Let me start off this post by saying, shit's about to get nerdy up in here... and that's coming from a guy who writes a blog about "little army men."
Today we're going to talk about Wizards and rolling for spells. I'm sure I'm not the first person to do this, nor will I be the last. I started this quest of nerdiness because I wanted to know what are the odds of getting the spell I wanted for a Lvl 3 wizard vs a lvl 4. I couldn't find any definitive answers online so I decided to do the math myself.
In case anyone doesn't know, the way magic spells work in the current edition is that there are 6 different spells. You roll a die for every wizard level you are and you get the spell that corresponds to that number. (Example: If I'm a level 2, I will roll 2 dice. If I roll a 1 and 5, I get the #1 and the #5 spell in the list) Since you can't have the same spell twice, if you roll a double, you get to pick any of the others from the list. (Example: I roll of two 3's, I can change one of the 3's into a 4. Thus giving me spells #3 and #4.)
Today we're going to talk about Wizards and rolling for spells. I'm sure I'm not the first person to do this, nor will I be the last. I started this quest of nerdiness because I wanted to know what are the odds of getting the spell I wanted for a Lvl 3 wizard vs a lvl 4. I couldn't find any definitive answers online so I decided to do the math myself.
In case anyone doesn't know, the way magic spells work in the current edition is that there are 6 different spells. You roll a die for every wizard level you are and you get the spell that corresponds to that number. (Example: If I'm a level 2, I will roll 2 dice. If I roll a 1 and 5, I get the #1 and the #5 spell in the list) Since you can't have the same spell twice, if you roll a double, you get to pick any of the others from the list. (Example: I roll of two 3's, I can change one of the 3's into a 4. Thus giving me spells #3 and #4.)
The only way to figure up these odds is to write out all possible dice combinations and see which one meet our criteria. For the charts below, we are assuming that I want the #6 spell. This is just for simplicity sake, if you wanted the Comet of Casandra(#5 on the list) the chances are EXACTLY the same.
Level 1 Wizard
I didn't do a chart for a level 1 because you can't roll a double on 1 die so the odds are:1/6 = 16.66666666666667%
Level 2 Wizard
So as you can see, there are 21 possible combinations and 11 outcomes that give us what we want.
11/21 = 52.38095238095238%
Level 3 Wizard
There are 56 different combinations of dice rolls for a level 3. 40 of which will give us our desired result.
40/56 = 71.42857142857143%
Level 4 Wizard
There are 126 different combinations of dice. Only 5 of them will not give us a 6 or a double.
121/126 = 96.03174603174603%
Level 5 Wizard
I didn't type out all the different combinations of 5 dice, I don't see the point in it. There is only one combination of 5 dice that won't produce our desired result:1 2 3 4 5
Anything else will give you the spell you want. Doing a bit of Googling, I've discovered there are 252 distinct combinations.251/252 = 99.6031746031746%
So in other words if you have a level 5 wizard and you don't get the spell you want... the dice really are out to get you.
As messed up as this may sound, it was actually kind of fun doing this. I think my next Mathhammer project will be charge probabilities, specifically for things with Swiftstride (Roll 3 die and discard the lowest.)
1500 point WFB tournament coming up on Saturday. I hate 1500 points with Ogres because by the time you buy characters and core choices, you either don't have many points less, or you have the bare minimum of models on the table.
Tomorrow, I'll try to post my list... but I'm still working on it. It was attempting to squeeze a lvl 4 heavens slaughtermaster into a list and that brought on this whole probability thing.
How about the probabilities that your Cold One knights or chariots will fail their stupidity roll exactly when you need to charge? I still curse Gav Thorpe every time I think about it. Curses be upon him!
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