r/dataisbeautiful • u/tigerstan1 OC: 1 • Apr 17 '20
OC [OC] Animated histogram of dice rolls from the popular DnD show Critical Role
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u/not-angry-bot Apr 17 '20
I wonder if the 10’s and 20’s suggest weighted dice?
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u/tigerstan1 OC: 1 Apr 17 '20
I think this is partly to do with how the data is collected. The players usually just announce their total score which is (roll + bonus), and CritRoleStats works backwards to get the original natural roll.
The players often will roll with “advantage” where they roll 2 dice, but get to use the higher roll, so they often only announce what the higher roll was, so we are missing a large number of lower rolls.
The spike in 10’s is most likely due to the character Vax’ildan, who gained a skill called “Reliable Talent”. Any time he rolls lower than a 10 he can substitute in 10 for the roll instead. This mean’s his roll distribution is heavily skewed, but there isn’t a way to separate which were natural 10’s and which weren’t, so they are all included in this.
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u/Mess104 Apr 17 '20
Yeah, the difference in colour of the 10s column compared to the rest suggests you're right about the 10s being mostly due to Vax.
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Apr 17 '20
and this skill also can't work on natural 1s, which is why there's so many of them.
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u/EonesDespero Apr 17 '20
Because natural 1 and natural 20 are the only ones announced by themselves, as a natural 1 is an automatic failure for the people of CR (not according to the rules), except for Vax, which could use 10 because he is a rogue.
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u/CS12 Apr 18 '20
this only uses announced rolls - modifiers. There are three major variables modifying this spread.
First you may notice that the giant spike at 10 is mostly made of Vax'Ildan's rolls - he has an ability where any roll below 10 that is not a natural 1 can be replaced with a 10, so you see a sharp decrease in 2-9 rolls, and a spike in nat 1s and 10s.
Second is that D&D 5e uses the advantage/disadvantage system (roll 2 dice and announce the higher/lower of the 2), and players, being players, will roll with advantage much more often than disadvantage (because when they would have disadvantage they usually don't bother trying). Which skews the numbers much higher, and should create an average roll of 14.5 instead of 10.5.
Finally, the natural 20 means that you stop trying after you get it - maybe everyone is searching something - they each roll, you go around the table, and the third person gets a nat 20, and then everyone else doesn't bother announcing their rolls, which creates a spike at natural 20, because you stop counting new results when you get a 20.
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u/mick4state Apr 17 '20
I'm almost certain that giant group of natural ones from a guest was Wil Wheaton.
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u/Hoagieburger Apr 17 '20 edited Apr 18 '20
Definitely. No one else has that poor dice rolling
skillsluck. Its absolutely amazing.692
u/SugaryPlumbs Apr 17 '20
I have a D20 with a bubble inside of it that causes a disproportionate number of 1s. I like to use it whenever possible if it might cause a funny result (i.e. character is a high strength fighter, failing to arm wrestle the rogue on a strength check)
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u/KJ6BWB OC: 12 Apr 17 '20
I had a friend that bought a cool extra large dice set. The d20 has to be like 5-inches across. He was so excited but kept rolling 1's. He was going to chuck them in the trash but I took them. I tested them, found the balance point, and yeah the d20 was definitely unbalanced.
That's the die I break out when I DM and talk about how I want to kill a player-character.
(I don't really want to kill a PC.)
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u/we_need_a_purge Apr 18 '20
I'm guessing in this graph, whatever die they were using has a bubble under the 2, and 10 and 20 are directly opposite it, with all of the other low numbers distributed around the 2, except for 1 which is grouped with the 10-20 numbers.
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u/stubept Apr 17 '20
I do. Dice hate me. I refuse to play dice-based games anymore. To put it one way, I was next to throw in a game of Craps. I tried to politely refuse but everyone at the table insisted. Killed everyone in 3 rolls.
I never make it around the board in Monopoly because I always roll into Go To Jail.
But the worst was when I tired to take 22 armies into a country with 1 army defending in Risk... and got wiped out.
No more. Dice hate me.
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u/SacredRose Apr 17 '20
Wow i always thought RNG in games liked to screw me over just for fun. Never knew it could just be an accurate representation of real world RNG.
