When all you have is a Mathhammer, the world looks like nails

[Fodderboy]

My statistics-fu is weak, but I can brute-force the calcs like nobody's business.

I did up a spreadsheet to calc the odds of casting a spell based on the number of dice tossed. I have attached the results here as a pdf - the original xls file was 8.8MB (and apparently you can't post xls files here).

Has anyone else developed guides like this?

 

[sn33r]

This is what good players do in there heads thanks for posting I really need this.

 

[DominicJ]

Done it for gut magic up to three dice.
Brute force too, excel, 6 columns, 42,000ish rows

Just needs a bit of polish

I'd never pull it out mid game, but its important to know.
I couldnt work out why I kept miscasting, two dice gives you a 2% chance, three a 10% chance, four, well, a lot...

 

[Zhatan]

I usually just do a quick calculation when deciding how many dice to use but it is interesting to see the percentages.

 

[Skittelz1981]

Well Fodderboy, i appreciate the work you've done and its nice to see it. It definately gives a general, statistical idea of how many dice/spell to use.

Downside is: i will just not rely on the statistics Failing IoN 12+ with 4 dice has happened to me often enough. Seeing spells with cv 16 rolled with 6dice! fail due to amazing statistically almost impossible results are not uncommon.

 

[DominicJ]

Million to one shots happen nine times out of ten

 

[Fodderboy]

Hi Dominic - it was 6^6 ~46k rows(+ titles)

@Skittelz & Dominic
79.3% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

 

[Lynks]

If you need a quick reference for all sorts of dice combinations and targets, http://anydice.com/ is a fantastic tool, it isn't a handy summary like yours but it's very powerful in what it can do

 

[Mox]

60% of the time, it works every time!

 

[Demian]

Maybe I'm not looking at the table the right way so... Could I make a request and have a table for:

Lvl 1 Casters using expensive stuff, like 9-15 difficulty?
Lvl 2 Casters using both cheap stuff and expensive?
Lvl 4 Casters, owning the house, casting all kinds of crazy!!

You don't have to do it, obviously, but I believe that's where we all get a bit stuck:

"What are my best chances to reach "X" number to cast / dispel if my wizard is lvl... 1, 2, 3, 4, Kemmler?"

Just the average best way to use dice!

 

[Fodderboy]

Maybe I'm not looking at the table the right way so... Could I make a request and have a table for:

Lvl 1 Casters using expensive stuff, like 9-15 difficulty?
Lvl 2 Casters using both cheap stuff and expensive?
Lvl 4 Casters, owning the house, casting all kinds of crazy!!

You don't have to do it, obviously, but I believe that's where we all get a bit stuck:

"What are my best chances to reach "X" number to cast / dispel if my wizard is lvl... 1, 2, 3, 4, Kemmler?"

Just the average best way to use dice!

Hi Demian

The spell's casting (or dispell) value is the number on the far left. Given the number of dice across the top, the table gives you the % chance of rolling that number. If there are any modifiers in place (Magic Level, High Magic, etc) simply change the target number on the left to suit.

IE: If you want to cast a 48" Gaze of Nagash (Casting Value 12) with a level 2 caster, use the odds for 12-2=10. 3 Dice gives you a 63% chance of casting it, with only a 7% chance of IF.

Anydice is good for a one-off, but I can't really use it mid-game without slowing things down significantly.

 

[Demian]

oooooooh! yeah, you're right!

Didn't think about that x°x

Thx!

EDIT: wow.. didn't not that lv 4 wizards had only 57% chance to cast a lvl 25 spell (excluding IF wich is 26%)

I believed it was a higher chance but... nice !

 

[Fodderboy]

oooooooh! yeah, you're right!wow.. didn't not that lv 4 wizards had only 57% chance to cast a lvl 25 spell (excluding IF wich is 26%)

I believed it was a higher chance but... nice !

That 57% includes the 26% chance of IF.

 

[Demian]

...and that's why you're The guy for this D:

hahaha

 

[Skittelz1981]

casting a 25 with a lvl 4 wizard....
Using your maximum of 6 dice will still require you to roll 21:6=3,5 so you will need all dices to roll a 4 except 1.... That is like his calculations show, just above 50% which is suckz.
Rolling two 1's will force your other dicerolls to be all 5+
Rolling two 2's will force your other dicerolls to be all 4+
(obviously this is all averages, rolling 2,2,3,3,5,6 will still get you there and that isnt a really good roll)

Ive tried casting Wind of Death once at 25, it ended up in an IF miscast that Misfired and ate 3 blackknights and a whole bunch of ghouls plus it messed me up in subsequent turns
Clearly not something im keen on trying again.
Now if youre a Darkelf with the lame Doomlocks, you can try IF for free as often as you want to get the insane increased versions of Soulblight and Doombolt, which can never misfire... Way to go Matt

 

[Minty]

I wonder if you'd be willing to force some more brute numbers for us?

