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One of my players has dyscalculia (meaning that they have severe difficulties processing math and numbers), and though I don't have dyscalculia, I do have adhd and I'm not so hot with math either. I can process mathematical problems carefully one step at a time, but this is demanding in terms of both time and brainpower.
Luckily for us, we play over roll20, an online tabletop software that can handle some of the math for us to an extent. I do wonder how this is handled over a physical table and dice, however, and unfortunately I've never had the luxury of being able to play that way.
What are your techniques for handling players' difficulties with math, and helping to make the game fun and smooth for everyone, including those with disabilities?
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Calculators at the table help a lot, even if you have no problems with math.
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I am also in favor of Hero Lab if you can get it (It's not just the numbers at the table - it's the numbers when making your character), and of writing things down on a piece of paper if you can't.
"Here is my accuracy for rolling 1-20 if I'm using Power Attack, here is my accuracy if I'm not, here is my damage..."
I see four options:
a) Get the help of a more math affine player.
b) As a GM, go for math lightweight options. Avoid Power Attack etc., monsters with many attacks, buffs, debuffs and so on.
c) Write down any important result in advance.
d) Change the rules for the dyscalculia player:
Attack: If he rolls 10 or more with d20, he hits, period. Bonuses don't matter. If it feels too strong or too weak, increase or lower the value a bit.
Save: As attack.
Skill: As attack, as long as he invested enough into the skill. If he didn't, let him roll for 20 or not at all.
Damage: Use (rounded down) averages for physical combat and damage spells. d6 makes 3, d8 makes 4 etc. - it's always half the max roll. A 6d6 fireball then always deals 6*3=18 damage.
I'd discuss the last option with the group and make sure everyone is fine with it.
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I have only ever had one player who had a really difficult time with tracking multipliers and one-off bonuses, and power attack etc etc. I made them a special character sheet with every attack routine they would ever use (about 20 or so including haste and inspire courage).
The player would choose haste>inspire>rapid shot>deadly aim and it told them the to hit bonuses and already figured average damage.
He would then have enough d20s to roll all attacks at once, color coded for order. We could start with the lowest so he had to add less. Ie, if his lowest bonus was +17 to hit and he rolled a 10; he could say does 27 hit? If I say yes then he knows every die that shows a number above "10" is a hit and just sets it aside never having to actually add the roll to the bonus. So he would roll 4-5 dice but only have to add 1-2 times per sequence.
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We have a couple players who make charts for all their possible attacks. They roll their die, add their situational modifiers, check the chart, and done. Makes it so fast. We can do a decent combat with a half dozen enemies in like 20 minutes.
We have another guy who did the color coded multiple dice thing. Speeds things up well.
We have a couple players who make charts for all their possible attacks. They roll their die, add their situational modifiers, check the chart, and done. Makes it so fast. We can do a decent combat with a half dozen enemies in like 20 minutes.
We have another guy who did the color coded multiple dice thing. Speeds things up well.
what a wonderful idea! If I ever do a game on a physical table I will remember it.
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Kind of off topic, but I know a guy who came from a stoner family in rural no-where with a school that should've just given up and fallen down for all the good it did anyone... and he very seriously credits D20 gaming as the reason he's both literate and capable with math. While it might be frustrating to apply the math all the time, one at least inevitably gets better with it.
As a GM, I just learned the characters so when they got to act, they would tell me what the wanted to do (Power Attack, Cleave etc) and I would just ask them to roll the appropriate dice.
I would then say something like "Okay, with your roll of 14, plus your bonus of 12, you hit with a 26, smashing the Ogre with your fist, roll a D6 and we can figure out damage..."
If the GM has issues with math... get a helpful player to do the work.
It's a team game, you only need one person who's good at the rules to enjoy it.
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I am great at the rules, good at remembering all the bonuses to calculate in, and terrible at arithmetic. I've got into the habit of just saying aloud my math.
Bolstered by guidance spell from her friendly cleric and shouted gymnastics instructions from the monk, Cyanne cartwheels out of the way of the oncoming rhino.
Doing a Charlie's Angels hair flip, she lands on her toes and bows before the astonished people in the marketplace.
