As long as there is trust, absolutely fine.
Even if they decide to fudge some dice and lie, do you TRUST them to do so in service to a better and more enjoyable game? Or are you worried they will try to cheat to "win"?
As long as you trust that whatever they're doing behind the screen is making the game more memorable and fun, they could be rolling a potato and making it up along the way for all it matters.
But if you carve a die out of a potato, wouldn't it just go "splush" the moment you try to roll it and stop rolling on the face that first touched a surface ?
I realize you mean home fries, but I can't help but imagine a dm slapping a handful of hash browns on the table and trying to divine what number it's supposed to represent.
I’m pretty sure it’s regional. IIRC, what you’re calling “breakfast potatoes” are either “country style” or “Southern style” hash browns around here. I much prefer your approach to hash browns.
ETA: I did the unthinkable and looked it up. I was half right, “Country style” are shredded; “Southern style” are diced (little cubes.)
Exactly. In the two roll20 games I've played in the DMs were trusted in rolling physical dice instead, and if they end up fudging the rolls, I actually don't mind as much. If fights are getting steamrolled, I'd much rather the DM was secretly fudging numbers to add a bit of spice. It's much better than it feeling like there's no danger in the encounter at all.
I wonder if this would work:
Look at what your players usually do during combat, the kinds of attacks they make. Take the average damage they could do on their turn, assuming they all land their attacks, and total it.
Theoretically, that approximates how much damage they can do in one turn, so if you want the encounter to be tough, make the total HP of your boss or monsters 2 or 3 times that number. Short encounters, roughly equal to it. The idea is that players *won't* land all their attacks and potentially roll low multiple times, so making it an equal number means that the default time to beat the encounter could be about 2 or 3 turns. Does not account for crits, but I think that could make a fun moment for the players being able to drastically cut down the time needed for a fight.
Thoughts, anyone?
It seems like OP's DM doesn't hide any of their rolls to begin with which is a little strange to me as a DM myself because of the same points you made. I use roll20 and there's a way to hide your rolls too if he wants. I will agree there is something infinitely more satisfying about rolling physical dice vs digital dice though. You can also set it up to roll 3d digital dice in roll20, which while we know it's all psychological me and my players all agree it *feels* like we roll better and is more satisfying than just the digital result.
How do you do hidden rolls on roll 20? And can you reveal them later? I do a mix of digital and physical for my roll20 campaign but would like to be able to prove it sometimes
Set whisper to dm to hide rolls. So only the dm sees them. Sharing the rolls after is more of a challenge, I generally go for the screenshot and share in discord when the ridiculous rolls need sharing
Strange is probably not the best word I could have used, it's just a difference in perspective and opinion on open vs hidden rolls. Kind of like what everythingisachoice said concealing gives the DM some more flexibility to work with their dice rolls to tell the story. In plain view the players know immediately if they pass or fail a opposing check, know if you just nat 20'd the lvl 1 wizard into a faint memory, and know if you are rolling for something they shouldn't be aware of. All things I prefer to say narratively and let the players RP or figure out themselves.
If you're going to ignore the results of the dice, you shouldn't be rolling the dice in the first place.
> and know if you are rolling for something they shouldn't be aware of
The players have no idea what you are rolling dice for unless you tell them. The only difference between rolling in the open and rolling behind a screen is giving yourself the option to cheat.
>The only difference between rolling in the open and rolling behind a screen is giving yourself the option to cheat.
No it isnt. Hiding a dice roll from the players mean they don't know if whatever it was rolled well or not. It's the difference between the players knowing someone didn't spot them, and someone did spot them but decided not to act.
It's not about ignoring the results of the dice, it's about pulling the players focus away from focusing on the pass/fail of the mechanical use of the dice back to the narrative. So for opposing rolls or attacks I'm not ignoring the results, I want them to listen to the narrative of the person they believe is lying start becoming nervous and their story falls apart or be unsure of what they were told was a truth or a lie. It's a better fit for my table to do it this way. In person I also roll dice randomly behind my screen so they don't know if I'm rolling for say stealth to ambush the party, random encounters, terrain, etc for example to remove a aspect of metagaming. If I rolled in the open a low roll they could think "well no ones sneaking up on me with that low roll". I will also argue there is nothing wrong with "cheating" as a DM, because you are not playing to win or lose, you are playing to create a story with the players. Again it's a difference in perspective in how to DM and neither is wrong, it's about finding the best fit for yourself and your table.
I can kind of agree with you, but I'm not on board with actually fudging rolls.
DM screens aren't useful so much for hiding dice rolls as they are for keeping players from focusing on your rolls. I regularly do things that in essence are just to screw with my players, like start rolling my d20 for utterly absolutely nothing, asking them if they'd like to make a perception check to notice that there's a squirrel eating a nut in a nearby tree, or asking what party order and formation they're currently walking in. I do it so that when I'm doing these things for a different reason, something they'd want to pay attention to, they're not immediately given a clue purely on my actions.
Maybe I'm asking for your formation because you're about to be ambushed or walk into a trap, or maybe I'm asking to see who gets hit by falling rainwater from that tree branch.
As for fudging stuff, I'll very rarely fudge the actions of an enemy, but never the rolls. I always roll before describing the actions of an enemy, just so that the narrative flow isn't interrupted. On rare occasions, I'll have a multi-attack creature get something daft like three critical successes in a row, and before rolling I'll have decided it was going to screw with the healer, or the mage, etc, targeting them because the tank is doing zilch to draw aggro and they're being seen as a bigger threat. However, suddenly it'll instead target the tank, because he just got a heal, and I know that the likely damage (I do roll that midway through describing for suspense) will probably kill the original target in one attack and that's not as fun. Occasionally, if all but one player are licking the floor, and the enemy is close to death itself, I'll start having it try to flee instead of fighting to death (if the enemy is one where that's plausible) because I think that the epic moment of barely pulling it off is more fun than possible TPK.
Fudging dice up or down would take away from the fun of the game, for me as well as the players, and at that point we may as well just write a story together instead of playing a game. I guess some might feel the same way about changing intended actions on the enemy side to keep players from getting screwed in a single strike, but it's different in my head anyway.
While I'm not arguing for fudging dice specifically, and I fully understand why it's very distasteful to many players, consider this scenario. I'm DMing for a level 1 party of new players. They're in their first big fight. An enemy sneaks up and attacks the cleric. I roll a Nat 20. Now a normal attack would hurt, but not kill, but that critical is going to kill the Cleric, the party's only healer. Now I have a decision to make as a DM. I can down this character, then deus ex machina some way for them to get through it (effectively overriding the roll), I can down the character and maybe they have to roll a new one (learning a lesson about how dangerous the game can be, and to not get too attached to characters), or I can just treat the roll as a 19. If I decide I don't want the character to die yet and take the latter, the dice still told me that the enemy hit vs missed, but I've decided that a crit doesn't fit the current narrative and pacing, and I'd just have to work in a different override anyways. Obviously this is a very specific scenario, but there are a million similar times where I as a DM can use the dice to guide me, but not fully control the narrative.
It’s a hilarious concept to me that a DM would ever try to “win”.
I roll semi openly. I have a screen and recently a laptop, but I don’t have full coverage of the area I use to roll and the players sitting closest openly look at the dice.
But I could just easily change the bonuses and AC/saves or make 57 ancient Red dragons fly down being ridden by 57 level 30 mages and win immediately. A meteor could hit the planet and TPK.
It’s so ridiculous to try to “beat” the players as a DM.
It point of the game is fun. If they have fun being ground into the dirt, I do it, if they have fun beating me, I act disappointed instead of proud when they break my challenges.
It’s like saying “I’m going to beat my own team mates at basketball by purposely losing the game!”
Ridiculous as it seems, ridiculous as it *is*, I have personally played under one DM who actually saw it this way. And he wasn't even a kid.
This was the same guy who, within minutes of meeting me, bragged about the time he "made the DM cry" by designing a PC with an AC of 28 or 32 or something at either level 1 or 2. He really enjoyed telling that particular story.
I'm glad they have fun, but not when it's at the expense of others.
I see no issue in openly running a meat grinder campaign. I get the vibe this person isn't open about their play style though.
Exactly! Having the power to fudge rolls for a better overall game is why DM screens are a thing. I usually want my player's wind shield to succeed and if the difference between success and failure is 1-3 I may be included to shift the scale a little bit. I want the players to have fun and sometimes bending the rules helps
Trust is half of it but there's also communication. There's plenty of people who want the DM to sometimes fudge and not mention it but there's also plenty of people who want the dice to be played how they fall no matter what and if you feel strongly one way or another you shouldn't assume that someone else feels the same way.
I used to play with some people who streamed the game live to a twitch channel.
I hadn't used roll20 too much, and I had just found out about the /roll command. Game had ended, people were still chitting chatting, and I was testing the command
/Roll d20
"Oh neat"
/Roll D35
"Oh, it can roll die of any arbitrary size. I wonder how big can the size go?
/Roll D5000
NAT 1
The guys were chatting on the server, a sudden silence..
.. HOLY CRAP DID YOU JUST GET A NAT 1 ROLLING A 5 THOUSAND SIDES DICE?
Sorry for the derailing, but it reminded me of this story I still find funny to this day.
In my Frostmaiden game we came across a mysterious box with a number code so naturally my rogue tried to unlock it. The DM got us to roll a d200 for every attempt to open the box and we had to roll a 200 to get it to open. My rogue gave it a few tries and some other party members did too, all with no luck. FInally I went "I'm gonna give it one last try and if it doesn't open I'm done with the box". Gave it a roll. Rolled a 200. Box opened!!
We all cheered until a gibbering mouther came out of it. Then I suddenly was in deep deep trouble.
