Is there a system that uses this?

[randomhero00]

I was just pondering dice. Normally in DnD for instance you'd of course roll 5d6 or 4d4 or 2d8 etc. I was thinking of other ways to represent random number brackets (e.g. 2d8 = 2 to 16.) A way I came up with was to use the percentile method...sort of.

So if you wanted the max number to be 48 you could roll a d4 and a d8. So if the d4 came up 1, and the d8 came up 6 you'd have rolled a 16. Now this gets goofy if you want your max to be odd past 10 (30s, 50s, 70s, etc), but the system would have the advantage of a lot less dice needed, as well as you could roll higher numbers (e.g. if you wanted max number to be 210 you could roll a d20 and a d10.)

Is there a system that has used this? If so was it any good?

[DSCrankshaw]

I believe some of the Iron Crown Enterprise games used d100 rolls. MERP (Middle Earth Role-playing game), for instance.

[Kylarra]

It seems needlessly complicated to have multiple max numbers like that. The closest would be games that use a percentile system and just have you roll under the target number.

[Tengu_temp]

Remember that rolling 1d4 for tens and 1d8 for single digits is nowhere near close to rolling a random number from 1 to 48, or even from 11 to 48.

[RandomLunatic]

Not RPGs, but Avalon Hill published a couple of games back in the day that used two different-colored d6s to yield results from 11 to 66. B-17: Queen Of The Skies and Sbumarine are two titles I know of (and have) that use this mechanic.

[Tinydwarfman]

Remember that rolling 1d4 for tens and 1d8 for single digits is nowhere near close to rolling a random number from 1 to 48, or even from 11 to 48.

I must be missing something, apart from the lack of a zero, how is it different?

[Kylarra]

Remember that rolling 1d4 for tens and 1d8 for single digits is nowhere near close to rolling a random number from 1 to 48, or even from 11 to 48.

Other than the fact that dice aren't perfectly random, you should be generating a number from 11-48 with about the same randomness as a normal RNG call.

[Tyrrell]

Other than the fact that dice aren't perfectly random, you should be generating a number from 11-48 with about the same randomness as a normal RNG call.

Except you can't get 19,20,29,30,39,or 40.

[Kylarra]

Except you can't get 19,20,29,30,39,or 40.

Huh. You're right, I completely missed that because I was mentally picturing normal percentile dice for the 1s column. My bad.

[The Big Dice]

Qin the Warring States uses what they call the Yin-Yang dice. Roll 2d10 and subtract the lower result from the higher. Then add in your skill modifier to beat a target number decided based on how difficult the task you're attempting is.

Legend of the Five Rings uses the Roll and Keep system. Roll a pool of d10s that is made up from a Trait value and a Skill value. Keep a number of dice equal to your Trait and reroll 10s as an open ended roll. Again, you're trying to beat a target number, but L5R also lets you bid the difficulty up using Raises. Usually to get a greater degree of success, cast your spell faster or do more damage.

AD&D used to represent random spreads in a x-y format, which could be a little confusing. Sometimes it meant roll x number of a certain dice type, others it means roll a dice and add a modifier. It was usually up to you to figure out what they meant.

There's always the BRP from Chasium, percentile based, aiming to roll lower than your skill.

Single dice + modifier is quite a common system, from D20 and it's family, through Cyberpunk 2020 and 2013, Traveller, Pendragon and many more. The dice type changes but they usually work to roll and add the bonus to beat a target difficulty.

[ghost_warlock]

Warhammer Quest (not really an RPG, but still...) uses a system like this for town encounters. It uses 2d6 for results (roughly) from 11 to 66.

I remember that, if you're darn lucky, you can easily make out with far more lewt running town encounters and (hopefully) winning a duel than you ever could playing the dungeon crawl the game was intended for.

[Ihala]

I was just pondering dice. Normally in DnD for instance you'd of course roll 5d6 or 4d4 or 2d8 etc. I was thinking of other ways to represent random number brackets (e.g. 2d8 = 2 to 16.) A way I came up with was to use the percentile method...sort of.

So if you wanted the max number to be 48 you could roll a d4 and a d8. So if the d4 came up 1, and the d8 came up 6 you'd have rolled a 16. Now this gets goofy if you want your max to be odd past 10 (30s, 50s, 70s, etc), but the system would have the advantage of a lot less dice needed, as well as you could roll higher numbers (e.g. if you wanted max number to be 210 you could roll a d20 and a d10.)

Is there a system that has used this? If so was it any good?

As has been pointed out, this does not work, nor does the 2 six sided dice producing a random number from {11 to 66}. The reason it works for your percentile dice is because you use a base 10 system. You can use the same concept with six siders if you use a base six system. Alternatively, if you think of percentile as instead one die from 1-10 and another whose value is (x-1)*10, where x is the rolled value you can use a base ten counting system with your idea. If you want a value from say, 1-60, with an equal chance of each result (assuming perfect dice, rolling surface etc.), you could roll a d6 and a d10. The (d6-1)*10 would be added to your d10. As such for every value {1 to 60}, there is one and only one combination on the d6 and d10 that can produce it. The difference here from your idea is that a 10 sider is used for the rightmost (ones) column. By using a d8 you remove all possible results with a number ending in 9 or 0. By not subtracting 1 from the result of the d4 you make a result of 10 or lower impossible.

Edit: If you really want to play with dice, find a way, using a base 10 (normal) counting system and only standard polygonal dice (d4, d6, d8, d12, d20), to generate a random number from 0 to 10. Note that from 0 to 10 is 11 possible results, not 10. Also each result can be reached through multiple combinations of dice results, but each has an equal chance of resulting. The answer involves needlessly complicated relationships and is useless, though there is a easy way to cheat the answer.

[Kurald Galain]

Qin the Warring States uses what they call the Yin-Yang dice. Roll 2d10 and subtract the lower result from the higher. Then add in your skill modifier to beat a target number decided based on how difficult the task you're attempting is.

Babylon 5 uses the same, only with 2d6 rather than 2d10. I seem to recall that mathematically, this works out to exactly the same as 2d6-7 (or 2d10-11 in your case), except it's more confusing for the playre.

I've also seen the d66 in other places, and of course In Nomine uses a d666 somewhere in there (although this more of a gimmick than an actual mechanic).

Anyway to the OP, my question is what is it you're trying to accomplish? Why would you want varying ranges of results in this fashion?

[llamamushroom]

[Probability argument] ...The answer involves needlessly complicated relationships and is useless, though there is a easy way to cheat the answer.

Is that "Roll a d12; 11=0, 12= re-roll"?

[Ihala]

Is that "Roll a d12; 11=0, 12= re-roll"?

Yep, you got it, that's the cheating way to do it.

[ref]

Statis Pro Baseball (though it doesn't involve dice in any way) had the result numbers on the players go from 11 to 88 without 9's or 0's.