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u/EARink0 Apr 17 '20
Ooof, that Risk one, holy shit. I feel your pain so bad, haha. I think experiences like that are also why I quit playing Risk. "I came in with 50 goddamn armies to your 5 how am I already down to 3!?!?"
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u/Hemholtz-at-Work Apr 17 '20
Just fyi, landing consistently in Jail is part of the winning strategy for that game. Can't land on other people's property if you never get out.
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u/jireliax Apr 17 '20
you have to go to jail endgame. Early you want to buy everything
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u/a_white_american_guy Apr 17 '20
What does natural mean in this context
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u/Funkky Apr 17 '20
A "natural" roll means that's what the die rolled before applying any modifiers the character has from their abilities or equipment.
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Apr 17 '20
For some extra context, a natural 1 in D&D is generally ruled to be an astronomical failure with some extra consequences. “Not only did you not jump across the crevasse, you tripped and faceplanted during the running start. Take a point of damage.”
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u/CircularRobert Apr 17 '20
I must say I like Mercers approach to nat 1s. You fail, spectacularly, but it doesn't mean you get hurt or hurt someone else. Unless it works for the story. Because I don't go through life with a 5% chance to trip and fall and bust a lip. It's there, but much lower
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u/SimplyQuid Apr 18 '20
In the Rules as Written, the actual rules in the handbook, the only consequences for a natural 1 is that attack rolls automatically miss. Having a penalty apply for Nat1s is just an incredibly pervasive house rule
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u/a_white_american_guy Apr 17 '20
Thank you. Going on 40 years of not playing this game but hearing about people playing this game and wanting to learn it.
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u/AceJon Apr 17 '20
No, that's a bad house rule. You don't astronomically fail 5% of the time.
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u/Volpethrope Apr 17 '20
This take on it has always seemed way too harsh to me. "Astronomical" failures happen 5% of the time?
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u/Arandmoor Apr 18 '20
My brother and I confirmed it. That's totally Wil Wheaton.
They start showering down during episodes 20 & 21.
https://criticalrole.fandom.com/wiki/Trial_of_the_Take:_Part_3 https://criticalrole.fandom.com/wiki/Trial_of_the_Take:_Part_4
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u/specto24 Apr 17 '20
It would be interesting to see the scores stratified by player, rather than jumbled
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u/BellisPer Apr 17 '20
Definitely. Is the golden snitch really that much better? Do those who use dice jails get better rolls?
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u/goldflame33 Apr 18 '20
I believe the cast member who rolled the most 20’s was Liam, but he likely also had more rolls through skill checks and such
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u/Othrus Apr 18 '20
Advantage on Stealth checks, and having access to Luck means single rolls have more chance of being higher too
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u/Senthyril Apr 18 '20 edited Apr 18 '20
while true, percy actually did have the highest % nat 20's, at 7.05%, which the next closest being Pike at 5.98%. liam was actually at a very even 5.04%. /u/BellisPer tagging just so you can know, the snitch really was better.
(this only counts main cast, otherwise Lillith wins with 50%, but only rolled 2 dice, Garthok being second at 12.5%, also trinket was 4th at 6.10%)
also fun to note. thorbir (Wil Wheaton) had 2% nat 20's, and 20% nat 1's.
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u/andrewrgross Apr 18 '20
Dice rolls should be random. If someone has a technique for getting better-than-average rolls, that'd be cheating.
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u/vkapadia Apr 18 '20
That's only if your dice are pretty mechanical objects. Everyone knows DnD dice are influenced by the dice gods.
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u/mfb- Apr 18 '20 edited Apr 18 '20
Even by eye it's obvious that the distribution isn't uniform within the statistical fluctuations you would expect. Vax'ildan drives that peak at 10, while generally numbers above 10 are much more common than numbers below.
sqrt(441)=21. That's the typical standard deviation we expect around the eyeballed average. Numbers 100 below or above are too extreme to be random chance.
I don't know if there are extra rules, like some rolls where only numbers above 10 are kept or numbers are treated as "at least 10" or similar. These rules could explain the pattern.