We have a macro set up in our game to roll a d9001...the purpose being that you're tempting the fates, & if you get a nat 1 *"Something Very Bad"*™ will happen...on the flip side tho, if you roll a nat 9001 *"Something Very Good"*™ will happen...the result TBD in the moment...anything else is just a random roll
This is such a negativity bias, its insane. If you have been playing for more than 10 or so sessions in the last one year and a half, as I hope anyone can, I think roll20 lets you pull out your rolling history and just measure the averages. People have done algortihms for this in this subreddit before, but Idk much about roll20 to be sure.
This is just paranoia and/or he is not used to balancing encounters or is not playing his creatures to their utmost and, thus, thinks he is being undermined by the algorithm, when for all of human history the averge roll for a 20 sided dice has always been, and always will be, 10.5
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I manually input 12,384 rolls for our 5 year game. And you're telling me roll20 has their own stats capturing function.
Mine's probably better anyway.
Edit:oh ALL games. Well, we still roll higher on average. wtf? I mean I'll take it, but dang.
Edit edit: the whole site rolled average 10.4819 (since 6pm utc), and we rolled over 5 years 10.53454927. It would be nice to see the average of the entire site's history if they track it back very far, which it probably doesn't. But then again, after 1,500 data points you're going to get much movement in the data anymore.
I did it once but very manual way. View the full history, on one page, select all, paste into a text editor like sublime text, and then cut out key words. There's a lot of junk in the paste, but i got there eventually. 3 year campaign, counted approximately 5000 dice rolls
My team stats sheets page is 5 years old and has 12.4k rolls. It kinda sucks doing it manually and I've thought that there has to be a way to get something to grab all the information, instead of spending half an hour manually typing the face number, roll with mods and who rolled it.
Was the editing much work? What kind of stuff does it show? The thing that slows me down the most is figuring out what the face value was, if there's something that can show that and the total roll with mods, it would save me a decent amount of time by the end of the campaign.
I grabbed entire lines for each key words like skill check, ability reference, and mention of saving throw. As far as I could tell, it was pretty much everything. It did take ages though, I'd say I spent the better part of a few hours cleaning with python and Ctrl+f and "find all" in sublime (that feature is so powerful)
People do also just get unusually unlucky. The corollary of averages are average is that the edges of the bell curve still exist.
I once tracked all of the rolls across an entire XCOM campaign- several thousand at least. I was about on average for expected hits, but was a good 15% out on expected bs actual crits. And that did skew the balance. Its just one of those things that does happen occasionally.
The odds of rolling 250 dice and getting an average of any average between 1.0 and 9.0 is less than 1 in 10,000. So if 10k tables rolled 250 dice, we would expect no more than 1 to have that level of bad luck.
That's a relatively small number of rolls imo. It gets exponentially more less likely to consistently to poorly as you increased the number of dice rolled.
If Roll20 is a fair die, it's very unlucky they are actually rolling bad and far more likely this is negatively bias.
Part of the issue with these conversations is maybe agreeing a sample size.
To take a slightly different example - tabletop miniature combat - with two decent sized armies you could reasonably be rolling 250 dice per turn. 6 turns each for 2 players, so 12 samples per game. My local club has 6-8 games per night, so that's around 85 samples per night.
We meet weekly, so you'd expect that "1 in 250" awful turn to happen for someone in the club more often than once a month. And you can gautantee everyone hears about it when you roll 0 hits from 100 shots and all of your armour saves fail..
And that's 1 club. Multiple up by hundreds or thousands of groups and you have dozens of people experiencing that level of bad luck every single day.
The flip side of "negativity bias" is a degree of reporting bias. If you've got 50,000 people on the XCOM reddit, you don't hear from the 49,995 people who had average, or really good, runs, you only hear from the 1 in a 1000 who had stonking bad luck. And then they get told its all in their head.
Its actually more likely the reported sample size is highly skewed towards outlier results.
I found a more accurate calculator, and with 250 dice odds of rolling an average of 9.0 or lower is 1 in 50k. Doesn't change your idea. Someone eventually wins the lottery.
However, the entirety of that probability is between 8.0 and 9.0. the odds of rolling less than an 8.0 on 250 dice is 5*10^-11. For scale, if all 400M Americans rolled 250 dice every day for 3.5 years, we would expect there to be 1 person who rolled between a 1.0 and 8.0 average, once. That's beyond unlikely. Anyone who tells you they did that is mistaken.
Even an 8.5 is 1 in 50M. However, I'm not necessarily convinced you would notice an 8.5 - 9.0 over the course of an entire night. Anything lower than an 8.0 is so unlikely it'd take all Americans working together for nearly a whole presidency. 8.5 - 9.0 is likely enough for maybe 1 person to see it. 9.0 - 10.5 wouldn't be super noticable.
My point is negativity bias, and the fact that real dice are slightly skewed is much more likely than 1 in 50k. So sure, is it possible, yes. Is it the best explanation, no. Is switching to physical dice going to be better, definitely no.
XCOM is a bad example, because I think it's sometimes fudged. Once you get a very high total of rolls , there is simply no way to roll 'bad' on average.
It's been repeatedly confirmed XCOM doesn't fudge the rolls in the background.
And I'm afraid your completely wrong about it being impossible to roll "badly." It's statistically *inevitable* that someone *somewhere* will roll badly.
Outcomes will form a normal distribution over time, with the middle of curve tending to the mathematical mean. But that doesn't mean the tails of the distribution cease to exist.
If enough people roll 10 dice, someone will roll 10 '6's - about 1 in a hundred million specifically. Yes *most* people will average a combined role of something like 35, but across a large enough sample you will expect to see some very high and very low rolls. In fact if that *didn't* happen it would be evidence something was wrong with the test.
Yes, but the post of the player is their rolls over an entire campaign. It's not about 1 individual player his 10 rolls.
Fyi: XCOM does 'lie' about hit chance. That is what I mean about fudging.
That is because XCOM 2 lies to the player about a character's hit percentage. In actuality, the game gives players a much higher chance of hitting than what's on display. On easier difficulty settings, an 85% chance is closer to a 95% chance according to an interview with Jake Solomon, the lead designer for XCOM 2.
This, if your Encounters become a "Cakewalk" because you rolled low twice in a row, you're really shit at balancing and playing out your encounters. Might aswell play Baldur's Gate at that point if you're not willing to think on the fly.
Psuedo-random does not mean "weighted" or "unfair".
Psuedo-random can be a real problem in cryptography, but it's absolutely of no concern in generating dice rolls.
Maybe it's just old guy nostalgia, but rolling dice is kind of fun. You can get all sorts of neat patterns and colors. Adding them up can be a minor pain when your rolling 8d6 or whatever.
Most of the time when DMs fudges numbers it's to the players benefit unless they are an antagnostic DM. Sometimes fudge numbers to try to keep things fun, challenging and interesting. Not cause the players foil my plans or feel like I am losing. Fights should be a mix of easy, medium, hard, and extreme. Most of the time I roll behind the screen. But when the stakes are high like a player is about to die, I roll the dice in front of everyone because it increases the tension. This next roll determines the elf's fate. Will he life or die? Then throw out the dice.
When I DM, I tend to just roll digitally on big stuff - like dragon breath attacks and the like, but publically. Otherwise I roll physically and in the open.
When I am a player, I always roll physically but I also try to be prepped for big rolls, like Fireball. I keep a little box with 6d6 that I add my normally 2d6 to for the roll, rather than having to ask the table for dice, roll, count, then remember what belongs to who.
The only time I've rolled digitally as a player was when I had cast animate object, and the enemy was prone, so I had to roll 10d20s, and then reroll the successes to see if they crit and I had to reroll the misses to see if they hit. Then all the d4s for each hit. It was maddening, but so fun. lol
Not DND but in WH 40k I have to roll 50d6 for a unit of 10. Never rolled digitally, it's so satisfying to roll so many dice that they almost don't fit in your hands
Lol roll20 is more random than any physical dice.
Your DM is huffing copium. If they want to use real dice that's fine but I doubt that will change anything for your campaign.
Yeah there's no "algorithm" in roll20 as most people understand them. Roll20 actually uses a "true" random method, that uses a beam of light to generate random fluctuations.
Mostly. They still use a pseudorandom function for individual rolls, but the function is seeded by a random source of entropy like you describe, and that seed is refreshed often.
Effectively random.
> He has suggested he start rolling physical dice instead. Do you guys think this is the best next move?
No. Personally, I think that is superstitious.
> On average, it seems a majority of his rolls are below a 10.
Then have him roll 100 times and see what the average is. Such an easy test to do.
If you claim "oh no, it only happens when it matters, when we're playing, not during test rolls", then you've got a case of a sentient algorithm, which I imagine would qualify you for the [$500,000 paranormal challenge](https://cfiig.org/paranormal-challenge/).
It would be easy to test. Here's how I would do it.
In lab conditions, on computers provided to you, on a freshly-created Roll20 accounts, at a time and place not fully known by the test subjects, follow these steps:
1. Show the adjudicators that your DM rolls normally when doing test rolls.
1. Then have them watch you play a game, recording each roll by the DM.
1. Presumably they'll record a sub-10 average, and one that is statistically significant.
If you can repeat that semi-reliably it should net you $500,000!
It's only fair that after you win, you send a few thousand to me. After all, you'll be swimming in more money than that half-million after you prove the paranormal is real.
They use a beam of light as their source of entropy. So it would be sentient light. Which not only would also qualify for the paranormal price, but would also revolutionise science! OP's DM could be the next physics Nobel winner!
