3028: D&D Roll

D&D Roll

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Title text: Under some circumstances, if you throw a D8 and then a D12 at an enemy, thanks to the D8's greater pointiness you actually have to roll a D12 and D8 respectively to determine damage.

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Explanation

This is one of 52 incomplete explanations: Created by a D20 FORGED IN THE CAVES OF A BOT. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

This comic is a scene from a tabletop roleplaying game, probably Dungeons & Dragons. In 3015: D&D Combinatorics, the same people, Cueball, Megan, Ponytail, White Hat and Knit Cap, are seated playing D&D in the same seats, where Cueball seems to represent Randall.

Here Cueball announces "I roll D20... 18," referring to rolling a 20-sided die and getting the relatively high score of 18, presumably while in a fight with a kobold (a small reptilian humanoid creature in D&D.) The Dungeon Master, Ponytail, responds that the kobold is unaffected, but humorously suggests using a sword instead, pointing out the absurdity of trying to defeat an enemy by rolling dice at them. (Ponytail was also the gamemaster in the previous D&D comic).

Cueball made the mistake of assuming that Ponytail would understand which of his weapons or other melee attacks he intended to use, but she had no way of knowing that, so she decided to gently tease him about the omission. This is a common mistake, and being gently made fun of is a common result. The player will usually be allowed to state the specific attack intended and roll again.^{[citation needed]} Alternately, many DM's take umbrage at a player's presuming to roll dice for actions before being asked to, and this could be interpreted as a chiding. This is because rolls are not necessary in cases where success is automatic (the kobold is effectively helpless), or impossible (the kobold is magically immune to physical attacks)

However, the possibility exists that the players' characters have actual dice, such as those which were role-played as being produced in 244: Tabletop Roleplaying. The title text suggests that if you literally threw dice as weapons, an eight-sided die (D8) would do more damage than a twelve-sided die (D12) because of its pointier shape, so ironically, you might need to roll the D12 to determine the D8's damage and vice versa, in "some circumstances."

Background

When you make an attacking play, a character might be equipped with a particularly obvious weapon, i.e. they only have a sword, and so the unspoken suggestion is that you wish to attack them with your sword (in the only, or most obvious, way; assuming the game also doesn't distinguish differences between different acts such as slashing, piercing, etc). But a character might have a choice, such as to throw (or stab, or slash) a dagger or, as a magic user, to cast a given offensive spell (and may have access to fireballs, blasts of ice). It may be important to know which attack is being tried against which enemy, as one that is impervious to iron or particularly susceptible to blunt trauma (whether or not the player knows this, yet) might need a player to be more specific. Assuming the choice of a D20 is not enough information (the smaller, but in this case more useful, "Icepick of Instant Kobold Death" could require a simpler 4 on a D4 to make its paralysing blow), you might have to say "I draw my elvish serrated iron sword and slash downward upon the kobold in the leather thong <rolls a D20>... 18!", or as much of that as you need to make clear that you're not trying to attack the kobold wearing full plate-steel with a jab of the orcish wooden staff.

By D&D 5.0 rules, a stone hurled from a sling does 1d4 bludgeoning damage. A sling bullet typically weighs ³/₄₀ pound (1.2 oz, 35 g), a plausible weight for a normal-sized die made of a moderately dense material. Presumably, an object of similar weight that's thrown "by hand" rather than with a sling would do less damage, though a heavier object might do similar damage (albeit with less range). The D&D 3.5 spell Magic Stone enhances ordinary small stones so they do 1d6+1 damage when hurled, or 2d6+2 when striking undead creatures. Apparently, thrown dice do significantly more damage than mere stones, in the xkcd universe.

Transcript

[Cueball, Megan, Ponytail, White Hat, and Knit Cap are sitting around a table in a tabletop gaming session. Both Cueball and Knit Cap are sitting in office chairs at the ends of the table, with Cueball leaning forward and holding his hand above the table and Knit Cap leaning back on her arm. Behind the table, Megan sits to the left of Ponytail and White Hat to the right. They are both looking at Ponytail, while Ponytail is looking at Cueball. Objects such as dice, miniatures, a map, and papers are on the table.]

Cueball: I roll D20... 18.

Ponytail: The kobold is unaffected.

Ponytail: Honestly, I don't know why you thought dice would help. You should probably try a sword or something instead.