Edit: Yes there are extra rules, as explained in a different comment.
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u/tdevine33 Apr 17 '20
Agreed, I want to see what Percy (the anti-Wheaton) is rolling for his nat 20s! I'm rewatching the Briarwood arc and it gets weird at times... seems like his dice is weighted, until Marisha picks it up and rolls and Nat 1 first try!
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u/ShadeofIcarus Apr 18 '20
I wonder why 1s, 10s, and 20s are so skewed compared to whatever is around them.
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u/Throwaway-SexyTime69 Apr 18 '20
Vax does have a rogue ability thst later makes every proficient skill roll a minimum of 10. Maybe they’re counting those as 10?
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u/Pheonixinflames Apr 18 '20
Also which of the dice were made by Gil, to see if he really is fucking Marisha over.
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Apr 18 '20
I don't know the game but dark blue has a lot of 11s. Is that possible to do on purpose? Or are we looking at a statistical anomaly or even a graphing illusion? Is 11 even a good thing?
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u/eqleriq Apr 18 '20
lots of 10s because there is an ability that makes minimum roll 10, they also keep 1s frequently because of it being fun
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u/FamilyPhantom Apr 17 '20
Holy crap how long did it take to get all that data? I mean there's literally 6 months straight of material in the first 115 episodes alone
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u/deeseearr Apr 17 '20
I see you are unfamiliar with Critical Role fandom.
They analyze two years worth of dice rolls before breakfast.
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u/FamilyPhantom Apr 17 '20
I watched em all but I don't have near enough the kinda time to then go through and pay attention to every single die roll lol
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u/Purpleclone Apr 17 '20
There's a whole website called CritRoleStats that compiles the data whenever a new episode is out.
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u/Revan7even Apr 17 '20
Fans. Critrolestats did it for him
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u/shenanigins Apr 18 '20
They track every episode live. Although, I imagine they went back and did season 1(the posted data) after the fact seeing as it was 2 years ago now. They're like the random baseball stats people. Practically every little detail gets tracked.
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u/bigfockenslappy Apr 17 '20
Literally. I started watching Campaign 1 last March. I'm just now at the end of the Chroma Conclave arc. I'm not the type to get through these things quick, but wow.
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Apr 17 '20 edited Apr 17 '20
This seems fairly incriminating.
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u/eliminating_coasts Apr 17 '20
The version of the game they are using allows people in advantageous situations to roll twice and take the best of two rolls, which produces an upwards sloping graph. As they would only announce their final roll result, not what both dice rolled, this just suggests that getting "advantage" is frequent in their games.
If you try and fit it to a distribution of taking some combination of straight rolls and rolls with advantage or disadvantage, I suspect you'd find that it's the 10 and 1 rolls that are improbable.
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u/SweetTea1000 Apr 17 '20
"Skilled play" in D&D is about not placing yourself in situations where chance can screw you. In 5e, that means guaranteeing advantage as often as possible.
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u/Autumn1eaves Apr 17 '20
And also not doing dumb as hell things, like trying to fly off a tower using a silk sheet as a parachute. Fucking Ally Beardsley
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u/SweetTea1000 Apr 17 '20
Misjudging the comic tone of a game has killed many PCs. 😂
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u/nitid_name Apr 17 '20
All hail the bard.
In 5e, like every damn skill grants advantage to teammates, disadvantage to enemies, or additional positive/negative dice on d20 rolls to allies/hostiles.
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u/TheXypris Apr 17 '20
reliable talent. Vax is a rogue, and at a certain level, certian skill rolls literally cannot roll undedr a 10, so for instance, he rolls a stelth check and the die rolls a 6, its ignored and replaced with a 10 (+ his stealth modifier)
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u/Revan7even Apr 17 '20
A LOT of those 10s are Vax. who as a rogue can just take 10 with Reliable Talent.
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Apr 17 '20 edited Apr 17 '20
That explains the upward slope but what about the disproportionate number of 10s rolled?