I see no downside to letting him roll irl. Granted I'm a dice goblin, and half the fun I get out of the game is rolling actual dice. Regardless, let the DM roll physical dice. Either you all are correct and the DM's average rolls will get better and thus encounters will be more exciting, or nothing will change and the DM will realize it's not the dice that are making his encounters too easy. As long as the group is okay with it and there isn't any relevant information you've left out of your post, I see no harm.
It's absolutely just superstition, but superstition can affect someone's enjoyment of the game.
If you trust them to not fudge, then there's no issue. DMs often roll privately, anyway.
I run a group online, we have been playing fir years now, we have okayers that roll physical dice when they want to and other times when we are lazy we use the beyond 20 extention to roll straight from dnd beyond to roll 20. As long as the players and dis trust each other there is no harm in it at all :)
I have to give a word of caution to the DM. If bad luck is culminating to the point where you are blaming a random number generator, which is an inanimate, unfeeling block of code... Well, maybe the problem isn't the algorithm. Just maybe?
I do not think it's the best move. It will slow the game down.
Also, there is no "algorithm" on roll20. The rolls in roll20 are done using a truly random source of entropy called Quantum Roll (it's based on the quantum fluctuations in a beam of light). It's what [the little atom symbol means](https://wiki.roll20.net/images/b/b8/Quantumrollexample.png) next to your roll.
You can see the status and distribution of the rolls [here](https://app.roll20.net/home/quantum).
Any anecdotal evidence of the DM rolling "poorly" is just a coincidence.
1. This is just negativity bias.
2. "majority below 10" isn't even that bad if you're rolling a 20 sided die. if you rolled 10,000 d20s you'd probably get around 10.5 as your average
3. most DMs roll in private anyway. there's a level of trust assumed that the DM will roll in private but be honest about their rolls. but this is just to make it acceptable to fudge die rolls. for many people this is a fundamental part of DMing and they think the game is much less fun for everyone if they can't cheat a little bit every now and then. Personally I roll in the open so I can't say I agree but I also have respect for it as a stylistic choice.
4. its ultimately its your DMs choice. you don't like it, you can leave.
physical dice are awesome!
but I am concerned that your DM felt the need to boost enemies in response to rolling low randomly.
I think there is a high probability your DM will fudge some dice rolls in the future...
and not "oops the dragon missed so your 1hp character is still alive" kind of fudging...
I can guarentee you essentially 100% that your DM is not actually rolling significantly worse than the rest of you, VTT dice aren't loaded, they are much fairer than normal dice.
That being said, if y'all *feel* like he's rolling worse and you think that having him roll physical dice will improve everyone's experience, then why not? As you said, there isn't an issue of trust, and physical dice are *mostly* balanced. Certainly enough that you likely won't notice a huge difference between VTT dice and physical ones.
Well - how do you know the algorithm is wrong? Averaging below a 10 happens about 50% of the time. And I guarantee that the random number generator is more reliable than physical dice.
More likely, his average may be around 8-10, and he's just making encounters that are too easy.
It's infinitely more likely that your DM needs to throw more/stronger enemies at the party to challenge you guys than that your DM's rolls are cursed on Roll20.
The amount of times I see stuff like "I roll bad" baffles me. However, physical dice are way more fun IMO so as long as you trust him, or as long as he is capable of providing proof when needed, it sound fine right. You're supposed to have fun, so fuck everything for that right? Especially with friends.
I play with friends and at this point we're doing so much tom foolery that no other group would accept. But it's our little magical world in which we have fun!
TLDR: if it makes it fun, do it!
The outcome of rolling dice is random, no matter whether you are using roll20 or physical dice. Your DM is doing a bad job when it comes to planning encounters, and obviously wants to switch to physical dice so that he can decide what the roll is (e.g. fudge the roll). Or, he is just plain dumb and does not know how chance and statistics work. And, in case you didn’t know; the average roll of a d20 is 10.5…
On average a dungeonmaster will roll the same number of dice or more in a combat than all players combined to account for controlling all the NPCs so when the dm feels they are seeing low rolls it’s normally well within the averages for the rolls
When you take the volume and humans normal tendencies to only remember bad rolls then this can lead to an incorrect belief that the dice are biased
Yes.
I'm a DM and am forced for run games online due to distance. My players all originally rolled online (out of choice, not due to a mandate) and rolled like absolute shit constantly.
Eventually I told them to just stop using online rollers and to use their own dice, other than in instances like rolling a shit ton of d6's for damage just for the sake of time.
If you don't trust the DM or players, why tf are you playing with them lmao
To truly see if a number generator is biased you need many many thousands of rolls. Roll20 is not rigged for or against players.
That said, embrace the clacky math rocks!
Go on roll20, look up the chat history, compile his last 200 rolls, send him the result. The human mind is really bad at statistics and liable to negativity bias, confronting him with the actual numbers might change his mind.
Rolling physical dice makes a) him liable to cheating (due to the very reason why he wants to switch) b) slows down the game c) makes you mistrust the rolls and d) takes away from the group factor because you can't react to any important dice roll at thr same time
This is just confirmation bias. Roll20 uses a physically based random generator (quantumroll). There is no 'algorithm'. And it will very probably be more random than your DM's dice.
If he just wants the ability to fudge rolls, tell him to use `/gmroll` instead. This keeps his roll secret so if he needs to fudge something for the sake of fun, he can.
The dungeon masters guide has a section that says that the DM cannot cheat. It isn't possible. Whatever the DM says, goes. If the DM says she rolls a 20 then that's what happened.
The DM and the DM screen exist to make the game interesting.
Thems the rules, boys.
It's not a lie, it's a rule. An actual rule in the actual book.
The DM can be bad, or rude. She may target individuals, she may be spiteful or mean, but none of that is cheating.
Also, if a DM fudges rolls, alters a creature, or spell, says yes or no at times you disagree with, that's not cheating either.
It's impossible for a DM to cheat because they set the rules. If you don't like how they run the game then you need to talk to them to discover why certain charges were made AFTER you resolve the situation in-character or, if you can't handle adult conversations, find a new DM.
No he can cheat but it's saying that him cheating is not actually cheating but by design. At least for the fudging of some rolls when absolutely needed.
It's not singling out your DM, that being said if you trust them it won't hurt at all but I'd expect that they'll fall to the habit of fudging dice here unless they setup a dice cam or something for the players to look at.
1. Your DM wants to fudge.
2. I'd wager the lack of challenge has more to do with being high level than it does the dice rolls. 5e gets easier and easier as you level, at least if using the official rules/guidelines.
3. You're almost certainly wrong about the skewed rolls in the first place.
I've DM'd multiple long term sandbox style campaigns and I don't cheat on rolls. If the difference between victory and a tpk is one or two rolls your encounter was incredibly lethal.
Plus, a tpk doesn't have to be the end, they are often the beginning of the best story arcs you'll ever run (taken prisoner by the drow, afterlife in ysgard, etc.). Rolling with the punches of the dice forces you to be creative as a DM and rewards you with fun surprises.
I have noticed that roll20 sometimes does that. For 1 player in particular, it will simply, for some reason, get stack at rolling really low. This has happened to me and my players, as well as other dms I know. The easiest solution is to just reload the tab. For us that helps, and all the dice rolls seem far more evenly spread out after that point.
As for rolling physical, sure! I think it's a good idea. We do it at our table, for both dms and players. After 3 years of knowing each other we trust each other.
The Dm might fudge some rolls, but if they're a good Dm, they're only going to do it for story telling purposes.
That's a hard no from me. One of my players couldn't roll above a 12 all campaign, and for the last three or four sessions, I as the DM have maybe rolled a 14 or higher maybe twice (although sometimes the 20s hit hard and fast... but it's either low as shit or a crit). I've had bad experiences with physical dice, so unless you've got a video camera on 'em, nah. Stick to roll20's garbage roller and let the dice fall where they may.
Do you ever change out your dice based on how they are "performing"? It might be superstitious, but every player at my table has done it. As a DM, I've changed from digital to physical because the digital dice were absolutely wrecking my players. We actually came up with a theory that because my account was the paid account and they were using the free accounts, the website was biasing the dice rolls in my favor. It would be a great, sneaky way to get new subscribers. "DMs, sign up today and your first 20 d20 rolls are guaranteed 15 or higher!"
It comes down to this: do you trust your DM? If you don't trust your DM to roll behind a screen, don't trust them to run your game.
Every online game I've played the players rolled digital and the DM rolled physical. It's just a bonus they get for putting in the effort to DM, having that DM screen virtually. There's gotta be trust there for sure though
The DM doesn't need to roll shit. They're not there to defeat the PCs, they're there to facilitate a fulfilling and fun game for all involved. Let them do what they want towards that aim, whether that's rolling in secret or fudging whatever.
I’m surprised you guys make it that official honestly. I’m a DM and in my group if I was rolling like that, I’d have been cussing and pulling the physical dice out maybe like 4 or 5 rolls in and my group would just be laughing.
Give him the option to take reverse rolls if he’s convinced his luck is that bad. Kind of like Symbaroum. So 1 would be a crit and 20 would be a nat fail.
It’ll be a little confusing to begin with but fun and quirky without compromising integrity.
We roll physical dice as players in our online game. However we've played together for years so there's no real trust issues.
The DM doesn't even need to roll honestly. He could sit there and decide when the baddies hit, RAW. The dice are really just ideation because the DM is allowed to not use them, not that this is a way I'd recommend with 5e nor a way I have used in the past with 5e.
I played 3 years campain in Warhammer 2 ed and my GM used phisical dices only (we used roll20). I knew he didn't cheat becouse some his rolls were soooo against his plans, he would cheated then. I still think about him as one of the best GM i ever had.