(I love play by post. It does the math for me!)
In live at the table gaming, I simply announce my roll and the modifiers I'm adding, and the table of math-savvy players will give me my grand total. I have a calculator, but the whiz kids I play with in PFS are all faster than that!
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Don't change a thing. Let the player struggle through it. They will figure it out over time and be better off for it. This comes from experience as I'm dyslexic and it affects number and letters. Gaming helped me a lot. No one changed the game for me and I struggled but I loved the game so much I put the effort in. Something I didn't do in school. I didn't find out I was dyslexic till I was in my first year of college. That's right gaming got me that far. Once diagnosed I was taught techniques, took years to perfect and when I went back to finish what I started 4.0 in every class. I just took what I did to learn games applied to my classes. I'd come over book reading all kinds of ways till it made sense.
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There are also build tricks you can do to remove the dice as much as possible. If you worship Abadar, there is a feat called Measured Response that allows you to take average damage on weapon attacks. This way if you have an 18 STR, and a +3 greatsword you can just say I hit for 16 points of damage instead of having to roll 2d6 + 3 enhancement + 6 STR.
There are also build tricks you can do to remove the dice as much as possible. If you worship Abadar, there is a feat called Measured Response that allows you to take average damage on weapon attacks. This way if you have an 18 STR, and a +3 greatsword you can just say I hit for 16 points of damage instead of having to roll 2d6 + 3 enhancement + 6 STR.
That should not be a feat :-p
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Don't change a thing. Let the player struggle through it. They will figure it out over time and be better off for it. This comes from experience as I'm dyslexic and it affects number and letters. Gaming helped me a lot. No one changed the game for me and I struggled but I loved the game so much I put the effort in. Something I didn't do in school. I didn't find out I was dyslexic till I was in my first year of college. That's right gaming got me that far. Once diagnosed I was taught techniques, took years to perfect and when I went back to finish what I started 4.0 in every class. I just took what I did to learn games applied to my classes. I'd come over book reading all kinds of ways till it made sense.
I have no interest in changing the rules of the game, but I'd like to emphasize that although it's great that it worked for you, powering through your disability and working without accommodations doesn't work for everyone. It certainly doesn't work for my ADHD in particular and only got me so far in life before my coping strategies proved ineffective and broke down. I wasn't diagnosed with ADHD until I was in college.
If I have a player tell me they're having problems and that they need some kind of accommodation, I will try to help them. I will not say "tough nuts, just struggle through it because someone on the Paizo boards said that worked for them." If I did that I would be a bully, and a hypocrite because people throughout my life have done that sort of thing to me many times and it was very emotionally destructive to me over time. On the other hand if people told me they didn't need any help, then I won't force help on them and leave them be.
Sorry, it's kind of a hot button issue with me.
There are also build tricks you can do to remove the dice as much as possible. If you worship Abadar, there is a feat called Measured Response that allows you to take average damage on weapon attacks. This way if you have an 18 STR, and a +3 greatsword you can just say I hit for 16 points of damage instead of having to roll 2d6 + 3 enhancement + 6 STR.
Say goodbye to nat 1's o:
I am great at the rules, good at remembering all the bonuses to calculate in, and terrible at arithmetic. I've got into the habit of just saying aloud my math.
Bolstered by guidance spell from her friendly cleric and shouted gymnastics instructions from the monk, Cyanne cartwheels out of the way of the oncoming rhino.
[dice=Acrobatics]1d20+7+1+2Doing a Charlie's Angels hair flip, she lands on her toes and bows before the astonished people in the marketplace.
(I love play by post. It does the math for me!)
In live at the table gaming, I simply announce my roll and the modifiers I'm adding, and the table of math-savvy players will give me my grand total. I have a calculator, but the whiz kids I play with in PFS are all faster than that!
note to self: play at the table with math nerds :Þ
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note to self: play at the table with math nerds :Þ
It's worked for our math-challenged player. :P I was a math major and one of our other players has been playing D&D so long that he's even faster at simple arithmetic than I am. We can often have his entire roll, with non-standard buffs, calculated out before he's even found his normal bonus on his character sheet.
