be all 14s, for the record).
Just curious what the actual percentages are and the more info I can find out about how the game factors your rolls, the more accurate I can do it.
If anyone knows ( @AndreaColumbo: have any insight to the mechanics?), I'd really appreciate it.
I'm trying to figure out the statistical probabilities of rolling a total net worth of stats. I was going to track down a math major at my school to figure it out, but turns out I don't even know where the math department is here as I did all my undergraduate stuff at a different college.
I know that rolling all 18s is like a 1 in 5 or 6 billion probability normally. I aim for 84 total points bare minimum when I roll guys and it takes me awhile to hit that (that'd be all 14s, for the record).
Just curious what the actual percentages are and the more info I can find out about how the game factors your rolls, the more accurate I can do it.
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I've been trying to do a similar thing - calculate the odds of a certain roll - through a (rather amateurish) monte carlo simulation I built for the purpose. I played around in my excel file and updated it to reflect those rules you stated. I used a min of 5 and a max of 18 for each stat. For dexterity I placed a min of 9, since I'm rolling a human thief (I think that doesn't matter much, since the total minimum is 75). If the roll is below 75, I make the monte carlo engine re-roll automatically and exclude all rolls below 75 from the results.
The calculation is not accurate enough to generate the odds for a perfect roll (all 18s), since it only uses 10,000 iterations (rolls above 75). Running that many rolls takes time for excel to calculate and I wouldn't want to wait for more than 10,000 rolls to run. However, I believe ten thousand rolls is quite enough to estimate the odds for more realistic results with minimum error.
Assuming these are the only rules to the dice rolls, for rolling 84 and above, which is your bare minimum, I get something like 26-27% odds. For rolling 90 and above (all 15s or higher), which is something I usually aim for (especially when dual- or multi- classing), the odds I calculated are significantly lower - c. 7%.
I'll be glad to discuss our approaches and maybe compare results with you. Please share your thoughts.
Unless you aren't paying attention; in that case you will get a great set of stats that you will only see in the split second you try (and fail) to stop yourself from clicking reroll again.
Thanks!
Just a note - you can roll lower than 5 - I've seen quite a few 3's. Unless I was rolling so long I started hallucinating.
Some semi-empirical evidence for you over last few days - 10000 clicks (close approximation over 6 hours) rolling a human fighter or a thief (about the lowest odds of getting good results) got me these numbers (that I picked up on):
90's: Plenty
91's: 10
92's: 7
93's: 4
94's: 2 (where I finished both the thief and fighter after 3 hours each)
Druid - ~5000 clicks (3 hours is about when I get bored evidently)
94's: Plenty
95's: 6
96's: 2
97's: 2
98: 1
Usually I see results like this - your roll will improve over time it's just that the odds of getting a higher roll than what you already have are much lower and therefore it takes longer. If it seems like your getting nothing it may just be because you've lost concentration. Haha, yes exactly. I've actually clicked reroll on good stats a few times but saved it by holding the button down and slowly moving it off the gui reroll button. Good reflexes
Also, could you please direct me to where I can get this auto dice roller myself? I found a version on the net that seems to lack the .exe file.
what the game additionally does is cheesily increasing values which are below the minimum race/class requirement to the minimum value. Which is why ranger/cleric rolls so good. It has way to many minstat requirements. It is supposed to be a penalty, but in case of BG games its a bonus.
So I wouldn't even say it's a bonus. High minimums only help if it's in a stat you're going to max no matter what, or is like 9 or something. I kind of hate when I have to have a minimum number in a stat that does nothing for my character.
as in (14,15,16,17,18) 5 times out of 18 the rolled number will be what i want multiplied as many times as i want.
as for the more info. Well, certainly not the forum. Unlikely.
The 1 is only possible with a roll of one dice. But due to autobumping the results are screwed heavily in player favor anyway. Cannot say i dislike it though.
Actually that's because your rolling a half-orc, which receive a -2 to intelligence, which makes the dice roll for INT 3d6 -2, meaning that the effective ability range is from 1 to 16. The strength and constitution rolls become 3d6 + 1, which is why you're allowed a 19, despite the fact that a 19 wouldn't normally be possible by either a 3d6 or 1d18 roll.
Any time that an ability has no racial modifiers or class restrictions, the minimum is 3 and the maximum 18, which is consistent with a 3d6 ability roll. I'm not saying that the roll defininately is 3d6, just saying that your example doesn't actually prove otherwise.
Edit: Ah, looks like Xanthul beat me to it.
Minimum stats:
Str: 13
Dex: 13
Con: 14
Int: 4
Wis: 14
Cha: 3
Min total: 61
For paladins, you do not benefit in combat from high wisdom nor high charisma.
Str: 12
Dex: 3
Con: 9
Int: 3
Wis: 13
Cha: 17
Min total: 57
I find it's really easy to roll a good cleric/ranger and very difficult to roll a good paladin.
yes, i agree, other than empirical or disassmebling there is no way of checking which roll the game uses be it 1d18 3d6 2d9 9d2 6d3. But im not sure how it is of importance.
@sandmanCCL
Ah thats correct ofc, for some reason i was rolling a half-elf paladin
Well it has some pretty significant consequences when determing the probability of different rolls. For instance the chance of getting all 18's using 1d18 rolls is 1/18^6 = 1/34012224 = 2.9x10^(-6) % (as you stated earlier). Getting all 18's using 3d6 is 1/6^18 = 1/101559956668416 = 9.8x10^(-13) %. So it changes by a factor of more than a million. Pretty important if you ask me.
What i was getting into is we dont know how exactly the game calculates the stuff anyway. Could be any weird equation. I am inclined to believe however that your guess of it based on some rules is more valid than mine after seeing this possibly related file.
2DA V1.0 0 MIN_STR MIN_DEX MIN_CON MIN_INT MIN_WIS MIN_CHR MAGE 0 0 0 9 0 0 FIGHTER 9 0 0 0 0 0 CLERIC 0 0 0 0 9 0 THIEF 0 9 0 0 0 0 BARD 0 12 0 13 0 15 PALADIN 12 0 9 0 13 17 DRUID 0 0 0 0 12 15 RANGER 13 13 14 0 14 0 FIGHTER_DRUID 9 0 0 0 12 15 FIGHTER_MAGE_CLERIC 9 0 0 9 9 0 CLERIC_RANGER 13 13 14 0 14 0the minimum stat is zero which would indicate that the globally appearing stat of 3 is a result of dice rolls and not an artificially enforced minimum.
Yeah I see where you're coming from. I guess any calculations will pretty much just be educated guesses.
Humans are the only race where the bare minimum is 3 for every stat. Some races can oddly get less than 3, but still have a 3 minimum for things they get a penalty to. Can't have less than 3 dexterity on a dwarf, for example, but you can roll a 2 on charisma.
In other words, I still have no idea what the underlying mechanics are. All I know for sure is you can't roll less than a 75 total.
For example, my simulation rolls a few "above 100" results for each 10,000 rolls. Something like 8-9 each time I tried. However, last night I got the BG auto roller from @decado and left it running for a few hours. For more than 100,000 rolls it recorded a highest result of 95. This leads me to believe that there is some rule I missed implementing and/or that the chances to get any number between the min and max stats are not entirely even (something may restrict rolls that are too high in a similar fashion as rolls that are below 75). Keep in mind that I roll a human thief, where the min for dexterity is 9 and for all other stats - 3.
I'll try to analyze some actual rolls from the auto roller later. This can maybe indicate some of the actual probabilities. However, what bugs me is that I probably will not be able to infer the rules of rolling applied by the game just from looking at the results.