Has anyone done a probability matrix to determine the odds of rolling the possible outcomes on various mixes of dice?

I know its fairly straight forward (if you are any good at maths) of working out the odds of rolling certain results (Blank/Triumphs, no Advantage etc), on positive dice, but I have no idea how to work out the odds of a "successful roll when you roll X Yellow, X Green and X Purple" dice.

I am sure you can create some kind of excel file to work this out, but I have no idea how.

If someone has done this, would they share it? Or can someone tell me HOW this can be done?

A matrix such as this would be very useful in a sort of conversion I am working on.

Cheers

RD

Yup. There’s threads on statistical probabilities. There’s tools, too. I link to one of them in my .sig below (“Dice Probability Generator” by Litheon at < http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/108337-dice-probability-generator/ >), which mathematically calculates the exact probabilities of whatever combination of dice you give it, and it can tell you what the probability is of reaching a particular target, etc….

Thank you, but I must be a complete idiot... how do i use this??

If you have Google drive there is this spreadsheet. Though I recommend downloading it and uploading it to your own drive, as using it via this link will mean you are editing my copy.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bHJR2tvnfaCXJjW4S7IIy55BvsuF5-ZlZte5vBScW0M/edit?usp=docslist_api

Will it copy into Excel? (Yes)

And this is more what I am looking for... some help in deciphering what I am looking at would be hugely appreciated. Because I am impatient!

But thank you both for your help!

(Oddly, when you select 1 Purple and NO other dice, it still says Mostly Likely success result = 1.... umm...?)

I've written one that creates data that Excel can create 3D planar maps of. For example, here's 1 Ability 5 Proficiency and 5 Difficulty. The peak is at 3 successes, 0 advantage as the most likely outcome. I haven't worked up the analysis of the results at this time as I keep getting busy with this odd thing called school that keeps wanting my time.

The nice thing is this roller isn't a Monte Carlo simulation. It is actually calculating all the possible outcomes and tallying them up and does so in under 30 seconds even for 6 of every die type.

That would normally be 6^6 * 8^6 * 12^6 * 6^6 * 8^6 * 12^6 >= 2.154 * 10^22 possible combinations. Yes, that means 6 Ability and 6 Proficiency... heheh. I get around the problem by having built up sub patterns of the dice results which reduces the number of combinations that have to be put together and summed.

Thank you, but I must be a complete idiot... how do i use this??

Litheon’s program is a Ruby script that you can run from the command-line. Assuming you have the Ruby interpreter installed, this should work on any common platform, including Windows, Linux, Mac, etc…. The code for this program can be downloaded from his page at https://github.com/Neolitheon/EotE-Dice-Probability

If you’re not familiar with running Ruby scripts from the command line, then obviously that’s going to be more difficult for you.

If you have Google drive there is this spreadsheet. Though I recommend downloading it and uploading it to your own drive, as using it via this link will mean you are editing my copy.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bHJR2tvnfaCXJjW4S7IIy55BvsuF5-ZlZte5vBScW0M/edit?usp=docslist_api

IIRC, you could share a read-only copy of that spreadsheet. People could still copy that somewhere else and edit it, but at least they wouldn’t be able to change your copy.

Thank you, but I must be a complete idiot... how do i use this??

Litheon’s program is a Ruby script that you can run from the command-line. Assuming you have the Ruby interpreter installed, this should work on any common platform, including Windows, Linux, Mac, etc…. The code for this program can be downloaded from his page at https://github.com/Neolitheon/EotE-Dice-Probability

If you’re not familiar with running Ruby scripts from the command line, then obviously that’s going to be more difficult for you.

If my glance through the code is right, then that probability calculator will suffer the same problem I had with my initial try at it. Namely the number of combinations will shoot quickly through the roof as the number of dice rise. I got around this by precalculating certain numbers of each die type.

If my glance through the code is right, then that probability calculator will suffer the same problem I had with my initial try at it. Namely the number of combinations will shoot quickly through the roof as the number of dice rise. I got around this by precalculating certain numbers of each die type.

It runs reasonably fast. Doing your same calculation of one Ability die, five Proficiency dice, and five Challenge dice, it executes in about 241ms:

$ time ~/bin/dicecalculator.rb -D:APPPPPCCCCC

++++RESULTS for Dice Pool: APPPPPCCCCC++++

Total Chance of Success: 59.25%

Total Chance of Advantage: 51.92%

Total Chance of Threat: 32.48%

Total Chance of Failure Symbol: 25.44%

Total Triumph Chance: 35.28%

Total Despair Chance: 35.28%

+++++++++++++++

real 0m0.241s

user 0m0.230s

sys 0m0.008s

If my glance through the code is right, then that probability calculator will suffer the same problem I had with my initial try at it. Namely the number of combinations will shoot quickly through the roof as the number of dice rise. I got around this by precalculating certain numbers of each die type.

It runs reasonably fast. Doing your same calculation of one Ability die, five Proficiency dice, and five Challenge dice, it executes in about 241ms:

$ time ~/bin/dicecalculator.rb -D:APPPPPCCCCC

++++RESULTS for Dice Pool: APPPPPCCCCC++++

Total Chance of Success: 59.25%

Total Chance of Advantage: 51.92%

Total Chance of Threat: 32.48%

Total Chance of Failure Symbol: 25.44%

Total Triumph Chance: 35.28%

Total Despair Chance: 35.28%

+++++++++++++++

real 0m0.241s

user 0m0.230s

sys 0m0.008s

That's good. I haven't had a chance to play with it yet. But that output isn't really all that helpful. That's more what you'd see with a more binary result system with just a Yes/No being expected. As you can see from the chart I have, the more successes you get, the fewer advantage and vice versa. This makes them not independent results, but codependent with an inverse relationship.

That's good. I haven't had a chance to play with it yet. But that output isn't really all that helpful. That's more what you'd see with a more binary result system with just a Yes/No being expected. As you can see from the chart I have, the more successes you get, the fewer advantage and vice versa. This makes them not independent results, but codependent with an inverse relationship.

There’s lots more options than I’ve shown so far. You really should play with it some.

For me, the most useful thing I find is setting a “target” value, and then using the tool to help me figure out what the odds are of achieving that target.

So, going back to the previous example, we could set a target of getting one or more Successes plus at least one or more Advantages. Witness:

$ ~/bin/dicecalculator.rb -D:APPPPPCCCCC -T:SA

++++RESULTS for Dice Pool: APPPPPCCCCC++++

Total Chance of Success: 59.25%

Total Chance of Advantage: 51.92%

Total Chance of Threat: 32.48%

Total Chance of Failure Symbol: 25.44%

Total Chance of Reaching Target (SA): 20.67%

Total Triumph Chance: 35.28%

Total Despair Chance: 35.28%

+++++++++++++++

So, your total chance of getting one or more Successes with zero net Advantage might be 59.25%, but your total chance of getting one or more Successes with one net Advantage is only 20.67%.

You would actually have slightly better chance of getting one or more Successes plus one or more Triumphs:

$ ~/bin/dicecalculator.rb -D:APPPPPCCCCC -T:SR

++++RESULTS for Dice Pool: APPPPPCCCCC++++

Total Chance of Success: 59.25%

Total Chance of Advantage: 51.92%

Total Chance of Threat: 32.48%

Total Chance of Failure Symbol: 25.44%

Total Chance of Reaching Target (SR): 21.86%

Total Triumph Chance: 35.28%

Total Despair Chance: 35.28%

+++++++++++++++