Any Excel users know of a formula to generate a list of dN numbers?

To save time running a game I thought it might be handy to have a pre-generated list of die rolls to use during encounters. A spreadsheet like Excel seems to be an ideal place to do this, but my knowledge of this type of app is sorely lacking in just how to do this.

3 comments

If you put the die type along the top row (just the numbers, no d) and this in A2 it should do what you want.

=RANDBETWEEN(1,A$1)

You can copy the cell without editing the formula and fill as much of the sheet as you want. Press F9 to reroll.

If you prefer a percentile die with zero, you can change it to

=RANDBETWEEN(0,9)*10

Or just combine the 2 dice as a single d100

3
- This is basically what I do as well.
  
  One thing I find useful is to list your party's Perception modifiers, use the formula above for a random d20 result for each PC, then add them together (for example, =B2+C2). Then when they walk into a room, hit F9 for an instant whole-party secret Perception roll.
  
  1
I’m not sure about a formula but you can use Visual Basic to make a random number generator for a bunch of rolls and place those values in an array and then place the array in the appropriate cells.

I can’t tell you exactly how to do
This as I haven’t used excel or Visual Basic in a while and never actually linked them together myself. I don’t know if you can even do it for free as I think visual studio costs money, though that may show how long I’ve been away from that side.

I can say you can also do the same as what I describe above using Google Sheets and App Scripts in probably 20 lines of code. I am more fluent with those and I think it would be pretty easy even if you don’t know how to code.

-2