"Dragons? Even less so!"
"What if there are gryphons?"
"Now you've got my interest."
this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2025
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THAC0 is the reason I am so good at maths.
"Do you want to play D&D with us? It's fun, you get to create a character, act out their dialog--"
sweeps majestic cape over their shoulder
"I shall BE THERE, with BELLS on! Excelsior!"
turns out I didn't hate improv or basic math, I just let something convince me that I should dislike things I'm bad at
If you're like me and countless others, my money is on the culprit of school being like "You don't get it yet? YOU'RE FAILING AND THERE ARE CONSEQUENCES. Look at the smart kid who is effortlessly succeeding! Let's dote on them!"
Like sheesh, of course I'd never want to try anything I don't have a natural affinity for. Thanks! Lol
I'm glad we realized this and broke out of it though. Many are not so lucky. :(
that is my primary suspect. but the problem persists into adulthood to. there is a generational rift between myself and the one before me where people don't want to teach what isn't already known. or just can't understand the process of learning enough to communicate effectively with eachother.
I mean, it's pretty basic math. I don't think that many people would be too interested if it had trigonometry or calculus lol
Gotta use trigonometry to accurately calculate the distance to flying enemies
Plus all the other sweeties that the great old one warlock attracts from other dimensions.
Is there any rpg where you need to do so? May be Fatal?
GURPS Vehicles had some options that you needed to do a little calculus for, iirc. To be fair, that was an extremely optional add-on, and the calculations were done as part of designing your custom vehicle, not in play!
Their speed/range penalty calculation is also logarithmic I think, but nobody actually calculates that - you just look up the adjustments on the table, which is reprinted all over the place (rulebooks, character sheets,GM screens...)
Lol there have been some VERY obscure games that have tried this. Expectedly, they never took off and usually had many other problems with lacking fun.
Usually the author just liked math and wanted to pen-and-paper simulate a universe, but forgot to make it fun to care about or play in.
I have a friend who once complained that adding 5ft every other diagonal was too complicated.
Now if you're playing 1st edition Pathfinder and juggling 7+ buffs some of which do stack and some don't, then yes that gets complicated. But an extra 5ft every other diagonal is easy.
not for D&D, but in wargames with minis and terrain and stuff, I absolutely want to know the trajectory of the artillery shells being fired on my position. As well as the blast radius of the detonation and (if applicable) the size of the fireball and radius in which any shrapnel might be an issue.
Gotta know how many of my men are left and if their fortifications are left standing.
Have you seen some of the homebrew rules people use to track inventory and encumbrance?
No. And I don't think that I'd like to. :)
Yeah, it's just basic arithmetic with (usually) small numbers, and if you're the min-maxing type you might add probability calculation into it, but the latter is strictly optional and the former is basically the fun part about maths.
TBH I think probability calculation is fascinating, but it can get a bit cerebral if you want to do it during play.
Can I interest you in German TTRPG Das Schwarze Auge?
Oh come on. It's not that complicated.
If it's 3rd edition you just do basic skill checks on any ones of the 30-odd ~~should~~ skills for everything. Yes, including leveling up.
If it's 4th edition you run a spreadsheet program to track the five dozen skills you selected and curse yourself as you have to walk down a stone stair but you only have points in walking up wooden stairs.
If it's 5th edition you basically play it like 3rd ed but with a point buy system that allows you to accurately construct an artistically inclined vintner with a large bladder.
(Yes, having a large bladder capacity is an official perk from an official rulebook but few DMs are going to be insane enough to actually play with that rulebook.)
This is exactly what I mean. The stairs thing seems to be a common joke.
"Roll to ascend the stairs." was a common joke in our group.
I remember all the spells being overly specific to the point of uselessness. "You can conjure a cat. It's just a regular cat and will probably flee from you. You can do this once a month and it costs a billion dollars."
DSA (aka The Dark Eye, as it's international release is called) does tend towards a low power level so magic is severely limited compared to e.g. D&D. You can throw fireballs but not as frequently. High-level magic can take days to recover from. I have my own criticisms of how the magic system works but it does work if you accept that a high-level TDE caster is at a lower power level than a mid-level D&D caster.
The overall complexity was insane in the 4th edition; 5th ed did a lot to fix that. There are still a lot of skills but it actually feels manageable now.
I actually like that the system can model mundane professions; it can be pretty cool to play a regular person who gets forced into adventure but is still competent at something, even if that something is not generally applicable to adventuring.
Nein. Bitte, nein.
Yes, ill bring draino and cesium chips!
Math? I don't think that rpg talks about computing an integral or spending 2h arguing on whether we're on a Hilbert space and can compute a scalar product.
"You must solve the puzzle to open the door! Okay, at midday a purple worm heads east at approximately 100 feet per minute, and a dragon leaves her lair at sundown going west at 480 feet per minute..."
Ah, but you see, arithmetic is scary.
The only time I get too much to deal with is when I’m rolling four dice per attack, twice per round, and want to have a high level of confidence in my answer while also not taking up everyone’s time. For that I just made a spreadsheet and moved on with it.
You just need to skill in arithmancy. When you need to calculate something in game, roll a check and if you roll high enough the DM has to do the math for you.
Looool
I like live imorov, and dragons, but not math. That's why I'm a bard.
I like math and dragons, but hate live improv, do I'm playing Baldurs Gate.
Music is just math that sounds good when you get it right. Can't help you if you're one of those dancing or fancy-talking bards, though.
What's the mathenatically optimal guitar solo that'll "make them panties drop?" 🤔
Mathematically...Free Bird? It always seems to be Free Bird.
Polymath bards exist
EVE Online taught me speed distance time long before school did. It also helps that it's just intuitively obvious but that didn't stop it taking 2 whole lessons of physics.
Change the "what about dragons" answer to "eh, can be cool, but nothing special" and add "what about if we combine all those things?" And I answer "Oooh, that sounds fun!"
I love hearing people talk about it a lot more than I have ever enjoyed playing.
That’s not to say I don’t enjoy playing it, certainly I do.
But I like the whole thing. You wanna tell me about your epic campaign? Or the ridiculous run? Cool. Those are stories I can consume without effort.
That's why you become the DM
Don't forget legalese
I love Owlcat games. But i absolutely hate that they have the math formulas in everything. Just tell me the results man, that's why I'm playing on a computer
To each their own, I love seeing the math because then I can miss six attacks in a row and go "Fuck you! That's bullshit! Those rolls are bullshit!" and then look in the combat log to see that no, those rolls weren't bullshit, they're just shit. Makes the game feel more fair. If they obfuscated the math and just said "Nah mate, you miss" x6 with no other explanation that would really piss me off.
Oh i don't mean during combat. I mean for spells and items, weapons and armor.
Magic Iron Armor
Protects character for (blah blah)x7(15 + armor base - stat whatever)
It's a computer program. Just list it as"protects character for 6", and have that 6 change based on the requirements. You know, like how every other dev team in the history of videogames has done it haha
But then you don't know how your gear scales! That's important knowledge!
If they were making a less number-crunchy game then I might agree with you but this is kind of just the nature of Pathfinder, honestly. It's a game for numbers nerds and your objective is to stack +68 to your attack rolls or saves via as many different avenues as possible. This isn't really Owlcat's fault I don't think, it's more just a consequence of choosing Pathfinder as the system to run your game in.
Nah it's Owlcat. They did the same thing with the 40k game.