Resource: The Dice Table

I’m not the biggest fan of rolling dice, other than the fact that it’s kinda required for most RPGs, but I’m more interested in the story than spending time rolling dice.

I’m sure that someone else has had this idea, and I brought it up on Twitter, probably about a year or so ago, but I decided to finally make the thing. This is how it works:

Rather than roll dice, you have a table which has randomly generated a bunch of numbers based on the die. This table has two rows of D20s, since you roll that a lot more than any other die. You simply choose the next number on the list, mark it off, and move along. You can usually eyeball whether the roll succeeds or not far quicker than rolling dice.

An example: a group of goblins attacks the party. The heroes make their actions, then it’s the goblins’ turn to act. You glance down at the chart, see that the next three rolls are 2, 5 and 16. Now, being a good DM, you’re not going to move the third goblin in toward the character that 16 is going to hit, you’re going to play it out the way you should, and have the goblins attack in the order you would if you were rolling. you move the goblins in, and explain right off the bat that the first two goblins miss, but that third one, he may hit. You know he’s got a +2 to hit (I’m not looking at my MM, so that to hit may be off), so you ask the paladin what his AC is. You then quickly describe the way the goblin lodges his spear between the paladin’s armor chinks, hurting him. You can be a lot more evocative without slowing things down for mechanics.

I’ve tried this once before, by rolling the numbers beforehand and writing them down, and it worked out well. Have you ever tried this?  Here’s the PDF of the table.

Dice Monkey has a Patreon, where you can support further content on the site. We also have a Ko-Fi, where we are raising money for the cover of Pointman Hacker Thief 2nd Edition.