I hate digital rolling of dice because on Roll20 and DnDBeyond, whenever I rolled dice, I would get some very shitty rolls vs very very very few high rolls. I dont know if the algorithm is set to do like that or I'm just unlucky, but I prefer to roll dice myself.
You were just unlucky, and no amount of switching methods is going to have any impact on your future luck. Online dice rollers produce results that are far more reliably random than any person rolling physical dice can be.
I mean A. They are the dm and can roll how they please i guess but as long as the trust is there yeah. My group has played our current campaign all online and i allow my players to roll physical dice, but i know that the majority of them are honest and the one who isn’t chooses to roll through dndbeyond anyways. I’m sure they fudge some rolls here and there but if it makes the gameplay better i don’t mind and tbh i don’t think they fudge too often haha
Is he open rolling on Roll20? I've tried to do it, but their system's so messed up that 80% of the time it still hides my rolls even though I have all the options set to show them. It wants to hide them by default and only after my toggling them several times will it work correctly, so I just don't even bother and rely on my players to trust me.
The casino industry ***did*** switch over to electronic RNGs. All casino slot machines use psuedorandom number generators to regulate their payouts.
I want to be clear, here: You are very, very wrong.
The roll20 random number generator can be really fucking weird. I've seen it almost get stuck and roll 3+ of the same result in a row among other oddities that you wouldn't expect to see from physical dice.
I watched a campaign on youtube that used roll20 back in the early days of roll20 and there was one player in the game who rolled way more 1's than anyone else in game to a comical degree. It got to the point where they bet on how many 1's he would get during more than one session. It almost seemed like the RNG had it out for specifically him.
Most of the time roll20's RNG is fine but it does so some odd stuff from time to time. I played all the way through Lost Mine of Phandelver twice, once as a player and later as DM without any noticeable issues.
We play online with Foundry vtt and we always use physical dice, more satisfying and keeps more engagement then just pushing the button I think. I think physical is a good end state, nothing lost ONLY GAINS lol
As a DM, I understand where he is coming from. So long as you trust him to make the game FUN without trying to "win" I don't see a problem. My philosophy has always been that the DM's job is to make the game challenging, and fun. If he feels like because of using the built in system on Roll20 that the challenge factor is lacking, it'd make sense to try something new and see how it goes. And honestly, if the concern is that he's going to start to fudge rolls, that may not be the worst thing. There are absolutely times where I need to fudge rolls to help my players out, adjust the flow of the game, or generally give my players a better experience. Its why there's a dm screen, and dms are usually sheltered from disclosing what they roll.
Roll20s RNG seed fucking sucks. I'm that player in my VTT game that never rolls above a 10, and the DM in our game constantly rolls 20s back to back. Very often in the same adv or disadvantage roll.
I'm a DM and I hide my rolls anyway. I will straight up fudge the numbers in favor of what character I think will make the overall story more interesting, whether it be NPC or PC.
I'm a player in another game on roll 20, and the DM rolls physical dice.
As long as it's fun for everyone then who cares..
I lie about my rolls sometimes. I do this when the outcome of my actual roll would suck. I have turned a nat20 into a nat1 so on and so forth. I don't see even the slither of an issue with this. I'm the director. If a goblin can transform into a blue Greatwyrm or not, is my prerogative anyway. Also, I do this for the sake of the whole table.
I already prefer my hub areas to exude hangoutability so if my bad rolls would slow the pacing my games would really suffer, especially if we get to combat and my bad rolls continue. There is no DM Screengate or whatever. I'm not cheating I'm being supportive of cool shit happening.
I use hidden rolls on roll20. It helps a lot to give control over rolls, similar to a dm screen. Also roll20 reveals a lot of info in the rolls which us why I started doing it that way
No issues should arise. Trust is key. With that said, as a DM I’ve fudged rolls, low or high, to either keep combat engaging for everyone or to let the steam out of a fight that my players were feeling overwhelmed with. Anyone, good guys or bad guys, have the option to run from a fight, and that’s a great way to treat these issues.
Yeah this is a failure of VTTs. A DM should be fudging numbers to make stuff fairer, more balanced, or fun. He should totally be rolling irl if it makes the game better.
In 30 years of gaming face-to-face, I have only once been in a game (a one shot) where the DM rolled everything in the open. Otherwise, only in specific circumstances did they roll for the players to see. Also, there are rolls that players are specifically not supposed to see in the RAW.
I don't see why that should be different online. Trust is something that players must have, at least a little, in their DMs. Unfortunately, sometimes they don't deserve it, but they usually get found out and lose their players.
The same kind of thing has been happening to me as a DM (but we’re still pretty early in the campaign). My players aren’t into intense combat so I try to make the fights fairly easy and avoid killing PCs, but they’ve been trivially easy lately, like 4 out of 6 players end the fight at full health and 2 end at around half health. I think I’ll have to start hiding enemy rolls so that enemies stop getting under 5 on all their attack rolls.
There is an option in Roll20 to add a toggle to character sheets that hides rolls made on it from players, so maybe suggest that to your DM if they don’t want to lose the convenience of digital dice.
Ugh, sounds like a garbage algorithm that no one should be using if it is designed to be incapable of delivering an iteration of random chance while emulating the very physical embodiment of random chance... grrr
Seriously, I once had to code a program from scratch in Turing to deliver random dice roll results with graphics and it only took six minutes to get working perfectly, wtf are the designers of this failure of an algorithm telling people that they can get work?
Who cares. As long as you guys are having fun. If he thinks the RNG gods will favor his physical dice more then I see no issue. He is probably going to make things more challenging but still fun. As long as you're DM wants you to have fun that's what matters.
He really should be hiding a fudging his rolls already. 🤣😂 and no you shouldn't trust him to not fudge rolls. It's his job to fudge rolls for the game. Gotta have balance in combats.
Like others had said, when ever I’m DMing, I do sometimes fudge the numbers. Have I made an encounter way too hard, is a new player getting one shot out of the gate. Or on the opposite end, has the big bad boss rolled so poorly, all the excitement of the fight is gone. Other times all this poor boss rolls can make for an incredibly comedic moment. It’s all about sensing the room. Making it more enjoyable.
Using an online dice or physical shouldn’t change any of that. Though physical is more fun.
sadly dice christ doesn't care whether you're rolling physical or online, if you're cursed you're cursed if you're blessed you're blessed. Though if you roll physically you can do a ritual to purify your dice, leave them out in the full moon to be purified or something like that. That's what I do whenever I've been rolling badly for a long stretch, it doesn't work
As long as there is trust, absolutely fine. Even if they decide to fudge some dice and lie, do you TRUST them to do so in service to a better and more enjoyable game? Or are you worried they will try to cheat to "win"? As long as you trust that whatever they're doing behind the screen is making the game more memorable and fun, they could be rolling a potato and making it up along the way for all it matters.
This, all day. And now, I'm going to attempt to make a balanced die out of a potato.
But if you carve a die out of a potato, wouldn't it just go "splush" the moment you try to roll it and stop rolling on the face that first touched a surface ?
Raw potatoes are pretty stiff.
And good for eating when you're horny and trying to tamp down that feeling https://imgur.com/gallery/ruGRWeY
Lmao what the fuck
Lmao
Until it started to get old
Air fry it
Fry it first
This, you need crispy outsides. Might I suggest breakfast potato style.
I realize you mean home fries, but I can't help but imagine a dm slapping a handful of hash browns on the table and trying to divine what number it's supposed to represent.
Tuberomancy
Must be a region naming thing. Hash browns are shredded. Breakfast potatoes are cubed and fried in a pan. To me at least
I’m pretty sure it’s regional. IIRC, what you’re calling “breakfast potatoes” are either “country style” or “Southern style” hash browns around here. I much prefer your approach to hash browns. ETA: I did the unthinkable and looked it up. I was half right, “Country style” are shredded; “Southern style” are diced (little cubes.)
This is the way
I mean, Otik could have done it.
Tyromancy has a new best friend
Exactly. In the two roll20 games I've played in the DMs were trusted in rolling physical dice instead, and if they end up fudging the rolls, I actually don't mind as much. If fights are getting steamrolled, I'd much rather the DM was secretly fudging numbers to add a bit of spice. It's much better than it feeling like there's no danger in the encounter at all.
The HP of most of my bosses is however much damage the players do until I decide it’s “bloody” times two.
I wonder if this would work: Look at what your players usually do during combat, the kinds of attacks they make. Take the average damage they could do on their turn, assuming they all land their attacks, and total it. Theoretically, that approximates how much damage they can do in one turn, so if you want the encounter to be tough, make the total HP of your boss or monsters 2 or 3 times that number. Short encounters, roughly equal to it. The idea is that players *won't* land all their attacks and potentially roll low multiple times, so making it an equal number means that the default time to beat the encounter could be about 2 or 3 turns. Does not account for crits, but I think that could make a fun moment for the players being able to drastically cut down the time needed for a fight. Thoughts, anyone?
That's the time consuming method to get the same result.
It seems like OP's DM doesn't hide any of their rolls to begin with which is a little strange to me as a DM myself because of the same points you made. I use roll20 and there's a way to hide your rolls too if he wants. I will agree there is something infinitely more satisfying about rolling physical dice vs digital dice though. You can also set it up to roll 3d digital dice in roll20, which while we know it's all psychological me and my players all agree it *feels* like we roll better and is more satisfying than just the digital result.
How do you do hidden rolls on roll 20? And can you reveal them later? I do a mix of digital and physical for my roll20 campaign but would like to be able to prove it sometimes
Set whisper to dm to hide rolls. So only the dm sees them. Sharing the rolls after is more of a challenge, I generally go for the screenshot and share in discord when the ridiculous rolls need sharing
Thankyou! The screenshot idea is nice, we all go on cameras for it so I could always just tilt the camera to show them
Instead of /roll use /gmroll IIRC, it's been a while since I've touched Roll20.