On that note, I will definitely suggest pre-calculating as much as possible for the math-challenged; our math-challenged player doesn't even usually have his skill bonuses added together ahead of time, so every time he does a skill check, he's trying to do "okay, it's three ranks plus four intelligence plus three class skill plus two racial...oh, and then there's all these situational buffs/debuffs I'm getting..."
Get everything you can added together ahead of time when you can do it more at your leisure. Then, when crunch time hits, it's less you have to figure out while you're delaying someone else's turn. It may even be worth it to pre-calculate with some of the more situational, but fairly frequent buffs, like prayer or bardic performance (depending on the group).
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On a somewhat related note, dwarves are a lovely race, and fiercely powerful, except I didn't know that for a long time, as I struggled to remember all their sodding situational bonuses. They're not for adding-adverse people.
Sadly, a lot of the finer details in pathfinder relies on fiddly, temporary and situational bonuses.
In general, I'd recommend you try to play casters as much as possible in tabletop games, that way your turn won't have math in it the way you get it with warrior classes. You can just write down your save dcs ahead of time, and that will be that. Write down skill bonuses too.
Outside of your turn you'll probably have to deal with hp, saves and initiative, not much you can do about that.
Sometimes people find it easier to count damage instead of lost hit points. I.e. "Okay that orc gave me 7 damage last turn, I write that down. Now, this turn I took 4 damge, 7+4=11, but luckily that's less than 12, which is my max, so I'm still standing." Might be easier than
12-7=5.
5-4=1.
On a somewhat related note, dwarves are a lovely race, and fiercely powerful, except I didn't know that for a long time, as I struggled to remember all their sodding situational bonuses. They're not for adding-adverse people.
Sadly, a lot of the finer details in pathfinder relies on fiddly, temporary and situational bonuses.
In general, I'd recommend you try to play casters as much as possible in tabletop games, that way your turn won't have math in it the way you get it with warrior classes. You can just write down your save dcs ahead of time, and that will be that. Write down skill bonuses too.
Outside of your turn you'll probably have to deal with hp, saves and initiative, not much you can do about that.
Sometimes people find it easier to count damage instead of lost hit points. I.e. "Okay that orc gave me 7 damage last turn, I write that down. Now, this turn I took 4 damge, 7+4=11, but luckily that's less than 12, which is my max, so I'm still standing." Might be easier than
12-7=5.
5-4=1.
Conveniently for my math-challenged player, they're playing a sorcerer drow. c:
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@OP- As a GM, this would be one of the times I think laptops, tablets, phones, etc. would be absolutely acceptable to have on hand. There are many dice aps you can download or use online that will roll the dice and add them up as well as your modifiers. I atcually had one on my laptop (which died... and I lost a bunch of documents which were the back-ups to the flash-drive I lost... fml) tha tI used for GMing because it was faster than me rolling dice for a bunch of different monsters.
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It might help to make a character sheet with all of the bonuses already summed, so the player only has to add two numbers (the die + the modifier). Don't make him track any temporary effects like buffs; instead, the GM can tracked these and add them to this result afterwords.
Something like this:
Greatsword Hit: +8
Brad: I rolled...uh, 7. I have a +8 to hit. So that's...7 + 8. Um, 78.
GM: Okay. Kate's inspire courage gives you a +4 to hit. Annie's haste gives you another +1. 78 + 4 + 1 = 83. Wow, the enemy only has 17 AC. You hit the crap out of that guy. Roll damage.
Greatsword Damage: +7
Brad: Uh, it's two dice, right. Let's see, my damage is +7. The rolls are...um, 4 and 2. That's 7 + 4 + 2 = 742.
GM: Adding in Katie's inspire courage of +4, that gives you a total damage of 746. The enemy only has 32 HP. You atomized him with your sword.
Brad: Yay, I'm glad I pretended to be worse than the GM in math!
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It can sometimes help to have a sort of basic 'formula card' for a player, particularly if they're one of the people who struggles with the math because it overwhelms with all the 'floating' add-ons.
