[Dice Pools] When colors of dice become too much

[Dregg]

Ok,
Working on my newest monstrosity "Path of 5 harmonies" I have ran into a mind numbing issue.

The game is simple
Dice pool based system with a sliding Difficulty
No Skills
Only Paths (or styles as they once were called in my Pulp Era rpg)
The 5 Paths are used to create an action
In thoery lets call the pats
Speed
Will
Brains
Power
Forte
Each of these would be assigned a number of D6
To perform an action you would use the dice from each of the paths to make your roll
So if you were to run up the stairs and shoot your pistol
it would be Dice from
Speed (to Run) 2 Dice
Power (to make it up the flight) 1 Dice
and
Forte (to Shoot the Pistol) 4 Dice (you really want to hit)

So in theory 7 Dice to roll
Now there is a built in Mod called Chi that will give a max to the dice rolled in an action so with a Chi of 6 we will shave off a dice off of forte to meet this limit)
Dice are rolled, the GM sees the difficulty at 4 so all the dice need to be 4 or over to be a success... easy

That hard part
Each of the Path also adds a special effect to the roll... More Damage, Stunting, quicker draw, whatever. So Now in order to seperate the Different pools I have decided to color coat the Paths.

I'm startin to think this Insane. Who wants a game where the player has to go out and buy 30.00 worth of Dice to play.
There has to be a way to simplify but how?

I'm stuck

[Christopher Weeks]

I'm startin to think this Insane. Who wants a game where the player has to go out and buy 30.00 worth of Dice to play.
There has to be a way to simplify but how?

I hope you're wrong.  I'm playing with two different resolution mechanics right now that use different colored dice to mean different things.  And six-siders are cheap.  Hey!...maybe we could get a grant from some die-manufacturers...  :-)

Seriously though, how many colors of dice will ever be included in your rolls?  All five?  Then how many of each would ever be needed?  Realistically, if any given player will only need four dice of a color, even if five distinct colors are actually needed, the GM could have five of those sets of colored D6s -- the ones that come 36 (I think?) to a pack for ~$8 and while you'd still need $30 in dice, not every player would.

In your case, it would make a neat metagame principle that each player had to bring one set/color/path to the table in the interests of "harmony."

Chris

[Dregg]

I'm startin to think this Insane. Who wants a game where the player has to go out and buy 30.00 worth of Dice to play.
There has to be a way to simplify but how?

Seriously though, how many colors of dice will ever be included in your rolls?  All five?  Then how many of each would ever be needed?  Realistically, if any given player will only need four dice of a color, even if five distinct colors are actually needed, the GM could have five of those sets of colored D6s -- the ones that come 36 (I think?) to a pack for ~$8 and while you'd still need $30 in dice, not every player would.

In your case, it would make a neat metagame principle that each player had to bring one set/color/path to the table in the interests of "harmony."

Chris

Yes each Path has a color (the path names sound more Cosmic, but I'm not at my lap top) and then the Other mechanic Ying/Yang will also  encompas a color as well AND you can trade in Path dice at 2 for 1 exchnage for a Generic die that can be used for anything.
So 7 colors so far.
In theory the Player would only need 6 of each of the colors and about 5 White D6's

I like your metagame Idea, actually love it!
And the way to balance the player type is model the templates/classes/ Character types off of the Paths.
This is why the Forge Rawks on Toast!

[Matt Gwinn]

The number of dice shouldn't  create much of a problem, especially with six-siders.  I have tons of them in all variety of colors.  Anyone who has seriously played D&D or GURPS should have loads of them.

I have one unrelated question.
To get a success ALL dice must beat the difficulty?  That seem sexceptionally difficult.  You also run into the problem of things becoming more difficult the more dice you roll.  It's far easier to roll a six on 1 die than 10 sixes on 10 dice.  or am I missing something?

,Matt

[Dregg]

I have one unrelated question.
To get a success ALL dice must beat the difficulty?  That seem sexceptionally difficult.  You also run into the problem of things becoming more difficult the more dice you roll.  It's far easier to roll a six on 1 die than 10 sixes on 10 dice.  or am I missing something?

,Matt

No the Successes are counted up and matched verses a Target of needed successes or vs. anothers successes in a contested roll.
I was not clear on that =)
I also added a component called I-Ching, the Coin toss. This would be used if there was no way in hell if a success could be made. If tit comes out in your favor you squeek by on the task if you fail you fail badly.
No the thing that I have been trying to figure if I want is an open Roll...
Roll a 6 roll again or keep it closed.
My main concern is the amount of colored dice and If it would be confusing. There has to be a way to not color code, but It can work in the advantage of the player it looks like.

[Shreyas Sampat]

If you can accept a fixed 50% target number on your dice, you can simply use the five denominations of coinage, supplemented by dice (or wacky Canadian money? bus tokens?)

I actually sort of like the idea of having 2 kinds of dice (with the option of sliding difficulty numbers) and the 5 Paths being represented by coinage.

[Lance D. Allen]

If colors are an issue, you simply roll more times.

Roll 2 dice for speed. Note the successes.
Roll 1 die for Power. Note the success/failure.
Roll 3 dice for Forte. Note the successes.

Determine what each success means. Voila. You only needed 3 dice altogether to determine. If you had 3 different colors of dice, then you could resolve it with a single roll, but it doesn't really matter.

No reason to stress; the situation is easily handled.

[Halzebier]

Hey!...maybe we could get a grant from some die-manufacturers...  :-)

Rumour has it - or can someone confirm this? - that with both "Shadowrun" and "Earthdawn", the marketing department insisted on the type of dice used...and arguably damaged both games in the process:

SR is saddled with standard dice (i.e., d6s), supposedly to increase the game's mass market appeal.

The die size is too grainy for what they were trying to do, so it has open-ended rolls, which cause all sorts of problems (weird probability curves, buckets of dice needed etc.).

(If the d6s were labelled "1,2,3,4,5,5+", some problems would be solved, but then, we'd no longer be talking about standard dice.)

ED is saddled with using every die type available, presumably because the marketing department wanted to go all gimmicky here.

But ED has an additive system, which is unecessarily clunky due to progressions such as from d12+d10 to d20+d4 or rolls such as d20+d8+d6.

SR with d10s or d20s and ED with d6s only would have been a great improvement, in my opinion.

YMMV.

Regards,

Hal