this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2025
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Me every time I think about this.
Weirdly enough, it’s just the way probability works.
Once something stops being a possibility, and becomes a fact (ie. dice are rolled, numbers known) - future probability is no longer affected (assuming independent events like die rolls).
e.g. you have a 1/400 chance of rolling two 1s on a D20 back-to-back. But if your first roll is a 1, you’re back down to the standard 1/20 chance of doing it again - because one of the conditions has already been met.
Math
thank you for your thorough in your explanation
You can tell it is by the way it is
The die has no memory of its past roles
Many though will land preferentially on one axis or one side. Practice rolls could easily conceal checking whether you have the low rolling die or high rolling die
The math checks out, but the problem is the danger of rolling a nat 20 on your practice roll. The odds of getting two nat 20s in a row are almost as low as the odds of getting two nat 1s, so you may be screwing yourself out of a crit
Jesse, that's not how probability fucking works.
Gosh it's almost like I was joking by coming to a correct conclusion through faulty reasoning
I mean I could have just been a complete dweeb and explain that the outcome of the second roll is unaffected by the outcome of the first, and you are just as likely to roll two ones in a row as you are to roll any two numbers, but then I'd have to find a locker to shove myself in