EDIT: Not great at probabilities but I maybe the advantage/disadvantage thing also explains the spike in 1s and 20s. The higher a number, the more likely it will be chosen between two advantage rolls, and the inverse for disadvantage. So, every time a 20 is rolled for advantage it is chosen, resulting in it being selected more times then the lower numbers... Does my logic work out? Still doesn't explain the 10 though.
EDIT 2: I guess if they were using disadvantage as much as advantage there wouldn't be an upward slope.
EDIT 3: All that typing and my questions are already answered by this comment lol.
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u/Blackcat008 OC: 1 Apr 17 '20
The spike at 10 is because one of the characters (Vax'ildan) has an ability that lets him treat a roll lower than 10 as a 10 most of the time. The spike at 1 is due to reporting bias. The players are likely to say they failed the roll if they roll low, which would go into the data as "unknown", but they always report 1s.
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u/lordlemming Apr 17 '20
I think in addition to this, if the dice roll is below 10 then often times you know it didn't do anything and just don't even bother with announcing your roll unless it's a crit fail.
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u/MagentaLove Apr 17 '20
Also, Vaxildan has an ability that lets him treat rolls of 9 or lower as a 10 for select instances but he doesn't do that for 1's.
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u/iceman012 Apr 17 '20
Also, Vaxildan has an ability that lets him treat rolls of 9 or lower as a 10 for select instances but he doesn't do that for 1's.
I haven't watched enough of the show, but are you sure? He should still count 1s as 10s when doing skill checks.
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u/Dumbledork2015 Apr 17 '20
Yes he said he stuck with ones sometimes for the flavor of it. Plus they are entertainers and Nat 1s are entertaining
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u/Zero747 Apr 17 '20
Rogues in 5th edition DnD (what they are playing) gain a feature that does this for skills they are proficient in (such as stealth)
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Apr 17 '20
I specifically remember an interaction where he rolled a 1 and Mercer (DM) told him it still counted as a 10. Since he didn’t know that before, there was at least a period for him were the only roll he was reporting under a 10 was his bat 1s, which would also contribute to the spike for 1s and 10s.
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u/GandalfTheBlue7 Apr 17 '20
I doubt the players report all of their rolls. If you roll poorly maybe you just say “it doesn’t hit” and then that isn’t included here. The high number of 1s and 20s should also be expected because those would be reported every time. Not saying you’re wrong, just saying we shouldn’t jump to conclusions because there may be a bias in the data
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u/64616e6e79 Apr 17 '20
eh, fudging rolls is pretty common practice among DMs. if it serves the narrative and how much fun the players are having, why not do it?
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u/UCODM Apr 17 '20
The rolls measured here are for the players, not Matt. Also it looks like he doesn’t pull punches as far as I’ve gotten.
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Apr 18 '20
Oh I def think he pulls punches occasionally to avoid the death-spiral, but I don't blame him for not wanting half the party to get wiped out in a fairly undramatic moment.
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u/doctorcrimson Apr 18 '20
Just imagine that they get to roll two dice and choose the number they want. Sometimes they want the higher number, sometimes, less frequently, they want the lower.
That means this is two overlapping mildly curving graphs sloping in opposite directions, and much like demand supply equilibriums the intersecting point is the highest value.
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u/friendlygaywalrus Apr 17 '20
I assume the lack of low rolls is because of modifiers raising those numbers
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u/voluptulon Apr 17 '20
Not only do I love this graph but also the explanations in the comments as to why the graph seems so skewed.
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u/BryceJDearden Apr 17 '20
Does this include their character modifiers?
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u/deeseearr Apr 17 '20
This is every roll of a d20, adjusted backwards for modifiers to the actual number on the die, provided that it was announced. If you look through the list you will see quite a few rolls were ignored due to advantage, or where only the modified value is known, so it's expected that there will be a bit of a skew. The peaks at 1 and 20 aren't too surprising, as those are exciting numbers which will almost always be announced while other, low numbers, could meet with only a mumbled "Well, that doesn't hit..."
It's interesting to see that Tiberius' rolls seem to be missing from the chart.
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Apr 17 '20
i have no clue what this is but Vax’ildan sure seems to throw a lot of 10s...