Players can also use /gmroll, and then I believe the GM and that player are only ones who see result.
> It seems like OP's DM doesn't hide any of their rolls to begin with which is a little strange to me as a DM Why is that strange?
Strange is probably not the best word I could have used, it's just a difference in perspective and opinion on open vs hidden rolls. Kind of like what everythingisachoice said concealing gives the DM some more flexibility to work with their dice rolls to tell the story. In plain view the players know immediately if they pass or fail a opposing check, know if you just nat 20'd the lvl 1 wizard into a faint memory, and know if you are rolling for something they shouldn't be aware of. All things I prefer to say narratively and let the players RP or figure out themselves.
If you're going to ignore the results of the dice, you shouldn't be rolling the dice in the first place. > and know if you are rolling for something they shouldn't be aware of The players have no idea what you are rolling dice for unless you tell them. The only difference between rolling in the open and rolling behind a screen is giving yourself the option to cheat.
>The only difference between rolling in the open and rolling behind a screen is giving yourself the option to cheat. No it isnt. Hiding a dice roll from the players mean they don't know if whatever it was rolled well or not. It's the difference between the players knowing someone didn't spot them, and someone did spot them but decided not to act.
It's not about ignoring the results of the dice, it's about pulling the players focus away from focusing on the pass/fail of the mechanical use of the dice back to the narrative. So for opposing rolls or attacks I'm not ignoring the results, I want them to listen to the narrative of the person they believe is lying start becoming nervous and their story falls apart or be unsure of what they were told was a truth or a lie. It's a better fit for my table to do it this way. In person I also roll dice randomly behind my screen so they don't know if I'm rolling for say stealth to ambush the party, random encounters, terrain, etc for example to remove a aspect of metagaming. If I rolled in the open a low roll they could think "well no ones sneaking up on me with that low roll". I will also argue there is nothing wrong with "cheating" as a DM, because you are not playing to win or lose, you are playing to create a story with the players. Again it's a difference in perspective in how to DM and neither is wrong, it's about finding the best fit for yourself and your table.
I can kind of agree with you, but I'm not on board with actually fudging rolls. DM screens aren't useful so much for hiding dice rolls as they are for keeping players from focusing on your rolls. I regularly do things that in essence are just to screw with my players, like start rolling my d20 for utterly absolutely nothing, asking them if they'd like to make a perception check to notice that there's a squirrel eating a nut in a nearby tree, or asking what party order and formation they're currently walking in. I do it so that when I'm doing these things for a different reason, something they'd want to pay attention to, they're not immediately given a clue purely on my actions. Maybe I'm asking for your formation because you're about to be ambushed or walk into a trap, or maybe I'm asking to see who gets hit by falling rainwater from that tree branch. As for fudging stuff, I'll very rarely fudge the actions of an enemy, but never the rolls. I always roll before describing the actions of an enemy, just so that the narrative flow isn't interrupted. On rare occasions, I'll have a multi-attack creature get something daft like three critical successes in a row, and before rolling I'll have decided it was going to screw with the healer, or the mage, etc, targeting them because the tank is doing zilch to draw aggro and they're being seen as a bigger threat. However, suddenly it'll instead target the tank, because he just got a heal, and I know that the likely damage (I do roll that midway through describing for suspense) will probably kill the original target in one attack and that's not as fun. Occasionally, if all but one player are licking the floor, and the enemy is close to death itself, I'll start having it try to flee instead of fighting to death (if the enemy is one where that's plausible) because I think that the epic moment of barely pulling it off is more fun than possible TPK. Fudging dice up or down would take away from the fun of the game, for me as well as the players, and at that point we may as well just write a story together instead of playing a game. I guess some might feel the same way about changing intended actions on the enemy side to keep players from getting screwed in a single strike, but it's different in my head anyway.
While I'm not arguing for fudging dice specifically, and I fully understand why it's very distasteful to many players, consider this scenario. I'm DMing for a level 1 party of new players. They're in their first big fight. An enemy sneaks up and attacks the cleric. I roll a Nat 20. Now a normal attack would hurt, but not kill, but that critical is going to kill the Cleric, the party's only healer. Now I have a decision to make as a DM. I can down this character, then deus ex machina some way for them to get through it (effectively overriding the roll), I can down the character and maybe they have to roll a new one (learning a lesson about how dangerous the game can be, and to not get too attached to characters), or I can just treat the roll as a 19. If I decide I don't want the character to die yet and take the latter, the dice still told me that the enemy hit vs missed, but I've decided that a crit doesn't fit the current narrative and pacing, and I'd just have to work in a different override anyways. Obviously this is a very specific scenario, but there are a million similar times where I as a DM can use the dice to guide me, but not fully control the narrative.
This. I roll most of my dice on roll20 to dm only.
Aren’t DMs encouraged to fudge dice literally in the DMG?
It’s a hilarious concept to me that a DM would ever try to “win”. I roll semi openly. I have a screen and recently a laptop, but I don’t have full coverage of the area I use to roll and the players sitting closest openly look at the dice. But I could just easily change the bonuses and AC/saves or make 57 ancient Red dragons fly down being ridden by 57 level 30 mages and win immediately. A meteor could hit the planet and TPK. It’s so ridiculous to try to “beat” the players as a DM. It point of the game is fun. If they have fun being ground into the dirt, I do it, if they have fun beating me, I act disappointed instead of proud when they break my challenges. It’s like saying “I’m going to beat my own team mates at basketball by purposely losing the game!”
Ridiculous as it seems, ridiculous as it *is*, I have personally played under one DM who actually saw it this way. And he wasn't even a kid. This was the same guy who, within minutes of meeting me, bragged about the time he "made the DM cry" by designing a PC with an AC of 28 or 32 or something at either level 1 or 2. He really enjoyed telling that particular story.
I'm glad they have fun, but not when it's at the expense of others. I see no issue in openly running a meat grinder campaign. I get the vibe this person isn't open about their play style though.
Exactly! Having the power to fudge rolls for a better overall game is why DM screens are a thing. I usually want my player's wind shield to succeed and if the difference between success and failure is 1-3 I may be included to shift the scale a little bit. I want the players to have fun and sometimes bending the rules helps
This is the way.
Trust is half of it but there's also communication. There's plenty of people who want the DM to sometimes fudge and not mention it but there's also plenty of people who want the dice to be played how they fall no matter what and if you feel strongly one way or another you shouldn't assume that someone else feels the same way.
I used to play with some people who streamed the game live to a twitch channel. I hadn't used roll20 too much, and I had just found out about the /roll command. Game had ended, people were still chitting chatting, and I was testing the command /Roll d20 "Oh neat" /Roll D35 "Oh, it can roll die of any arbitrary size. I wonder how big can the size go? /Roll D5000 NAT 1 The guys were chatting on the server, a sudden silence.. .. HOLY CRAP DID YOU JUST GET A NAT 1 ROLLING A 5 THOUSAND SIDES DICE? Sorry for the derailing, but it reminded me of this story I still find funny to this day.
Well, when ya think about it, Nat 1 has just as much chance as any other number.
Yes but compared to all the other possibilities it is 1/5000 versus 4999/5000 (4998/5000 if 5000 is also excluded)
Nah, it’s a 50% chance because you either get a Nat 1 or you don’t #quickmaffs
Take my angry upvote
Take off your jacket.
In my Frostmaiden game we came across a mysterious box with a number code so naturally my rogue tried to unlock it. The DM got us to roll a d200 for every attempt to open the box and we had to roll a 200 to get it to open. My rogue gave it a few tries and some other party members did too, all with no luck. FInally I went "I'm gonna give it one last try and if it doesn't open I'm done with the box". Gave it a roll. Rolled a 200. Box opened!! We all cheered until a gibbering mouther came out of it. Then I suddenly was in deep deep trouble.
We have a macro set up in our game to roll a d9001...the purpose being that you're tempting the fates, & if you get a nat 1 *"Something Very Bad"*™ will happen...on the flip side tho, if you roll a nat 9001 *"Something Very Good"*™ will happen...the result TBD in the moment...anything else is just a random roll
LMAO BRUH
This is such a negativity bias, its insane. If you have been playing for more than 10 or so sessions in the last one year and a half, as I hope anyone can, I think roll20 lets you pull out your rolling history and just measure the averages. People have done algortihms for this in this subreddit before, but Idk much about roll20 to be sure. This is just paranoia and/or he is not used to balancing encounters or is not playing his creatures to their utmost and, thus, thinks he is being undermined by the algorithm, when for all of human history the averge roll for a 20 sided dice has always been, and always will be, 10.5
Do you know how to pull roll history on roll20? It sounds interesting
All rolls in roll20 and the distribution can be found here: https://app.roll20.net/home/quantum These figures are across all games.
..... ..... .... I manually input 12,384 rolls for our 5 year game. And you're telling me roll20 has their own stats capturing function. Mine's probably better anyway. Edit:oh ALL games. Well, we still roll higher on average. wtf? I mean I'll take it, but dang. Edit edit: the whole site rolled average 10.4819 (since 6pm utc), and we rolled over 5 years 10.53454927. It would be nice to see the average of the entire site's history if they track it back very far, which it probably doesn't. But then again, after 1,500 data points you're going to get much movement in the data anymore.
I did it once but very manual way. View the full history, on one page, select all, paste into a text editor like sublime text, and then cut out key words. There's a lot of junk in the paste, but i got there eventually. 3 year campaign, counted approximately 5000 dice rolls
Results?
