Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered

[zugschef]

a scroll containing one spell is about "8 ½ inches wide and 11 inches long" and "a scroll holding more than one spell has the same width (about 8 ½ inches) but is an extra foot or so long for each extra spell."

emphasis added

So you want to tell me that a spellbook has a format of roughly 8 1/2 * 1 1/3 inches?

[Prak]

I'm... not sure where you get that from. Scrolls simple take up one sheet of printer paper per spell, and when you scribe them over to your book, for some reason, it takes up more than that.

[zugschef]

I'm... not sure where you get that from. Scrolls simple take up one sheet of printer paper per spell, and when you scribe them over to your book, for some reason, it takes up more than that.

You quoted me and emphasized some parts just to show me what I already know? What kind of idiot are you?

[Chamomile]

While it is technically true that a scroll is supposed to be roughly the size of a single piece of printer paper, it should be noted that this is stupid. The vast majority of scrolls contain no more than one spell and if all you need is a single piece of printer paper to contain the spell, then rather than a scroll which is specifically designed to contain like twenty feet of paper in an easy-to-carry package, you can just use an actual piece of parchment that is about the size of a piece of printer paper. You can fold that thing up once or twice and put it in a box and it will be smaller than a scroll in a scrollcase, or if you're worried about creases you can just roll it up and it will still be smaller 'cause you don't need those wooden handle dealies, and you can fit at least two dozen rolled up pieces of parchment into a single scrollcase. If you're going to make something an actual scroll it should logically be because you need a lot of space, so it makes plenty of sense that the average scroll would in fact require multiple pages of a spellbook to transcribe, RAW be damned.

The printed circuit board explanation is pretty cool too, though.

[Prak]

I'm... not sure where you get that from. Scrolls simple take up one sheet of printer paper per spell, and when you scribe them over to your book, for some reason, it takes up more than that.

You quoted me and emphasized some parts just to show me what I already know? What kind of idiot are you?

Sorry, it was in response to name_here, someone had just posted in between. I was heading out the door to an interview, so I didn't bother to quote him too.

[Username17]

First, a scroll of more than one spell is more than one sheet. Scrolls are about an extra foot in length for each extra spell on them (3.5 DMG, page 238). Secondly, copying a spell into your spell book from a scroll destroys the scroll, despite the fact that copying from another spell book page does no such thing. And thirdly, scribing a scroll of a higher level spell takes quadratically more materials, while copying a spell book page takes only linearly more materials.

Clearly, a scroll uses powerful magic to condense the spell effect into one page, just as it uses powerful magic to allow the spell to go off when the trigger is read on the scroll. The act of copying the spell off the scroll into a spell book requires you to unpack the spell, which also destroys the scroll.

Scrolls are weird. Much weirder than the 2nd edition scrolls which were just spell book pages that went off as cast spells if you set fire to them. But I don't see it as being in any way inconsistent.

-Username17

[zugschef]

I'm... not sure where you get that from. Scrolls simple take up one sheet of printer paper per spell, and when you scribe them over to your book, for some reason, it takes up more than that.

You quoted me and emphasized some parts just to show me what I already know? What kind of idiot are you?

Sorry, it was in response to name_here, someone had just posted in between. I was heading out the door to an interview, so I didn't bother to quote him too.

Sorry, I kinda overreacted.

@Frank: Thanks. The part with quadratic versus linear cost is key to me. It's still weird, as you put it, but this way it's comprehensible and makes sense.

[ishy]

I've always seen scrolls as if the magic spell was already partially done and 'compiled'.
Like say the difference between machine code and higher programming languages.
And wizards need to study the scroll for a long time, to 'decompile' it.

[zugschef]

cancerinogen made me laugh and spill my rice.

Yeah, dictionary-fail on my part.

[shadzar]

well a scroll has things written to cast from like a wand has the spell cast into it. you can't copy a spell form a wand into a spellbook tho, because you have no "notes" with which to reverse engineer it. like the wand the scroll already has all the magic energy needed to cast the spell, and a spellbook only has enough energy to act as a catalyst to allow you to memorize it.

[Schleiermacher]

Well, in 3.x a spellbook doesn't have any magic energy at all. It will, for example, not light up under a Detect Magic spell. It's just a record, basically analogous to a cookbook.

The fact that most people, even ones trained in Spellcraft or Knowledge: Arcana, can't get any use out of a spellbook indicates that wizardry isn't a craft quite analogous to cooking, but maybe the mental discipline and esoteric practices necessary to learn spellcasting are just that difficult to grasp.

[zugschef]

Well, in 3.x a spellbook doesn't have any magic energy at all. It will, for example, not light up under a Detect Magic spell. It's just a record, basically analogous to a cookbook.

Makes you wonder what the horrendously expensive ink is actually for...

[RadiantPhoenix]

Well, in 3.x a spellbook doesn't have any magic energy at all. It will, for example, not light up under a Detect Magic spell. It's just a record, basically analogous to a cookbook.

