How does the forum dice roller work anyway?

I thought I’d do a review of the forum’s dice roller syntax. The info is in a few places but it seemed desirable to condense it. The veteran play by forum members will already have found and be using this information but I thought a condensation might make it somewhat easier to find for new guys or for lapsed forum players like myself who might have forgotten how it works.

I read back through the dice roller is installed thread and noted four methods for ‘rolling’ dice. Use : (a colon) for the ; (semi-colon) in my examples of the syntax. In the examples x is the number of dice you want to roll and n being the number of sides on those dice.

The ‘default’ is rolls from a number of six sided die.

;dice x;

Example result for six dice:

Rolling 6:
(1, 2, 2, 5, 5, 6)

You can take that a bit further and specify the number of sides the die you are rolling have, 4 or 8 or 10 or 12 or even 6.

;dice xdn;

Example result for six twelve-sided dice:

Rolling 6d12:
(1, 1, 4, 7, 8, 10)

Or perhaps ten sides:

Rolling 6d10:
(1, 1, 4, 5, 6, 10)

You can also roll groups of dice with either of these commands.

;dice x x x; or ;dice xdn xdn xdn;

Example result for 3 groups of differing numbers of six sided dice.

Rolling 3 4 5:
(2, 2, 5)  (4, 4, 5, 6)  (2, 2, 4, 6, 6)

Example result for 3 groups of differing numbers of ten-sided dice.

Rolling 3d10 4d10 5d10:
(2, 8, 10)  (1, 2, 9, 10)  (1, 2, 2, 9, 9)

But the best one is specifically for playing Axis and Allies. This command will allow you to roll groups of six sided dice and will check to see if the results are less than a certain number. It will then count the total hits from the requested rolls.

;aaa x@value or less that hits;

You can roll for more than one group at a time.

So if you are attacking with two infantry, an artillery, a tank, a fighter, and a bomber for example that would be 1 unit hitting at 1 or less; 2 units at 2 or less; 2 units at 3 or less and 1 unit at 4 or less. That would translate to this ‘code.’

;aaa 1@1 2@2 2@3 1@4;

And the actual roll would look like this:

Rolls: 1@1 2@2 2@3 1@4; Total Hits: 31@1: (5)2@2: (1, 3)2@3: (5, 2)1@4: (3)

And as you will no doubt have noticed, you can use more than one random generator type per post. What you can’t do is ask it to roll groups of six sided and say ten sided die at the same time.

Don’t try ;dice 2d6 7d12;  Really. Don’t do it.

You also can’t edit a post with a die result in it. You get gibberish, which if you think about it is a good thing.

So to recap using : for ; and x will be the number of results and n will be the number of sides.

Any number of six sided dice – ;dice x;

Any number of dice with a specified number of sides – ;dice xdn;

Groups of either of the above – ;dice x x x; or ;dice xdn xdn xdn;

Axis and Allies combat rolls with ‘hits’ counted – ;aaa x@value or less to hit;

Also for more than one combat value – ;aaa x@value or less that hits x@second value or less that hits;

I hope you find this information helpful.

So I guess I didn’t say anything that was wrong in this write-up?