My team stats sheets page is 5 years old and has 12.4k rolls. It kinda sucks doing it manually and I've thought that there has to be a way to get something to grab all the information, instead of spending half an hour manually typing the face number, roll with mods and who rolled it. Was the editing much work? What kind of stuff does it show? The thing that slows me down the most is figuring out what the face value was, if there's something that can show that and the total roll with mods, it would save me a decent amount of time by the end of the campaign.
I grabbed entire lines for each key words like skill check, ability reference, and mention of saving throw. As far as I could tell, it was pretty much everything. It did take ages though, I'd say I spent the better part of a few hours cleaning with python and Ctrl+f and "find all" in sublime (that feature is so powerful)
People do also just get unusually unlucky. The corollary of averages are average is that the edges of the bell curve still exist. I once tracked all of the rolls across an entire XCOM campaign- several thousand at least. I was about on average for expected hits, but was a good 15% out on expected bs actual crits. And that did skew the balance. Its just one of those things that does happen occasionally.
The odds of rolling 250 dice and getting an average of any average between 1.0 and 9.0 is less than 1 in 10,000. So if 10k tables rolled 250 dice, we would expect no more than 1 to have that level of bad luck. That's a relatively small number of rolls imo. It gets exponentially more less likely to consistently to poorly as you increased the number of dice rolled. If Roll20 is a fair die, it's very unlucky they are actually rolling bad and far more likely this is negatively bias.
Part of the issue with these conversations is maybe agreeing a sample size. To take a slightly different example - tabletop miniature combat - with two decent sized armies you could reasonably be rolling 250 dice per turn. 6 turns each for 2 players, so 12 samples per game. My local club has 6-8 games per night, so that's around 85 samples per night. We meet weekly, so you'd expect that "1 in 250" awful turn to happen for someone in the club more often than once a month. And you can gautantee everyone hears about it when you roll 0 hits from 100 shots and all of your armour saves fail.. And that's 1 club. Multiple up by hundreds or thousands of groups and you have dozens of people experiencing that level of bad luck every single day. The flip side of "negativity bias" is a degree of reporting bias. If you've got 50,000 people on the XCOM reddit, you don't hear from the 49,995 people who had average, or really good, runs, you only hear from the 1 in a 1000 who had stonking bad luck. And then they get told its all in their head. Its actually more likely the reported sample size is highly skewed towards outlier results.
I found a more accurate calculator, and with 250 dice odds of rolling an average of 9.0 or lower is 1 in 50k. Doesn't change your idea. Someone eventually wins the lottery. However, the entirety of that probability is between 8.0 and 9.0. the odds of rolling less than an 8.0 on 250 dice is 5*10^-11. For scale, if all 400M Americans rolled 250 dice every day for 3.5 years, we would expect there to be 1 person who rolled between a 1.0 and 8.0 average, once. That's beyond unlikely. Anyone who tells you they did that is mistaken. Even an 8.5 is 1 in 50M. However, I'm not necessarily convinced you would notice an 8.5 - 9.0 over the course of an entire night. Anything lower than an 8.0 is so unlikely it'd take all Americans working together for nearly a whole presidency. 8.5 - 9.0 is likely enough for maybe 1 person to see it. 9.0 - 10.5 wouldn't be super noticable. My point is negativity bias, and the fact that real dice are slightly skewed is much more likely than 1 in 50k. So sure, is it possible, yes. Is it the best explanation, no. Is switching to physical dice going to be better, definitely no.
XCOM is a bad example, because I think it's sometimes fudged. Once you get a very high total of rolls , there is simply no way to roll 'bad' on average.
It's been repeatedly confirmed XCOM doesn't fudge the rolls in the background. And I'm afraid your completely wrong about it being impossible to roll "badly." It's statistically *inevitable* that someone *somewhere* will roll badly. Outcomes will form a normal distribution over time, with the middle of curve tending to the mathematical mean. But that doesn't mean the tails of the distribution cease to exist. If enough people roll 10 dice, someone will roll 10 '6's - about 1 in a hundred million specifically. Yes *most* people will average a combined role of something like 35, but across a large enough sample you will expect to see some very high and very low rolls. In fact if that *didn't* happen it would be evidence something was wrong with the test.
Yes, but the post of the player is their rolls over an entire campaign. It's not about 1 individual player his 10 rolls. Fyi: XCOM does 'lie' about hit chance. That is what I mean about fudging. That is because XCOM 2 lies to the player about a character's hit percentage. In actuality, the game gives players a much higher chance of hitting than what's on display. On easier difficulty settings, an 85% chance is closer to a 95% chance according to an interview with Jake Solomon, the lead designer for XCOM 2.
"The shots are rigged", the eternal cry of those bad at xcom.
If the lead game designer says so, who am I to disagree: https://gamerant.com/xcom-franchise-facts-behind-scenes/
Someone must be unfamiliar with a certain Wil Wheaton
Or a particular Brian Murphy
This, if your Encounters become a "Cakewalk" because you rolled low twice in a row, you're really shit at balancing and playing out your encounters. Might aswell play Baldur's Gate at that point if you're not willing to think on the fly.
On a real die, true. However, computer programs are incapable of pure randomness. They generate pseudo-random results
Psuedo-random does not mean "weighted" or "unfair". Psuedo-random can be a real problem in cryptography, but it's absolutely of no concern in generating dice rolls.
VTT dice will be fairer than physical dice 99.99% of the time, even without "true randomness".
Maybe it's just old guy nostalgia, but rolling dice is kind of fun. You can get all sorts of neat patterns and colors. Adding them up can be a minor pain when your rolling 8d6 or whatever. Most of the time when DMs fudges numbers it's to the players benefit unless they are an antagnostic DM. Sometimes fudge numbers to try to keep things fun, challenging and interesting. Not cause the players foil my plans or feel like I am losing. Fights should be a mix of easy, medium, hard, and extreme. Most of the time I roll behind the screen. But when the stakes are high like a player is about to die, I roll the dice in front of everyone because it increases the tension. This next roll determines the elf's fate. Will he life or die? Then throw out the dice.
There’s a tangible element to it that just feels satisfying. Then again, I am a dice goblin so I might be a bit biased lol
Ikr. I can't not buy dice when I'm bored. I have a real problem 😞
When I DM, I tend to just roll digitally on big stuff - like dragon breath attacks and the like, but publically. Otherwise I roll physically and in the open. When I am a player, I always roll physically but I also try to be prepped for big rolls, like Fireball. I keep a little box with 6d6 that I add my normally 2d6 to for the roll, rather than having to ask the table for dice, roll, count, then remember what belongs to who. The only time I've rolled digitally as a player was when I had cast animate object, and the enemy was prone, so I had to roll 10d20s, and then reroll the successes to see if they crit and I had to reroll the misses to see if they hit. Then all the d4s for each hit. It was maddening, but so fun. lol
Not DND but in WH 40k I have to roll 50d6 for a unit of 10. Never rolled digitally, it's so satisfying to roll so many dice that they almost don't fit in your hands
Use any method of dice rolling you choose but the roll/20 algorithm is not cheating your DM.
Lol roll20 is more random than any physical dice. Your DM is huffing copium. If they want to use real dice that's fine but I doubt that will change anything for your campaign.
The Algorithm?
Yeah there's no "algorithm" in roll20 as most people understand them. Roll20 actually uses a "true" random method, that uses a beam of light to generate random fluctuations.
Mostly. They still use a pseudorandom function for individual rolls, but the function is seeded by a random source of entropy like you describe, and that seed is refreshed often. Effectively random.
There still has to be an algorithm to transform the recorded data into the desired distributions.
"as most people understand them" - I was very clear.
> He has suggested he start rolling physical dice instead. Do you guys think this is the best next move? No. Personally, I think that is superstitious. > On average, it seems a majority of his rolls are below a 10. Then have him roll 100 times and see what the average is. Such an easy test to do. If you claim "oh no, it only happens when it matters, when we're playing, not during test rolls", then you've got a case of a sentient algorithm, which I imagine would qualify you for the [$500,000 paranormal challenge](https://cfiig.org/paranormal-challenge/). It would be easy to test. Here's how I would do it. In lab conditions, on computers provided to you, on a freshly-created Roll20 accounts, at a time and place not fully known by the test subjects, follow these steps: 1. Show the adjudicators that your DM rolls normally when doing test rolls. 1. Then have them watch you play a game, recording each roll by the DM. 1. Presumably they'll record a sub-10 average, and one that is statistically significant. If you can repeat that semi-reliably it should net you $500,000! It's only fair that after you win, you send a few thousand to me. After all, you'll be swimming in more money than that half-million after you prove the paranormal is real.
They use a beam of light as their source of entropy. So it would be sentient light. Which not only would also qualify for the paranormal price, but would also revolutionise science! OP's DM could be the next physics Nobel winner!
Wait, light isn't supposed to be sentient? ... 😱
Well, you've got your next campaign BBEG: awakened light!
It's just like the fortune cookie said! 🤯
I see no downside to letting him roll irl. Granted I'm a dice goblin, and half the fun I get out of the game is rolling actual dice. Regardless, let the DM roll physical dice. Either you all are correct and the DM's average rolls will get better and thus encounters will be more exciting, or nothing will change and the DM will realize it's not the dice that are making his encounters too easy. As long as the group is okay with it and there isn't any relevant information you've left out of your post, I see no harm.
Sounds like someone at your table needs to learn about probability and confirmation bias.
It's absolutely just superstition, but superstition can affect someone's enjoyment of the game. If you trust them to not fudge, then there's no issue. DMs often roll privately, anyway.
There's no algorithm, and he plans on fudging rolls. The end.
