House Rule Question

[ShaneNINE]

Will a house rule like the following screw up the game?

If you have x amount of dice in your pool (this isn't for combat, btw, but other skills) you automatically get y number of successes.

So, if you have, say, 30 dice in your pool for basket weaving then you're guaranteed some number of successes (like maybe 5) to show that 30 dice means you kick ass at making baskets.

My point of view is probably somewhat skewed by Exalted where the TN is always 7. You don't ever change it. What the house rule would mean to address is rolling 30 dice and coming up with some measley amount of successes. I got thinking about this cause the one guy in our group who NEVER thinks of gaming mechanics (he'd be happy flipping coins) brought it up. I figured if he noticed it...

[prophet118]

well what i generally do, is look at the amount of dice to be rolled, and the difficulty (sorry TN)... yeh 30 dice may be cool, but that doesnt always mean a success..even the most skill violin maker, and about 50 violins in his backshed that just didnt make it...lol

[Mike Holmes]

I don't get the question. What's the problem? Too high a chance of player failure? Whiff syndrome? Given the definitions from TROS, this isn't a problem.

I mean the results that the game produces are the results that the game produces. That is, you only have to consider them in the context of other similar rolls. Comparing the outcome of TROS to the outcome of Exalted is nonsensical. The range is not the same, and the expected outcomes are not the same.

It strikes me personally that TROS is an infinitely better system.

Mike

[prophet118]

well with alot of white wolf games, you have one set diff (TN), so that no matter how you do it, it should theoretically be the same, in actuality, that is dead wrong...

when you try and skill, and fail, or just dont do it, the diff does increase, by 1 point

now what confuses me about TROS, is that i was reading through the book that one of the skill defaults was a 13...i may be wrong, but there are no 13's on my d10's....thats what im mostly confused about... though i understand that it is supposed to represent an impossible task.... but how would you succeed at it?

[Jake Norwood]

now what confuses me about TROS, is that i was reading through the book that one of the skill defaults was a 13...i may be wrong, but there are no 13's on my d10's....thats what im mostly confused about... though i understand that it is supposed to represent an impossible task.... but how would you succeed at it?

See "stacking," p. 6, section II.1.

Jake

[prophet118]

aah ok then, not confused anymore.....lol

that is a nice way to do it..lol

[MrGeneHa]

So, if you have, say, 30 dice in your pool for basket weaving then you're guaranteed some number of successes (like maybe 5) to show that 30 dice means you kick ass at making baskets.

... What the house rule would mean to address is rolling 30 dice and coming up with some measley amount of successes.

I don't think this is a major worry, statistically.

Someone on this board wrote up a nice MS Excel sheet to analyze how many successes you'll get at different TNs.  Let's take TN7.

With 20 DICE (far short of 30), your odds of getting at least 5 successes is 94.9%.  Your odds of 4 - 98.4%   3 - 99.6%

The odds of getting no successes (much less a fumble) is less than 1 in 1000.

But, if you don't want to have to ROLL 30 DICE for innocuous matters, you have several choices:

Let 'em have it.  Use your house rule and give them a fraction of dice as successes.  This would assume that they're doing something unimaginative, and aren't striving for brilliance.

Let 'em have it, and don't even bother making a house rule.

Use the die roller utility from the .net players aides page.

Have fun!

Gene