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Discussion

Dice comic. 172.69.22.181 04:09, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

And in a pinch, d4s can be used as caltrops. --172.71.147.210 05:22, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

I am willing to bet good money that every D&D comic that features the game's name inside the title will either break the RSS Feed or User:TheusafBOT. 42.book.addict^{Talk to me!} 10:17, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

Ah, that's why we never got a good explanation about the one with the D&D players dialling in over AT&T to roleplay S&M sessions while eating M&Ms and drinking A&W. 172.70.90.4 13:22, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

Is this the same issue that causes the page title to be rendered as "D Roll"? Angel (talk) 08:50, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

Probably? 42.book.addict^{Talk to me!} 21:50, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

If the D20 is large enough (>30 cm?) and its full volume is made of a heavy metal or alloy, like iron, steel or gold, one can just use it as a "blunt weapon" (that is, the weight is used against the enemy). 172.70.39.208 17:01, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

30cm would be way too heavy to use as a blunt weapon. A 30cm d20 made of iron would weigh some 107 kilograms, and a golden one would be almost 270. Though I have thought for a while that a cube with a handle plugged into one corner would be a cool and effective shape for a mace head. 172.68.23.135 01:14, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Second XKCD on D&D in a few months... I think some cartoonish picked up a new hobby recently. Ralfoide (talk) 18:25, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

Should have used the d65536. DL Draco Rex (talk) 19:55, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

Someone added the "chide the player for being presumptious" idea, which I corrected/added to a little (wondering if it should go into the Background section, to not clog up the basic Explanation). But just to note that 'local rules' that we always used to use were to allow 'presumptive' rolls to be made, to speed up gameplay. If the DM/GM/whoever needed more/different/other rolls to be made, they could ask for them (or, sometimes, just ask for them anyway, I think, to maintain the 'mysteries of the game' — "You enter an apparently empty room, roll 6D6... nothing happens! And now a D4... still nothing happens!"). Though with two caveats: No rolling then deciding the action to declare for it (e.g.: rolled high, tried stupidly damaging move; rolled lower, suggested an easier dodge) and even 'wasted' dice could then be used by the GM/DM (on a whim) if they rolled either extreme of critical. This led to the occasional 'speculative' rolling (without obvious purpose) that might lead to tripping over some discarded minor-artifact or a light-sleeping enemy, etc, just to mix things up a bit. Though it's all down to the one running the game, and you never really know if they're even 'accurately' interpreting the valid roles you do know about, if they're good enough story-tellers with a decent sense of how to make a mission not seem like it's quite so much on-the-rails as they planned it to be all along... I suspect that there are as many opinions about this as there are editors here, however. If not more, given that many of us have acted under multiple different playing situations, and perhaps even from both sides of the Dice Screen. (I'm not even sure I've ever played raw, vanilla D&D, for example, and couldn't even tell you which Edition I've most played. Plus all the other things like Star Wars (only ever the original D6 version), Babylon 5 and others for which I'm not even sure of their canon-base.) So, yeah, interpret the comic in any one of several ways! 172.70.85.238 16:23, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

I find the claim that a player would be allowed to specify a weapon and "roll again" strange. Firstly, in my experience most players only have one primary weapon at a time (to not unnecessarily carry around the weight and space of excess weapons), meaning generally there's no need to specify (only maybe if they're equipped with a secondary/parrying weapon, which people usually only use as a sneak/second attack). As such, no, I don't think this is Cueball's error, the joke is that this is Ponytail's mistake thinking he wants his character to throw dice, and/or this is a goofy game where the characters are actually carrying around dice. Secondarily, what kind of dick DM/GM would make them roll again? Unless it's a terrible roll and they're using the excuse to generously offer a re-do roll (and 18 is generally great in most contexts). The point is for this to be fun, such a terrible nit-pick would fight against such fun. I must not be alone since someone put "actual citation needed" on that, for which I think the only possible citation would be to find an online resource of a DungeonMaster manual IF it actually says this somewhere, but this seems like an unwritten thing up to the individual person. NiceGuy1 (talk) 04:34, 26 July 2025 (UTC)

I hope it's not improper wiki etiquette to ask things like this, but I need to ask User:NiceGuy1, what the HELL did I do wrong this time?! I made one dumb edit, apparently, which was then reverted, so any harm was undone there. Then I made another edit, which added nothing but factual information which I have checked for myself, and now I've "screwed up the Trivia and [undone] the error where it was named", whatever that sequence of words means. And you re-added one of the lines from my first edit! What's with the aspersions? Revolutionary girl euclid (talk) 04:28, 16 August 2025 (UTC)

Restored. I don't understand the reverts either. --FaviFake (talk) 21:04, 17 August 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, appreciate it. I do think my comments were starting to get a bit melodramatic at a certain point there, lol (it was late at night for me so I was getting irritated and tired). Revolutionary girl euclid (talk) 20:30, 18 August 2025 (UTC)

Oh no you were very polite, if i were you i'd have been a little more (passive-)aggressive. --FaviFake (talk) 10:51, 19 August 2025 (UTC)
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