A Nerdy Discovery: Minilith and the Green Die

[Carrot in my Hat]

I discovered a strange anomaly while playing J2J the other day. My opponent had a ship with green die power and the minilith and attacked me. He rolled a 1 on the die. I automatically assumed that because of the minilith this would turn his roll into a 10. To my initial surprise he rotated the die 180 degrees and an 8 appeared.

The reason this surprised me is because all dice are created such that the lowest number on a die is directly opposite the highest number on the die. Then the next lowest opposite of the next highest. For example if you examine the 6 sided violet die you will find the following numbers are opposites
1-6 , 2-5 , 3-4

This even works for the blue 16 sided die:
1-16 , 2-15 , and so on

However the 10 sided green die does not technically have a number 10 on it. It has a 0 which in the game is counted as a 10 (don't tell me you are supposed to count the 0 as a 0 because that would entirely defeat the purpose of upgrading from the orange die). However, whoever manufactured the die did not treat the 0 as a 10. Therefore the 0 (lowest number) is opposite of the 9 (highest number). And so on 1-8, 2-7....

Why does this matter?
Well mathematically it means the minilith is not as 'strong' on the green die than it would be if the die was numbered appropriately. It still provides an advantage just not as good as it could be.

Well that's it for my fun fact. The real question is 'Why did Playroom not get a green die with the number 10 on it?'

[Tyberius]

By golly, now I'll have to check my dice.
One of my sets didn't come with a green 10-sider, so I first bought one at my FLGS that was at least green.
Then I switched it with my KinderBunnies 10-sider since it looked closer.
Now I'll have to check all 3 dice types and see if they share the same situation.
(I should also check my Chessex D&D 10-siders as well)

Great find.

[costguy]

Wow this is cool discovery - I got out my old D&D dice - from 20+ years ago. (man I'm a geek) and my 2 d10's follow this pattern of 0 with 9 opposit. I would imagine this is industry standard as disce companies are pretty strict about this. And if you want to look there is a video out there talking about dice from a dice manufacturer about how his are the best. But anyway. Wasn't sure about the effect - but you seem to be right the average final roll is 7.2 where with a true 10 this would be 8 In other words if you had to roll higher than a 7 your chances would be2 in 5 rather than 3 in 5 (40% vs 60%)

Of course your still better off with the D10 than the d8 with an average of 6.5 awsome

[TheDavii]

This page on Wikipedia indicates that most d10's run from 0 - 9 and are used in "pairs" to create percentiles (00-99). It is the "standard" way of making dice.

I would expect that PR did that due to cost. Anything non-standard is going to be more expensive.

[sprinterash]

also the rules say that the nuber opposite 2 on the d12 is 10 instead of 11 its an honest mistake but a misktae nobtehless also quick rule about non-d10 dice: the number rolled and the number on the opposite side (the side that the die is resting on i.e. 180 degrees over) add to 1 more than the highest roll possible. obvious but helps to find out if flipping is advantageous with some simple subtraction (for the d10 pairs of opposite side add to 9 with 0 being opposite 9 and counting as 0 and not 10)

[mandrilltiger]

I don't have J2J but I know that the quest 12 sideds have a 7 on the other side of the 1 not a 12. Did they change this for J2J?