Rollable Table and the Bell Curve

I'm taking advantage of some unexpected downtime to rebuild some rollable tables for my game. Has anyone got a trick to giving the table a "bell-curve" effect? Is it just a matter of evenly reducing the weight of the result, or is there something more to it? Thanks!

Also, has anyone put together a good roll template to clean up table results? As is, they sure eat up a lot of space in the chat window. Anyone care to share?

Yeah, adjusting the weight of the result would be the way to go. Use AnyDice or something to find a dice expression of your choice, then use that to find the respective weights for your results. Remember that Roll20 uses integers for the weight, not percentages, so you can't straight-up use the AnyDice values. For example, if you use 3d6, the total number of possible results is 6^3, or 216. The percentage listed for an 11 is 12.50%, so the weight you have to list in the table is 12.50% of 216, or 27.

Yes, to get a bell curve, simply modify the weights on the table. For example, 2d6 forms a bell curve, which could be represented with the following table: Name Weight 2 1 3 2 4 3 5 4 6 5 7 6 8 5 9 4 10 3 11 2 12 1 If there's a specific dice roll bell curve you want to emulate, it can help to list out all the possible results for the roll: Die 1 Die 2 Total 1 1 2 1 2 3 1 3 4 1 4 5 1 5 6 1 6 7 2 1 3 2 2 4 2 3 5 2 4 6 2 5 7 2 6 8 3 1 4 3 2 5 3 3 6 3 4 7 3 5 8 3 6 9 4 1 5 4 2 6 4 3 7 4 4 8 4 5 9 4 6 10 5 1 6 5 2 7 5 3 8 5 4 9 5 5 10 5 6 11 6 1 7 6 2 8 6 3 9 6 4 10 6 5 11 6 6 12 Count the number of times each total appears, and use that for the weight. If there isn't a specific die roll you're emulating, simply make sure the weights are symmetrical. (The number of table items with weight X should be an even number, unless X is the highest weight on the table.)

I can't add to the math side, well not with any level of accuracy anyway ;) ... but... you can use rollable tables to reflect percentage values (see the wiki, specifically here for details). You can additionally add "weight" to items in two methods; either enter the number of times you want the item be a possible result OR enter a percentage value. When using percentage values, do not place "%" after the number, and the final number of all items that are elements of the table must equal 100.

Thanks, guys! That's exactly what I needed to know.

Just to mention, the numbers do NOT have to add up to 100, they will work with any numbers Adding two elements with a weight of 20 and 40, will add up to 60, but the first one will come up 1/3 of the time, and the other 2/3. You can add 10 elements each with a weight of 3000, and they'd come up exactly 1/10. So if you got percentage values, you can use those of course, in that case the result must be 100, otherwise it won't match the % values. That's all.

Quatar is spot on, i was merely addressing the percentage question, but like he says any ratio that gives the desired effect will do. I tend to default to percentages as it is a very easy way to understand your potential output ;) Happy rolling!