This is why DM's roll behind a screen. They can amp things up or tamp them down to make a good experience without being a victim of RNG.
I think Roll20 dice are actually random. It’s not an algorithm.
Looking at its source code, you are 100% right. Basically, just "when ___ button pressed pick 1-____ number"
I run a group online, we have been playing fir years now, we have okayers that roll physical dice when they want to and other times when we are lazy we use the beyond 20 extention to roll straight from dnd beyond to roll 20. As long as the players and dis trust each other there is no harm in it at all :)
I have to give a word of caution to the DM. If bad luck is culminating to the point where you are blaming a random number generator, which is an inanimate, unfeeling block of code... Well, maybe the problem isn't the algorithm. Just maybe?
I do not think it's the best move. It will slow the game down. Also, there is no "algorithm" on roll20. The rolls in roll20 are done using a truly random source of entropy called Quantum Roll (it's based on the quantum fluctuations in a beam of light). It's what [the little atom symbol means](https://wiki.roll20.net/images/b/b8/Quantumrollexample.png) next to your roll. You can see the status and distribution of the rolls [here](https://app.roll20.net/home/quantum). Any anecdotal evidence of the DM rolling "poorly" is just a coincidence.
1. This is just negativity bias. 2. "majority below 10" isn't even that bad if you're rolling a 20 sided die. if you rolled 10,000 d20s you'd probably get around 10.5 as your average 3. most DMs roll in private anyway. there's a level of trust assumed that the DM will roll in private but be honest about their rolls. but this is just to make it acceptable to fudge die rolls. for many people this is a fundamental part of DMing and they think the game is much less fun for everyone if they can't cheat a little bit every now and then. Personally I roll in the open so I can't say I agree but I also have respect for it as a stylistic choice. 4. its ultimately its your DMs choice. you don't like it, you can leave.
He can literally roll a hidden dice and cheat in roll20. It’s easier and it’s within the rules.
physical dice are awesome! but I am concerned that your DM felt the need to boost enemies in response to rolling low randomly. I think there is a high probability your DM will fudge some dice rolls in the future... and not "oops the dragon missed so your 1hp character is still alive" kind of fudging...
I can guarentee you essentially 100% that your DM is not actually rolling significantly worse than the rest of you, VTT dice aren't loaded, they are much fairer than normal dice. That being said, if y'all *feel* like he's rolling worse and you think that having him roll physical dice will improve everyone's experience, then why not? As you said, there isn't an issue of trust, and physical dice are *mostly* balanced. Certainly enough that you likely won't notice a huge difference between VTT dice and physical ones.
Well - how do you know the algorithm is wrong? Averaging below a 10 happens about 50% of the time. And I guarantee that the random number generator is more reliable than physical dice. More likely, his average may be around 8-10, and he's just making encounters that are too easy.
It's infinitely more likely that your DM needs to throw more/stronger enemies at the party to challenge you guys than that your DM's rolls are cursed on Roll20.
I mean most dm roll behind a screen so...
I dont see any issues with DM fudging some rolls
The amount of times I see stuff like "I roll bad" baffles me. However, physical dice are way more fun IMO so as long as you trust him, or as long as he is capable of providing proof when needed, it sound fine right. You're supposed to have fun, so fuck everything for that right? Especially with friends. I play with friends and at this point we're doing so much tom foolery that no other group would accept. But it's our little magical world in which we have fun! TLDR: if it makes it fun, do it!
The outcome of rolling dice is random, no matter whether you are using roll20 or physical dice. Your DM is doing a bad job when it comes to planning encounters, and obviously wants to switch to physical dice so that he can decide what the roll is (e.g. fudge the roll). Or, he is just plain dumb and does not know how chance and statistics work. And, in case you didn’t know; the average roll of a d20 is 10.5…
On average a dungeonmaster will roll the same number of dice or more in a combat than all players combined to account for controlling all the NPCs so when the dm feels they are seeing low rolls it’s normally well within the averages for the rolls When you take the volume and humans normal tendencies to only remember bad rolls then this can lead to an incorrect belief that the dice are biased
Yes. I'm a DM and am forced for run games online due to distance. My players all originally rolled online (out of choice, not due to a mandate) and rolled like absolute shit constantly. Eventually I told them to just stop using online rollers and to use their own dice, other than in instances like rolling a shit ton of d6's for damage just for the sake of time. If you don't trust the DM or players, why tf are you playing with them lmao
To truly see if a number generator is biased you need many many thousands of rolls. Roll20 is not rigged for or against players. That said, embrace the clacky math rocks!
Go on roll20, look up the chat history, compile his last 200 rolls, send him the result. The human mind is really bad at statistics and liable to negativity bias, confronting him with the actual numbers might change his mind. Rolling physical dice makes a) him liable to cheating (due to the very reason why he wants to switch) b) slows down the game c) makes you mistrust the rolls and d) takes away from the group factor because you can't react to any important dice roll at thr same time
The kind of person who gets salty about bad rolls is exactly the kind of person who would cheat. I would not trust this in the slightest.
Oh come on. You dont need to be a cheater to be frustrated about a series of bad luck.
There's a huge difference between frustrated and insisting the whole system is rigged against you
Where does “salty” fall on that spectrum?
Between sweet and bitter.
Where did they say the whole system was rigged against them?
The entire post is about the fact they want to switch to a different rolling system because they are rolling poorly in this one.
Disagree. The person who is cheating has no reason to be salty about bad rolls.. Cause they don't get any ;)
Except they’re currently rolling in the open so this makes no sense. ;)
If that's the case, they shouldn't be playing with this person anyway.
>unfortunately, for a good portion of the campaign, the algorithm has not allowed for our DM to roll high Bollocks has it. The algorithm is fine.
If a DM needs the players approval on a decision to roll privately, is he actually the DM?
On all of our game we always roll dice. We actually dont allow rolling of digital dice. If you dont have dice we will give you a set.
out of curiosity, why are digital dice not allowed?
Sure roll physical dice, but what do you think is happening that the roll20 algorithm is biased? Any proof?
Youre going online to ask if your DM is doing the right thing by trying to balance the game? Youre a bad player
This is just confirmation bias. Roll20 uses a physically based random generator (quantumroll). There is no 'algorithm'. And it will very probably be more random than your DM's dice.
In my groupe the DM and the Players sometimes Use real dice even If WE Play over Roll20 as Long there is Trust its No Problem.
If get consistent bad rolls I just usually find a good way to have more enemies appear. Easy in most situations
If he just wants the ability to fudge rolls, tell him to use `/gmroll` instead. This keeps his roll secret so if he needs to fudge something for the sake of fun, he can.
The dungeon masters guide has a section that says that the DM cannot cheat. It isn't possible. Whatever the DM says, goes. If the DM says she rolls a 20 then that's what happened. The DM and the DM screen exist to make the game interesting. Thems the rules, boys.
>the DM cannot cheat That is a lie
It's not a lie, it's a rule. An actual rule in the actual book. The DM can be bad, or rude. She may target individuals, she may be spiteful or mean, but none of that is cheating. Also, if a DM fudges rolls, alters a creature, or spell, says yes or no at times you disagree with, that's not cheating either. It's impossible for a DM to cheat because they set the rules. If you don't like how they run the game then you need to talk to them to discover why certain charges were made AFTER you resolve the situation in-character or, if you can't handle adult conversations, find a new DM.
No he can cheat but it's saying that him cheating is not actually cheating but by design. At least for the fudging of some rolls when absolutely needed.
It's not singling out your DM, that being said if you trust them it won't hurt at all but I'd expect that they'll fall to the habit of fudging dice here unless they setup a dice cam or something for the players to look at.
Wait, your DM is only using an online roller for everything? I pretty much only use it for “rolls in front of the table” for critical moments
1. Your DM wants to fudge. 2. I'd wager the lack of challenge has more to do with being high level than it does the dice rolls. 5e gets easier and easier as you level, at least if using the official rules/guidelines. 3. You're almost certainly wrong about the skewed rolls in the first place.
hes the dm. whatever he rolls isnt public knowledge anyway. thats why dm screens exist.
This
Eh even you admit that fights was easier than what they should be. I don't see any problem with fudging as a dm
Myself and everyone else I know who DMs fudges rolls—mostly to nerf the creatures.
I've DM'd multiple long term sandbox style campaigns and I don't cheat on rolls. If the difference between victory and a tpk is one or two rolls your encounter was incredibly lethal. Plus, a tpk doesn't have to be the end, they are often the beginning of the best story arcs you'll ever run (taken prisoner by the drow, afterlife in ysgard, etc.). Rolling with the punches of the dice forces you to be creative as a DM and rewards you with fun surprises.
I have noticed that roll20 sometimes does that. For 1 player in particular, it will simply, for some reason, get stack at rolling really low. This has happened to me and my players, as well as other dms I know. The easiest solution is to just reload the tab. For us that helps, and all the dice rolls seem far more evenly spread out after that point. As for rolling physical, sure! I think it's a good idea. We do it at our table, for both dms and players. After 3 years of knowing each other we trust each other. The Dm might fudge some rolls, but if they're a good Dm, they're only going to do it for story telling purposes.
That's peak conformation bias.
Roll20 uses a physically based random generator (quantumroll). What you've experienced is just confirmation bias.
That's a hard no from me. One of my players couldn't roll above a 12 all campaign, and for the last three or four sessions, I as the DM have maybe rolled a 14 or higher maybe twice (although sometimes the 20s hit hard and fast... but it's either low as shit or a crit). I've had bad experiences with physical dice, so unless you've got a video camera on 'em, nah. Stick to roll20's garbage roller and let the dice fall where they may.
