AnyDice: How to compare highest roll of two dices with another result

anydice

My question is that I want a system where I am always rolling 2 dices (let's say 1d4 & 1d8) to get the highest result of these two. Then, roll the difficulty with another dice (let's say 1d6) and compare these results to see what are the odds of a failure, a tie, and a success for different difficult dices.

I don't know how to make it on AnyDice to have precise numbers. Can someone help me?

Best Answer

Part 1: `highest of A and B` for skill dice

output [highest of 1d4 and 1d8]

You can even chain that, which you can see in action here

Part 2: `>1d6` for comparison to difficulty dice

output [highest of 1d4 and 1d8]>1d6

This compares the highest of the two dice with the 1d6, and if it's higher, it's a 1, otherwise a 0.

The end result using > = < is this:

61.46 % higher, 12.50 % Tie, 26.04 % smaller for a difficulty die of 1d6.

Adaption is simple!

To adapt, just alter the dice in the upper portion of this Script:

SKILL_A: 1d4
SKILL_B: 1d8
DIFF: 1d6

output [highest of SKILL_A and SKILL_B]>DIFF named "Higher"
output [highest of SKILL_A and SKILL_B]=DIFF named "Equal"
output [highest of SKILL_A and SKILL_B]<DIFF named "Lower"

Streamling with functions

Anydice allows running functions. And Ilmari Karonen did a very quick streamline on it, that allows working from it later.

Larger, equal, and smaller than can be seen as "[this] - [that]" and then seeing a positive, 0 or negative value. So just to see 1, 0 and -1, you can truncate it with:

function: sign of N:n {
  if N < 0 { result: -1 }
  if N > 0 { result: 1 }
  result: 0
}

The operative line then becomes

output [sign of [highest of SKILL_A and SKILL_B] - DIFF] named "1 = higher, 0 = equal, -1 = lower"

Resulting in this script

Related Solutions

[RPG] How to use AnyDice with Classic World of Darkness / 20th Anniversary

I ended up getting a tweet from the creator of AnyDice with an optimized solution. The function names are clear and it works quickly.

@catlikecoding Hey Jasper, could you help me with an #AnyDice question? I'm still learning the ropes with the system. http://t.co/H0qMhIaIGD

— Taylor Wright (@redlamp) June 6, 2014

@redlamp Don't use a mega function, break it up. http://t.co/anUMab5ByK

— Jasper Flick (@catlikecoding) June 6, 2014

The code sample:

function: roll ROLL:s {
 if 1@ROLL < 1 & (#ROLL)@ROLL = -1 {
  result: -1
 }
 result: [highest of 0 and ROLL]
}

function: roll ROLL:n with willpower {
 result: [highest of 0 and ROLL + 1]
}

function: specialty N:n {
 if N = 10 { result: 2 }
 if N = 1 { result: -1 }
 result: N >= DIFFICULTY
}

DIFFICULTY: 7

NORMAL: d{-1:1, 0:(DIFFICULTY - 2), 1:(11 - DIFFICULTY)}

SPECIALTY: [specialty d10]

X: 4

output [roll X d NORMAL] named "normal"
output [roll X d SPECIALTY] named "speciality"
output [roll X d NORMAL with willpower] named "normal willpower"
output [roll X d SPECIALTY with willpower] named "speciality willpower"
\ automatic success is automatic, nothing to show \

[RPG] How should I emulate the highest in an irregular dice pool in AnyDice

This is doable, but you'll need to break it up into smaller chunks, so the syntax will get a bit annoying. Here's an example:

output [highest of [highest of 1@2d4 and 1@4d6] and [highest of 1@5d8 and 1@2d10]]

Now to break this down: The highest of X and Y function grabs the higher value of the two supplied. The 1@2d4 syntax grabs the highest die rolled in the given pool.

[highest of 1@2d4 and 1@4d6] - The higher of the best d4 and the best d6
[highest of 1@5d8 and 1@2d10] - The higher of the best d8 and the best d10
[highest of [highest of 1@2d4 and 1@4d6] and [highest of 1@5d8 and 1@2d10]] - The higher of the result from the previous two.

You can also continue nesting higher of X and Y as much as you need to cover all the dice pools.