Makes you wonder what the horrendously expensive ink is actually for...

Writing really, really tiny words so it all fits on that few pages, maybe?

[Ice9]

I think the gold and time requirement, and the fact that writing-copying spells like Amanuensis don't work on spellbooks, at least strongly implies that there's something there beyond the pure information.

[zugschef]

I think the gold and time requirement, and the fact that writing-copying spells like Amanuensis don't work on spellbooks, at least strongly implies that there's something there beyond the pure information.

The MoF version could copy spells, though.

[wotmaniac]

Well, in 3.x a spellbook doesn't have any magic energy at all. It will, for example, not light up under a Detect Magic spell. It's just a record, basically analogous to a cookbook.

Makes you wonder what the horrendously expensive ink is actually for...

it's just code for "hookers and blow", for breaking up the monotony of all that studying.
(note how you don't have to pay anything for the automatic spells you get at level-up .... 'cuz that's just regular normal studying, not the extra-credit)

[Prak]

What are the actual statistics on a dice pool system where 6 or better is a hit, 10s count double and ones remove a single success?

[Aryxbez]

Are there any links here that go into detail, the math failings (particularly Padded Sumo, and powers given too small of [W's]) of 4th edition D&D? Main reasons for it comes from the second desire below.

Currently playing the BaneGuard Class by Frank, other than the Marking Mechanism needing to be a Trigger, instead of an action, what else is wrong with the class? This is in part a call out to Lago PARANOIA for help, as in the distant past, has vaguely noted it being rather "Dodgy".

I've heard people generally attack the 1st level 4[W] Daily power being attacked as "too much", wondering on if any past proof can be shown that proved why it was valid? (Frank has said it was an illogical restriction by designers after all) I myself trust the BaneGuard to be mathematically sound, and given 4[W] vs. 3[W] is apparently like a 0.5 difference in average damage, I'm not too worried about it. Information mostly for a DM of mine, who seems to be running into the same mistakes as most 4rries did with this class/game itself.

[wotmaniac]

What are the actual statistics on a dice pool system where 6 or better is a hit, 10s count double and ones remove a single success?

Unless there's something I'm missing/forgetting/ignorant of, I'd say 50% ... chance of achieving success on a single die: 50%; # of expected successes from a given die pool: 50%.
The 1's and extra from 10's cancel each other out.

The math does get a little more complicated for edge cases. Are you looking for that equation?

[Prak]

I'm back to tweaking WoD because people are more willing to play WoD+House Rules than AS so, say you have a dice pool of 6, TN 6, 1s subtract, 10s count double, and lets say the person writing this completely tuned out their high school algebra class when it got to statistics, what is the statistical chance of getting 1, 2, 3, etc hits?

[Username17]

What are the actual statistics on a dice pool system where 6 or better is a hit, 10s count double and ones remove a single success?

You mentioned that you were twiddling with WoD, so I'm going to assume you are talking about dicepools of d10s. You really need to specify these things.

As it happens, what you're talking about has very simple to calculate averages (it's just the number of dice dived by two), but your chance of getting a particular number of hits is much less tractable. Your chance of getting 1 or more hits on 1 die is 50%, as is your chance of getting 2+ hits on 3 dice. But when you don't have something that is exactly 50/50, the fact is that things get more swingy (that is, converge towards 50%) as more dice are rolled. So 2 dice are more likely to roll 1+ hit than 4 dice are likely to roll 2+ hits.

-Username17

[TiaC]

Use http://anydice.com/ with the program output Nd{-1,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,1,2} where N is the size of the dice pool. Then click the At Least button.

[Prak]

Um, yeah, d10s, sorry.

[fectin]

I'm back to tweaking WoD because people are more willing to play WoD+House Rules than AS so, say you have a dice pool of 6, TN 6, 1s subtract, 10s count double, and lets say the person writing this completely tuned out their high school algebra class when it got to statistics, what is the statistical chance of getting 1, 2, 3, etc hits?

As long as 1 and 10 don't do anything special, WoD dicepools are actually some of the easiest to do statistics at. You're looking for the binomial distribution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_distribution

All you need to do is plug and chug:
n is your dice pool size
k is exactly the number of successes
p is one minus your target number divided by 10 (so, for TN=6, p=0.40)

Plug those into this:
(n!/(k!(n-k)!))*(p^k)*((1-p)^(n-k))

(if you remember Pascal's triangle, you can use that instead of the first term. It's much easier, but hard to explain quickly.) That gives you the probability of exactly k successes. Repeat for k=1:n to get a full distribution.

So, for your question, n=10, k=6:10, p=.4, here:

[Username17]

TN 6 on a d10 is p=.5, not p=.4.
Also, Prak was specifying funky bullshit on 1s and 10s. TiaC was totally right to just suggest going to Anydice.

-Username17