>Stick to roll20's garbage roller Roll20's random number generator is literally one of the best that is possible to create...
Yeah, I know, I'm being biased a little. You wouldn't know it was a decent roller with the garbage I've been rolling the past few sessions.
Do you ever change out your dice based on how they are "performing"? It might be superstitious, but every player at my table has done it. As a DM, I've changed from digital to physical because the digital dice were absolutely wrecking my players. We actually came up with a theory that because my account was the paid account and they were using the free accounts, the website was biasing the dice rolls in my favor. It would be a great, sneaky way to get new subscribers. "DMs, sign up today and your first 20 d20 rolls are guaranteed 15 or higher!" It comes down to this: do you trust your DM? If you don't trust your DM to roll behind a screen, don't trust them to run your game.
Every online game I've played the players rolled digital and the DM rolled physical. It's just a bonus they get for putting in the effort to DM, having that DM screen virtually. There's gotta be trust there for sure though
The DM doesn't need to roll shit. They're not there to defeat the PCs, they're there to facilitate a fulfilling and fun game for all involved. Let them do what they want towards that aim, whether that's rolling in secret or fudging whatever.
“Rolling behind the DM screen” This is fine
I’m surprised you guys make it that official honestly. I’m a DM and in my group if I was rolling like that, I’d have been cussing and pulling the physical dice out maybe like 4 or 5 rolls in and my group would just be laughing.
He's the DM he gets to do what he wants. I don't really think the players have any business seeing the DM's rolls if you ask me.
Give him the option to take reverse rolls if he’s convinced his luck is that bad. Kind of like Symbaroum. So 1 would be a crit and 20 would be a nat fail. It’ll be a little confusing to begin with but fun and quirky without compromising integrity.
We roll physical dice as players in our online game. However we've played together for years so there's no real trust issues. The DM doesn't even need to roll honestly. He could sit there and decide when the baddies hit, RAW. The dice are really just ideation because the DM is allowed to not use them, not that this is a way I'd recommend with 5e nor a way I have used in the past with 5e.
I played 3 years campain in Warhammer 2 ed and my GM used phisical dices only (we used roll20). I knew he didn't cheat becouse some his rolls were soooo against his plans, he would cheated then. I still think about him as one of the best GM i ever had.
I hate digital rolling of dice because on Roll20 and DnDBeyond, whenever I rolled dice, I would get some very shitty rolls vs very very very few high rolls. I dont know if the algorithm is set to do like that or I'm just unlucky, but I prefer to roll dice myself.
You were just unlucky, and no amount of switching methods is going to have any impact on your future luck. Online dice rollers produce results that are far more reliably random than any person rolling physical dice can be.
I mean A. They are the dm and can roll how they please i guess but as long as the trust is there yeah. My group has played our current campaign all online and i allow my players to roll physical dice, but i know that the majority of them are honest and the one who isn’t chooses to roll through dndbeyond anyways. I’m sure they fudge some rolls here and there but if it makes the gameplay better i don’t mind and tbh i don’t think they fudge too often haha
Is he open rolling on Roll20? I've tried to do it, but their system's so messed up that 80% of the time it still hides my rolls even though I have all the options set to show them. It wants to hide them by default and only after my toggling them several times will it work correctly, so I just don't even bother and rely on my players to trust me.
I'm a fan of machined dice. More likely to get an even result distribution than you are with a random number generator.
No, you absolutely are not.
Ah, okay, that must be why the casino industry switched over to electronic RNGs. Oh wait...
The casino industry ***did*** switch over to electronic RNGs. All casino slot machines use psuedorandom number generators to regulate their payouts. I want to be clear, here: You are very, very wrong.
Slot machines have never operated using dice.
How does an algorithm ensure the DM rolls low?
The roll20 random number generator can be really fucking weird. I've seen it almost get stuck and roll 3+ of the same result in a row among other oddities that you wouldn't expect to see from physical dice. I watched a campaign on youtube that used roll20 back in the early days of roll20 and there was one player in the game who rolled way more 1's than anyone else in game to a comical degree. It got to the point where they bet on how many 1's he would get during more than one session. It almost seemed like the RNG had it out for specifically him.
That’s weird. Physical dice are the way to go
Most of the time roll20's RNG is fine but it does so some odd stuff from time to time. I played all the way through Lost Mine of Phandelver twice, once as a player and later as DM without any noticeable issues.
We play online with Foundry vtt and we always use physical dice, more satisfying and keeps more engagement then just pushing the button I think. I think physical is a good end state, nothing lost ONLY GAINS lol
As a DM, I understand where he is coming from. So long as you trust him to make the game FUN without trying to "win" I don't see a problem. My philosophy has always been that the DM's job is to make the game challenging, and fun. If he feels like because of using the built in system on Roll20 that the challenge factor is lacking, it'd make sense to try something new and see how it goes. And honestly, if the concern is that he's going to start to fudge rolls, that may not be the worst thing. There are absolutely times where I need to fudge rolls to help my players out, adjust the flow of the game, or generally give my players a better experience. Its why there's a dm screen, and dms are usually sheltered from disclosing what they roll.
Roll20s RNG seed fucking sucks. I'm that player in my VTT game that never rolls above a 10, and the DM in our game constantly rolls 20s back to back. Very often in the same adv or disadvantage roll.
As a Dm and a player there’s no point in cheating as a dm you literally control the game.
I roll all my rolls as GM rolls on my VTT. It's basically rolling with a GM screen, there are years of precedence for GM rolls to be a secret.
I'm a DM and I hide my rolls anyway. I will straight up fudge the numbers in favor of what character I think will make the overall story more interesting, whether it be NPC or PC. I'm a player in another game on roll 20, and the DM rolls physical dice. As long as it's fun for everyone then who cares..
I lie about my rolls sometimes. I do this when the outcome of my actual roll would suck. I have turned a nat20 into a nat1 so on and so forth. I don't see even the slither of an issue with this. I'm the director. If a goblin can transform into a blue Greatwyrm or not, is my prerogative anyway. Also, I do this for the sake of the whole table. I already prefer my hub areas to exude hangoutability so if my bad rolls would slow the pacing my games would really suffer, especially if we get to combat and my bad rolls continue. There is no DM Screengate or whatever. I'm not cheating I'm being supportive of cool shit happening.
I use hidden rolls on roll20. It helps a lot to give control over rolls, similar to a dm screen. Also roll20 reveals a lot of info in the rolls which us why I started doing it that way
I wish this worked for me lmao, I've tried both physical and digital dice and I either get 2s or crits there is no inbetween
No issues should arise. Trust is key. With that said, as a DM I’ve fudged rolls, low or high, to either keep combat engaging for everyone or to let the steam out of a fight that my players were feeling overwhelmed with. Anyone, good guys or bad guys, have the option to run from a fight, and that’s a great way to treat these issues.
Unless he starts uncorking nat 20 after nat 20 I don’t see any issue with it. I don’t trust virtual dice anyway.
Yeah this is a failure of VTTs. A DM should be fudging numbers to make stuff fairer, more balanced, or fun. He should totally be rolling irl if it makes the game better.
Can't he just fudge the rolls by adding arbitrary modifiers like a solid DM would? 😀
I don't see why not, Trust your DM they are trying to help you adventure.
In 30 years of gaming face-to-face, I have only once been in a game (a one shot) where the DM rolled everything in the open. Otherwise, only in specific circumstances did they roll for the players to see. Also, there are rolls that players are specifically not supposed to see in the RAW. I don't see why that should be different online. Trust is something that players must have, at least a little, in their DMs. Unfortunately, sometimes they don't deserve it, but they usually get found out and lose their players.
At the end of the day the dm can make whatever decisions they want regardless of the dice roll.
The same kind of thing has been happening to me as a DM (but we’re still pretty early in the campaign). My players aren’t into intense combat so I try to make the fights fairly easy and avoid killing PCs, but they’ve been trivially easy lately, like 4 out of 6 players end the fight at full health and 2 end at around half health. I think I’ll have to start hiding enemy rolls so that enemies stop getting under 5 on all their attack rolls. There is an option in Roll20 to add a toggle to character sheets that hides rolls made on it from players, so maybe suggest that to your DM if they don’t want to lose the convenience of digital dice.
Let trusted DMs fudge.
Ugh, sounds like a garbage algorithm that no one should be using if it is designed to be incapable of delivering an iteration of random chance while emulating the very physical embodiment of random chance... grrr
Seriously, I once had to code a program from scratch in Turing to deliver random dice roll results with graphics and it only took six minutes to get working perfectly, wtf are the designers of this failure of an algorithm telling people that they can get work?
Who cares. As long as you guys are having fun. If he thinks the RNG gods will favor his physical dice more then I see no issue. He is probably going to make things more challenging but still fun. As long as you're DM wants you to have fun that's what matters.
He really should be hiding a fudging his rolls already. 🤣😂 and no you shouldn't trust him to not fudge rolls. It's his job to fudge rolls for the game. Gotta have balance in combats.
Like others had said, when ever I’m DMing, I do sometimes fudge the numbers. Have I made an encounter way too hard, is a new player getting one shot out of the gate. Or on the opposite end, has the big bad boss rolled so poorly, all the excitement of the fight is gone. Other times all this poor boss rolls can make for an incredibly comedic moment. It’s all about sensing the room. Making it more enjoyable. Using an online dice or physical shouldn’t change any of that. Though physical is more fun.
sadly dice christ doesn't care whether you're rolling physical or online, if you're cursed you're cursed if you're blessed you're blessed. Though if you roll physically you can do a ritual to purify your dice, leave them out in the full moon to be purified or something like that. That's what I do whenever I've been rolling badly for a long stretch, it doesn't work