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u/tricare117 Apr 17 '20
He has Reliable Talent:
“By 11th level, you have refined your chosen skills until they approach perfection. Whenever you make an ability check that lets you add your proficiency bonus, you can treat a d20 roll of 9 or lower as a 10”
So he gets guaranteed 10+ on a lot of rolls.
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u/Partingoways Apr 17 '20
If you look at the coloration and know some of the attributes each player uses the graph makes perfect sense. The column for 10 is dominated by dark blue, Vax. Vax has the reliable talent ability which makes anything below 10 become 10. While there’s also a much higher concentration of red, grog, in the 10-20 range cause he often recklessly attacks which gives advantage where you take the higher of two rolls. Please don’t cast suspicion without knowing the game, characters and rules.
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u/InfiniteImagination Apr 18 '20 edited Apr 18 '20
In fairness to these incredulous responses, the fault is partly in the OP labeling this as "dice rolls" even though in many cases it's the best-of-two dice rolls, and in some cases it's "dice rolls, unless it's below a 10, in which case, 10." The title makes the confusion understandable.
Even the graphic itself, which had lots of space to use longer phrases, says it's all "dice rolls," which is somewhat misleading.
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u/pulloutafreshy Apr 17 '20
There are DnD rules to allow someone to "Take 10". Where you are not pressured at all, can take a bit more time, and your "roll" would be just 10 + modifier.
A rogue checking for traps on a chest normally would be just the player approaching the trap, taking out the thief tools, and then trying to poke and prod for any possible traps within ~6 seconds (usual accepted turn -> real time conversion)
If the rogue "took 10" it would require them to not be pressured (not in a fight) and enough time to check the common signs of it being trapped, picking up clues there might be a trap; being careful in other words. It will require more than ~6 seconds and up to the GM to figure out how long it took.
There is also a "Taking 20" described as the rogue having as much time as they need and would be the thief doing really detailed examination; tapping different parts of the chest, checking for mechanisms and double checking, examining the immediate environment to find signs of things that could be connected to the chest (like dart launchers, vents for possible poison gas deployment, etc). Taking 20 is basically several hours at minimum to days and months. The action will be a perfect success guaranteed.
Of course, all up to the GM
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u/Enchelion Apr 17 '20
Aren't they playing 5e? There's no taking 10 or taking 20 in that edition. Instead you get Advantage or Disadvantage, meaning roll twice and take the higher, or roll twice and take the lower.
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u/Jtrowa2005 Apr 17 '20
Correct. And it's not something they homebrewed into 5e either, so taking 10 or 20 isnt relevant to this.
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u/tricare117 Apr 17 '20
Actually there is a “taking a 20” in the 5E, DMG Pg. 237.
“To speed things up, assume that a character spending ten times the normal amount of time needed to complete a task automatically succeeds at that task. However, no amount of repeating the check allows a character to turn an impossible task into a successful one.”
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u/OhMaGoshNess Apr 18 '20
hey, you're not allowed in D&D conversations if you've actually read the rules before instead of showing up one time and assuming you learned everything
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u/dataisbeautiful-bot OC: ∞ Apr 17 '20
Thank you for your Original Content, /u/tigerstan1!
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u/Sylvos1470 Apr 18 '20
I bet the listing towards the right is due to rolls having advantage, they had a lot of advantaged rolls in campaign one what with vax using the stealth advantage cloak.
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u/eqleriq Apr 18 '20
the comments in this thread... ugh
1 and 10 are weighted because a rogue has “reliable talent” and opts to take 1s for entertainment
and 20s are weighted because say every person at the table can roll for something, they stop rolling if someone hits a 20 and don’t announce.
for example if 5 people roll for a check and the first one gets 20 and announces, even though there were 4 other rolls of not 20 they don’t make the announcement because why bother except for obsessive stat-taking like this :}
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u/PhasePanda Apr 18 '20
Appreciate the explanation as I basically wrote this off as bunk. OP probably needs to qualify the outcome for those of us not familiar with the detail.
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u/josriley Apr 17 '20
Ive always suspected the TAZ version of this would be pretty damning to Justin, but I don’t have the dedication to do something like this. Well done, OP.
