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Old 08-07-2020, 07:37 PM   #1
lachimba
 
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Sydney
Default Formulas for speeding up repetitive rolls

Does anyone have any formulas for speeding up repetitive rolls?

For example:

A PC is badly injured (negative HP, but in hospital care for a month) rather than rolling perhaps 30 times I can roll maybe three times?
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Old 08-07-2020, 07:48 PM   #2
Rupert
 
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Default Re: Formulas for speeding up repetitive rolls

Quote:
Originally Posted by lachimba View Post
Does anyone have any formulas for speeding up repetitive rolls?

For example:

A PC is badly injured (negative HP, but in hospital care for a month) rather than rolling perhaps 30 times I can roll maybe three times?
For that many rolls I'd just take the expected number of successes, based on the table on B171. The variability on 30 rolls is pretty small.

For say only a dozen, maybe roll three and take the expectede result for the rest if you want some variation?
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Old 08-07-2020, 07:49 PM   #3
Tyneras
 
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Default Re: Formulas for speeding up repetitive rolls

Pyramid #3/65 has the This One Goes To Eleven article, long story short you can treat the skill roll as always rolling 11 a lot of the time without breaking the game, it just switches things to bonus stacking rather than hoping the dice are in your favor.

I use this anytime you can just reroll or take extra time, which covers a lot of out of combat situations.

So you could assume the physician always rolls 11 and go from there.
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Old 08-07-2020, 10:00 PM   #4
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Default Re: Formulas for speeding up repetitive rolls

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Originally Posted by Tyneras View Post
Pyramid #3/65 has the This One Goes To Eleven article, long story short you can treat the skill roll as always rolling 11 a lot of the time without breaking the game, it just switches things to bonus stacking rather than hoping the dice are in your favor.

I use this anytime you can just reroll or take extra time, which covers a lot of out of combat situations.

So you could assume the physician always rolls 11 and go from there.
Hopefully, you don't have a condition that reduces the physician's effective skill to 10 or less.

EDIT: That's probably a situation in which you don't use that optional rule, though.
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Old 08-08-2020, 01:20 AM   #5
AlexanderHowl
 
Join Date: Feb 2016
Default Re: Formulas for speeding up repetitive rolls

In high skill campaigns, waiving any low risk roll when the effective skill level is 16+ is fairly standard. In general, this does not apply to adventuring rolls, combat rolls, influence rolls, job rolls, or reaction rolls, but it does cut the number of rolls by 80%-90%. Of course, a routine repair roll (like changing a tire) becomes nightmarish in a hurricane (-6 to skill), at night (-8 to skill), using only your off-hand because your primary is broken (-4 to skill), and at 80% normal time because the water is rising (-2 to skill). At that point, having a 30+ in a skill can matter, as you can still succeed despite that massive penalties.
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Old 08-08-2020, 05:03 AM   #6
lachimba
 
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Default Re: Formulas for speeding up repetitive rolls

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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
In high skill campaigns, waiving any low risk roll when the effective skill level is 16+ is fairly standard. In general, this does not apply to adventuring rolls, combat rolls, influence rolls, job rolls, or reaction rolls, but it does cut the number of rolls by 80%-90%. Of course, a routine repair roll (like changing a tire) becomes nightmarish in a hurricane (-6 to skill), at night (-8 to skill), using only your off-hand because your primary is broken (-4 to skill), and at 80% normal time because the water is rising (-2 to skill). At that point, having a 30+ in a skill can matter, as you can still succeed despite that massive penalties.
I don't think that's what I'm after

Specifically one thing I want to do is - when PCs are reduced to say -30HP, but live and have one month downtime I want to be able to say how much HP they will have by that session based on say their HT, expected physician skill of 14 and so on.

I could roll for each day, I could handwave or I could have a system of making one or two rolls to say PC 1 is at -5HP, PC 2 at -15HP and so on.
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Old 08-08-2020, 07:59 AM   #7
ericthered
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Default Re: Formulas for speeding up repetitive rolls

I generally get out a computer program and use that to roll dozens of times in the blink of an eye. usually I use the nbos Inspiration Pad Pro, because that's my gaming random generator of choice*, but that requires a little technical work to make it do dice from its original form. It does let me roll an arbitrary number of dice though.

If I want to roll a really high number of dice (over 100), I'll write a quick program that gives me the number I need.

I've been meaning to publish an html doc that will do that for people one of these days. This pushes me to get down to doing it.
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Old 08-08-2020, 08:22 AM   #8
Ejidoth
 
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Default Re: Formulas for speeding up repetitive rolls

There are a pair of interesting tables in, of all places, GURPS Zombies on pages 113 and 114.

Page 113 has a quick approximation of success (for low target numbers) or failure (for high target numbers) rates as simple fractions, intended to simplify resistance rolls and self-control rolls for hordes.

Page 114 has a table for approximating a large number of low-success-rate rolls with one higher-success-rate roll, intended for horde perception checks.
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Old 08-08-2020, 08:42 AM   #9
Stormcrow
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Default Re: Formulas for speeding up repetitive rolls

Average TL8 hospital, patient has HT 10. The daily HT roll will be against an effective level of 11. 62.5% of these rolls will succeed. Assume all possible First Aid, Surgery, and Physician rolls have already been made; all that is left is to recover naturally.

62.5% of 30 is 18.75, so on average, 18 of these HT rolls will succeed. Just assume that after 30 days, the character has recovered up to 18 hit points. Most normal humans would be fully cured.
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Old 08-08-2020, 10:02 AM   #10
AlexanderHowl
 
Join Date: Feb 2016
Default Re: Formulas for speeding up repetitive rolls

Most people are going to be sent home after they are no longer at risk of dying (above -HP) to heal naturally because there are limited resources. If we assume a HP 12 individual with -30 HP, this would mean that they would only stay until they reach -11 HP. At that point, they would probably be prescribed antibiotics to avoid potential infection and sent home to heal naturally.
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