For example, for damage, if you have a printed card that has:
Weapon Dice Roll + ( )Enhancement + ( )STR + ( )Power Attack + ( )Inspire Courage
...printed on it over and over, plus a pen and simple calculator, then a player can write-in what they need to in the blanks, and use a new line when things change, scratching out the old one. At this point it's as easy as following the line with a + key on a calculator since it's all right there in front of them.
Compared to just having a "+X" number, it has the advantage that they can see right in front of them exactly what's going on. It's likely that they will start visualizing the linear system in their mind, which is a massive victory over confusion.
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Play a witch and make other people do math!
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I use a white board and adjust my character sheet numbers as necessary. I recently was in a combat where my melee tripper was affected by 6 or 7 different buffs. I just wrote out what the new values would be for my default actions. Since I play Society, it's hard to predict what buffs I'll be receiving until I'm at the table. I believe that encounter included bloodrage, challenge, heroism, haste, enlarge, and bless. Possibly more. As such, I adjusted my hit bonus, damage, AC, CMB, and CMD as appropriate. I did this during other players' turns so I would be ready for my turn.
I'm pretty good at math, though, so this might not be as relevant for folks with dyscalculia.
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Have you considered 5th Edition D&D? It replaces all the fiddly little bonuses with Advantage (roll two d20s and take the better) and Disadvantage (roll two d20s and take the worse).
So everything is 1d20+X not 1d20+X+Y+Z-W-V
It REALLY makes the math a whole lot easier. Combat really flies in 5th Edition.
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I use a white board and adjust my character sheet numbers as necessary. I recently was in a combat where my melee tripper was affected by 6 or 7 different buffs. I just wrote out what the new values would be for my default actions. Since I play Society, it's hard to predict what buffs I'll be receiving until I'm at the table. I believe that encounter included bloodrage, challenge, heroism, haste, enlarge, and bless. Possibly more. As such, I adjusted my hit bonus, damage, AC, CMB, and CMD as appropriate. I did this during other players' turns so I would be ready for my turn.
I'm pretty good at math, though, so this might not be as relevant for folks with dyscalculia.
I've thought about getting a whiteboard a few times. Still crosses my mind from time to time.
If I ever set up a super gaming den, it'll probably feature a glass-topped table with a grid beneath it, so that you can draw maps, scribble notes, etc. straight onto it.
Have you considered 5th Edition D&D? It replaces all the fiddly little bonuses with Advantage (roll two d20s and take the better) and Disadvantage (roll two d20s and take the worse).
So everything is 1d20+X not 1d20+X+Y+Z-W-V
It REALLY makes the math a whole lot easier. Combat really flies in 5th Edition.
I kinda have to second the suggestion to consider another game system. While other posters have offered plenty of good solutions to help cut down on numbers management, Pathfinder is a very math-heavy system with lots of little fiddly bits. I'm pretty good with math, but even I got frustrated when trying to GM a couple fights where lots of buffs, debuffs, conditions, and modifiers were flying on both sides.
There are plenty of RPGs out there that go a bit easier on the math side of things. I'd recommend at least checking them out.
Have you considered 5th Edition D&D? It replaces all the fiddly little bonuses with Advantage (roll two d20s and take the better) and Disadvantage (roll two d20s and take the worse).
So everything is 1d20+X not 1d20+X+Y+Z-W-V
It REALLY makes the math a whole lot easier. Combat really flies in 5th Edition.
I kinda have to second the suggestion to consider another game system. While other posters have offered plenty of good solutions to help cut down on numbers management, Pathfinder is a very math-heavy system with lots of little fiddly bits. I'm pretty good with math, but even I got frustrated when trying to GM a couple fights where lots of buffs, debuffs, conditions, and modifiers were flying on both sides.
There are plenty of RPGs out there that go a bit easier on the math side of things. I'd recommend at least checking them out.
Repeat after me: close enough for state work. Close enough for state work.
At high levels 3 points of damage probably isn't going to matter. The next person up is going to hit the thing for 47 damage anyway and kill it whether it started the round at 46 or 30.
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There are several dice roller apps that can save multiple sets of dice. So he could save a single attack, saves, full round attacks and so on. It allows for bonuses so once he has a standard roll set he has no math to do.
The one or two situational mods can be tacked on.