Over on the Tomb King forum a gentleman named Krael ran the numbers for a lot of Tomb King options and discovered that a lot of commonly held TK truisms aren't completely true at all (this didn't shock me).

You can see his work here.

I wouldn't ask you to do all that for us, but would you be willing to run the numbers for Grave Guard?

I've long beleived that Great Weapons are not the no-brainer choice that every other Vampire thinks they are.

good, certainly, but not always the best.

Krael ran the numbers for Tomb guard with HW&S and with Halberds and showed that, actually, HW&S is a valid choice.

I think the same thing would happen, but I'd like to see the numbers if you are willing to replicate Krael's work.

The effects of Weapons, is what I'm most interested in, but the effects of horde/bus and Banner of Barrows would be fascinating too.

 

[Fodderboy]

I wonder if you'd be willing to force some more brute numbers for us?

Over on the Tomb King forum a gentleman named Krael ran the numbers for a lot of Tomb King options and discovered that a lot of commonly held TK truisms aren't completely true at all (this didn't shock me).

You can see his work here.

I wouldn't ask you to do all that for us, but would you be willing to run the numbers for Grave Guard?

I've long beleived that Great Weapons are not the no-brainer choice that every other Vampire thinks they are.

good, certainly, but not always the best.

Krael ran the numbers for Tomb guard with HW&S and with Halberds and showed that, actually, HW&S is a valid choice.

I think the same thing would happen, but I'd like to see the numbers if you are willing to replicate Krael's work.

The effects of Weapons, is what I'm most interested in, but the effects of horde/bus and Banner of Barrows would be fascinating too.

Can do. It will just be at least a week, as I've got some speed painting to get done for this weekend.

 

[Zhatan]

Can do. It will just be at least a week, as I've got some speed painting to get done for this weekend.

Will be interesting to see the results. I think that GW is the superior choice against any enemy that matters. HW+S might be better against weak units but that's not what we need GG for anyway.

 

[Minty]

Can do. It will just be at least a week, as I've got some speed painting to get done for this weekend.

Sorry, I didn't see your reply!

That;s just fine. I mean, I'm asking you a favour, I can hardly demand you also drop everything to go do it now (NOW!).


@Zhatan - I concur, partially.

I don't know if you checked out that Tomb King thread I linked to, but I think a lot of TK players were surprised how wrong some common knowledge was.

So while I to think Great Weapons are likely to come out best in an all-comers list, I'm not certain of it my any means and I think the difference might be far smaller than anyone would predict.

 

[Fodderboy]

How DARE you ask a favour!

I'll have a swing at it this week.

 

[Minty]

So uh...

Did you get around to it?

not to nag or anything, but I'm still curious about who things would shake out.

 

[Ripper]

60% of the time, it works every time!

 

[Fodderboy]

I have finally gotten off my duff and done the number crunching (apologies to those who've been ever-so-patiently waiting). Included is the number of models needed to dish out wounds from/to opponent's models.

pdf is attached. I can fire off the xls via pm if desired.

Let me know what you think. I can re-arrange it to make more sense any way you like.

This is basic, just how many attacks are needed to punch through.

 

[Zhatan]

I have finally gotten off my duff and done the number crunching (apologies to those who've been ever-so-patiently waiting). Included is the number of models needed to dish out wounds from/to opponent's models.

pdf is attached. I can fire off the xls via pm if desired.

Let me know what you think. I can re-arrange it to make more sense any way you like.

This is basic, just how many attacks are needed to punch through.

Im confused... GG can't use halberds.

 

[ATP485]

I have attached a zip file with two scripts I wrote in R statistical programming software. One is a script for combat and the other is for BS shooting.

They take user defined inputs such as number of attacks, special rules (re-rolls, poison, stomp etc), profile characteristics, saves etc and return the average number of wounds.

I find it useful for looking at how one unit will perform against another, and how augment/hex spells change the result.

All you will need is the R software which is free. You can get it here. http://cran.r-project.org/ I use RStudio which has a better user interface. The scripts are very user friendly as I wrote them to share with my gaming group.