CotW Contest #498: I rolled a one -- Critical Failure.

Well, there's this old thing I dreamed up (literally, I had a dream about the art, and designed the card in my sleep to match it), from back on 2018:

Glowing Hellscape
Land
, Put a glow counter on Glowing Hellscape: Add , , or . You lose 1 life for each glow counter on Glowing Hellscape.
Pay for each glow counter on Glowing Hellscape and remove them, , Sacrifice Glowing Hellscape: Roll a d6. On a 1, 2, or 3, create X 1/2 black Insect creature tokens with deathtouch, where X is the number of glow counters on Glowing Hellscape. On a 4 or 5, create an X/X blue and red Wurm creature token with trample. On a 6, create an X+3/3 black and red Demon creature token with flying and trample. Activate this ability only during your turn.

The art would use glow-in-the-dark ink: Insects would just be highly-shiny black; Wurms would glow blue with a red-glow center; Demons would glow red with a highly-shiny black glow center. Insects must all look like long-sausage-abdomened queens.

I realize that with AFR, this'd prolly use the roll table format, but I don't have that template.

Statistics Homework #12
Artifact
If you would roll a die, you may skip that roll and have the result be the expected value from that roll instead. (The expected value is the weighted mean of all possible values. For example, a six-sided die's expected value is 3.5.)
, : Roll X six-sided dice. When you do, ~ deals damage equal to the total of those results to target permanent.
"Don't forget to show your work: 1/6 + 2/6 + 3/6 + 4/6 + 5/6 + 6/6 = 3.5"
--Vanari, Statistics Tutor

Edit: Removed acorn and removed hybrid pip from activation.

-- Dr. Otto Octavius, PhD

Sorry: untranslated word I forgot (english is not my primary language). Thanks.

For those unfamiliar with the reference, the Modron Cathedral is a place in the D&D multiverse. It is located in the plane of Mechanus, the lawful-neutral-aligned plane. Law and order are absolute in Mechanus. Mechanically, this translates to rolls being average whenever possible, e.g., an attack that deals 1d12 + 2 bludgeoning damage automatically deals 8 damage in Mechanus. The plane is primarily populated by modrons—construct-looking creatures that also have biological parts.

The Modron Cathedral is located in Regulus, Mechanus's largest realm. In it resides Primus, the One and the Prime, who rules all of Mechanus. In it also resides the Great Pool from which all modrons are born.

Edit: Redefined "average roll" to be more mathematically accurate.

Rules-wise you're good. Each replacement effect only triggers once per source, but if you had four of these out, a d6 would become a d20.

Assuming your dice are unloaded

sdfkjgh , vizionarius , Daij_Djan : Yes, I'm aware that this is not correct from a purely mathematical standpoint. For D&D and MtG, the most common dice used are d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, and d20. There's the occasional d2, d3, and d100, too. The average single roll for a fair, n-sided die is, as Daij_Djan noted, (n+1)/2. In D&D, any decimal is rounded down, unless otherwise specified; (n+1)/2 and n/2, both rounded down, would be equal for all dice commonly used in D&D and MtG save for a d3. As such, I assumed it would suffice as a simple, operational definition of an "average roll" for the purposes of a Magic card.

Anyway, since my attempt to oversimplify has ruffled feathers, I'll change it to be more mathematically accurate and future-proof. Who knows if a future Un-set card asks a player to roll a 69-sided die? The new definition would accurately put the average roll at 35 rather than 34.