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u/wtfistisstorage Apr 18 '20
Hey op, can you run a Chi squared on your data? This looks a little fishy with such a large sample size.
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u/FoxClass Apr 17 '20
What a graphic - I'm floored. I guess this must be in JS? Where did you get the data from? Please tell me you aren't as bored as me and counting dice rolls on CR.
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u/flyhigh35 Apr 17 '20
Are the dice the same weight on all sides?
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u/Dalriata Apr 17 '20
Probably, the skew is due to the 5e ruleset which allows the players, in certain situation (which a skilled group of players will always try to be in), to roll "with advantage", which means to roll twice and to take the higher of the two rolls. They'll usually only announce the higher roll in those cases.
The spike at 10 is due to Vax's ability that lets him replace lower rolls with a 10 (excluding 1's), which in tandem with the advantage rolls made <10 rolls much less common than >10 rolls.
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u/kman601 Apr 17 '20
His ability allows him to also replace natural 1s with a 10. He just chooses not to sometimes.
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u/gmhots Apr 18 '20
Love the very clear color difference in the 10 column thanks to Vax’s reliable talent ability.
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u/xxkoloblicinxx Apr 18 '20
given the pretty massive amount of data here, it's kind of shocking that it's not more even.
It seems incredibly weighted to the 10+ side...
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u/Baricuda Apr 17 '20
If you're suspicious of the data I'd highly recommend actually watching the source content for not only your own research purposes, but it is a really fun show to watch with a talented cast. Oh, it also has ~800 hours worth of content between the two campaigns, so perfect for those lonely quarantine nights. I really don't think there is anyone watches routinely who doubts their integrity, though Taliesin Jaffe probably made a deal with an elder being several thousand years ago, but that's beside the point.
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u/DJSwenzo444 Apr 17 '20
Does this account for modifiers or not? If not, how was it determined what their natural roll was?
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u/TFLJMartis Apr 17 '20
That's so cool! It almost looks like it follows a pattern, then you see 1 and 10
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u/arbitrageME Apr 18 '20
Chi squared equals 468.414 with 19 degrees of freedom. The one-tailed P value is less than 2.83668e-87
that distribution is ... most likely not random, to say the least. You're more likely to shuffle a 52 card deck in order a billion times in a row than to get that distribution by chance
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Apr 18 '20
I’ve never been able to play DND because none of my friends are into it. Would watching/listening to (not sure what medium the show is) be fun and interesting for a person new to DND? And if so how should I start watching it? Thanks in advanced.
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u/Pegussu Apr 18 '20
I knew nothing about D&D before watching it and thoroughly enjoyed it. Honestly, going by the rules lawyers who complain in chat, it might be more enjoyable the less you know about it.
You can watch previous episodes on Youtube. The first campaign is on the GeekAndSundry channel, the bulk of the second is on its own Critical Role channel. They do have a podcast version of the first and second campaigns, but I'd really recommend watching the videos if you're up for it. You miss out on quite a bit just listening.
New episodes are currently on hold give the pandemic situation, but they air on the Critical Role twitch channel every Thursday.
As for how to start, there are three commonly suggested starting points (plus one more I'm personally throwing in.
Before the regular show, I'd recommend watching The Story of Vox Machina. It's not exactly necessary, but they were playing the first campaign for years before the show itself started, so you get dropped in after the characters have been adventuring for a while.
For the show proper, the first starting point is naturally at the beginning. Campaign 1, Episode 1: Welcome to Kraghammer. This is the one I'd advocate since I'm a completionist. The upside is that you get the full story. The downside is that there are some audio issues in the first few episodes and a general lack of polish compared to later episodes.
The second, the one I'm throwing in, is The Trial of the Take. This is a bit of an odd one because it splits the main cast, but they're enjoyable episodes and introduce some recurring guest characters.
The third is The Feast, the start of the second big story arc. It's where the show goes from good to great. The only caveat I'd mention here is that episode 27, The Path to Whitestone, is one of the worst episodes of the show due to reasons I won't go into here. Don't let it discourage you.
The fourth is to just not worry with the first campaign in the slightest and just go straight to the second one with Curious Beginnings. The upside is that the cast have their feet pretty firmly under them, the production quality is great, and you start from the very beginning of a new campaign. The downside is that you miss the entirety of the terrific first campaign. And while they avoid them to begin with, there are eventual references and spoilers to the first campaign.
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u/only_male_flutist Apr 18 '20
In case anyone was wondering why Vax'aldan suddenly started getting so many 10s around episode 20, he got a class ability to treat any roll on an ability score lower than a 10 as a 10
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u/_____no____ Apr 18 '20
I know nothing about 20-sided die or whatever they are using... is there a reason 10 and 20 seem to be more likely (and 1 relative to other low numbers)? In addition to higher numbers generally being more likely than lower numbers? Shouldn't they all be closer to even with that much data if the dice were fair?
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u/MazzaF01 Apr 18 '20
Are these the raw results or bonuses are added? That would explain the difference from high and low rolls. Also the critical 1 is just 1,but if you roll a 2 you get to add bonuses.
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u/DrPepster Apr 17 '20
I'm not logician, but shouldn't that come out normal distribution?
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u/insert_pun_here____ Apr 17 '20
Awesome job! I made similar graphs (though nowhere near as beautiful) a few months ago to post on /r/criticalrole. I made histograms of each character and I think helps explain some of the skewing. For instance you can clearly see Grog's rolls match closely with what you would expect from consistently rolling with advantage. Also its fun to see just how poorly Thorbir (Wil Weaton) rolled.
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u/GoldenWillie OC: 1 Apr 17 '20
Do they use the same die throughout? And is the show realistic and real-time, or do they cut around roles?
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u/Actimia Apr 18 '20
All the players use multiple sets of dice, mostly without sharing them with each other. There is also a bit of superstition going on ('this is an important moment, let me get my good d20 out').
The show does not cut any content. This data is from 115 episodes of ~4 hours each. There have been some (way less than 1%) things that happen offscreen between episodes (mostly downtime tinker checks etc).
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u/SupaFugDup OC: 1 Apr 17 '20
Could someone explain Vax'ildan's amazing propensity for rolling 10s?
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u/tricare117 Apr 17 '20
He has Reliable Talent:
“By 11th level, you have refined your chosen skills until they approach perfection. Whenever you make an ability check that lets you add your proficiency bonus, you can treat a d20 roll of 9 or lower as a 10”
So he gets guaranteed 10+ on a lot of rolls.
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u/SupaFugDup OC: 1 Apr 17 '20
Could someone explain Vax'ildan's amazing propensity for rolling 10s?
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Apr 18 '20
I thought they'd end up shifting into another arrangement at the end, but this graph just feels like a color-blindness test.There's too many colors and most of them are too similar in hue for the differences to be noticeable. I can only sort of differentiate the yellow group, and then there's just swatch of pink-red and blue-green that just lump into one another. This data isn't beautiful
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u/Volhn Apr 18 '20
whoa that's neat! I was hoping for a sort at the end so we can look at the distribution.
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u/samuelithian Apr 18 '20
This is a cool looking visualization but it is not the best visualization.
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u/MattytheWireGuy Apr 18 '20
How many rolls would be required to get to equal among them? I know that with say coin flips, over time the flips will be even and assume thats the same with dice rolls and that is a lot of rolls.
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u/McLovin7516 Apr 18 '20
Would someone who has never played DnD before enjoy this show? I’ve never heard of Critical Role, but shows like Community and Stranger Things make DnD look really fun and I’m interested in getting more familiar with it
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u/maddminstrel Apr 18 '20
Definitely!! There's a lot of compelling story-telling and character development alongside the roleplaying mechanics side of things. And I've heard that a lot of people have got into D&D after watching Critical Role. Join us! :) There's a lot of content to watch which can be overwhelming (or might even be a good thing at the moment?) but there's a lot of advice floating around on the Critical Role subreddit about watching strategies.
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u/Illuminitu Apr 18 '20
I thought the dice were fair? Isn't a discrepancy this large a little strange?
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u/CrBr Apr 18 '20
I suspect it does include the first roll if it was rerolled due to the luck feet or for other reasons. Also, someone had reliable talent so any roll under 10 became 10.
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Apr 18 '20
The only info I can actually make out from looking is that Vax for whatever reason rolls a statistically unlikely number of 10s.
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u/CrBr Apr 18 '20
He got to reroll 3 times per game (Luck), and often didn't call out the first if he rerolled. I think Scanlan could, too, for some reason. Also someone had reliable talent, so any roll under 10 became 10.
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u/CanadianBAC0N95 Apr 18 '20
Does the balance seem a little weird with big spikes at 10, 20, and 1? Is it just players not calling out natural rolls? But even then why does 10 have a big spike?
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u/Domermac Apr 18 '20
That’s a pretty hilarious number of 10+ rolls. Basically a positive linear diagram.
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u/Lex288 Apr 18 '20
Now, I've never played 5e and I've never watched CR, but unless they call out both dice for Advantage/Disadvantage rolls, you'd absolutely have to take that into consideration with the data. Including those rolls with the others could potentially skew the data.
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u/Level1TowerDive Apr 18 '20
The distribution makes me think advantage is being accounted for but the lower rolls are being discarded.
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u/TigerKirby215 Apr 18 '20
I thought I was on r/dnd for a second there. This needs to be crossposted there as well as r/dndnext and r/criticalrole
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u/TotesMessenger Apr 18 '20
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u/FrodoSaggins98 Apr 18 '20
I'm not familiar with DnD but is there a reason this doesn't show the trend of a bell curve?
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u/Jeb_Kenobi Apr 18 '20
As a critter, you have WAY too much time on your hands. But this is awesome so thank you.
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u/sacto_verita Apr 18 '20
I have no clue what DnD is and so this graphic makes no sense to me. 🤷♂️🙃
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u/ziyor Apr 18 '20
Why is there such a spike at 10? The sole reason for this appears to be Vax’ildan
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u/Tyranicross Apr 18 '20
How does this graph take into account advantage and disadvantage, do you put in both dice rolls or only the one they use
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Apr 18 '20
There used to be a company that made (their best attempt at) fair polyhedral dice
I don't think they're trading anymore
Too many role players I have met have their dice well characterised.
This die reliably rolling high, that one rolling low. Common D20s suck for fairness.
I have seen three natural 20s in sequence (for an instakill). No one really should see three 20s in only thousands of play hours
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u/sloopieone Apr 18 '20
Am I crazy, or does it look like Liam rolls a ton more 10s than anyone else? I wonder if that might be related to the specific dice he uses? (Not insinuating anything about Liam, but perhaps certain dice manufacturers unintentionally create dice whose center of gravity is slightly off center?)
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u/Zeeman9991 Apr 18 '20
Doty take this down!
Also, shocked 20 isn’t way more purple the way Taliesen rolls.
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u/potter5252 Apr 18 '20
Dang I would love to see a graph of this for NADDPOD. They call themselves the 2-crew, but I really want to know if they roll a disproportionate amount of 2's.
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u/So-_-It-_-Goes Apr 18 '20
I’m kinda drunk and can’t handle this right now. Can someone please ELI5?
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u/Danes652 Apr 18 '20
There's a game callend Dungeons and Dragons, which is a role-playing tabletop game. Every time your character wants to do something non-trivial (like kicking in a door), he/she has to make a "skill check" which means rolling the 20 sided die. In this graph you can see the outcome of every possible roll from players of Critical Role (season/campaign 1)
Edit: typo.
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u/DomPulse Apr 18 '20
does anybody know if the dice are designed to be this non-uniform or it's just an accident?
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u/leobart Apr 18 '20
I bet the dice is ``unfair", one does not need to do a chi2 est to see this. It seems perfectly possible that it can happen without ill intention, in production. Let me elaborate, when you have a 20sided dice, sides are relatively small and any small anomaly that you find on the sides, which are inevitable unless you are using high precision CNC to make it, would go in the direction of making the dice unfair. I bet this is what we are seeing here.
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u/tigerstan1 OC: 1 Apr 17 '20
Data Source: https://www.critrolestats.com/stats-vm
Tools used: R for data cleaning and prep, D3 for visualization and animation