Hi everyone,

I’ve been reading all the material here at the Forge and it's pretty helpful stuff. My compliments to Ron and the whole gang. A very high level of quality in the discussions here. I guess I’ve got a reasonable handle on the big concepts espoused herein and so decided to join in the fun.

I’ve been working to find just the right central dice mechanic for my in-development game. It’s a fantasy RPG, but will not earn “heartbreaker” status (or so I fervently hope), thanks in part to the good advice found here... My working title is “Ancient Powers”.

I’m a programmer and I’ve been using my skills to analyze the distributions and break points for dozens of common techniques. I’ve looked at all the variations listed above (multiple times and with many variants) and found something or other unsatisfactory in all of them (for my game design goals, that is).

My requirements for a central dice system:

1) Low handling time (esp. little math)
2) Even progression
3) Non-Linear
4) Minimize dice needed (say, no more than half-dozen per player)
5) Provide a degree of success (not simple pass/fail)

So here’s what I came up with after a few weeks of working on this in my spare time.

Ability Potentials are figured by adding an attribute to a skill (both rated on a 0 o 5 scale). The standard success check is to roll 2 12-sided dice. Your degree of success is the die that comes closest to your Potential without going over. If you have a advantage of some kind (e.g., a weapon specialty), it’s called an Edge and it provides you with a third die to roll. If you roll doubles within your Potential, you add them together to get a better success degree (crits are defined as success above Potential).

Example: You have a Potential of 8 when sneaking around (derived from your Agility 3 (an attribute) and Stealth 5 (a skill)). You generally roll 2d12 and keep the one closest to 8 without going over. Say you roll {5, 10}, your degree of success is 5. If you have an Edge (say, sneaking around on the rooftops of your home city), you get to roll 3d12. Say you roll {6, 6, 8}, your degree of success is 12 (adding the double six successes is better than keeping the 8). If you also had a pair of magic sneaky boots, they might provide another Edge for a total of 4d12. Four Edges is the maximum helpful amount, as we assume that additional Edges begin to overlap. Thus 6d12 is the maximum pool.

Voila. We get a curve (it turns out to be a rather cool one too--although not a bell, it has a good “feel”) that favors results close to the Potential, but we don’t have to add dice together. Edges are an elegant way to boost abilities without mucking with stat adjustments, reserving such operations to only situational adjustments by the GM.

I’m not sure if this is particularly original (not that I think originality is all-fired important in a central dice mechanic – we’re going to run out of new & useful ways to roll pretty soon), but I’ve not seen its exact duplicate myself. I have seen a few “roll high but not over” systems, but they all used a single (linear) die. That is unsatisfactory, IMHO. Has anybody else tried this mechanic?

Thanks,

Steven

Hi Stephen,

Welcome to the Forge!

Everyone, Stephen's post spins off of a discussion going on in RPG Theory, so here's the thread:
Die roll transparency

Best,
Ron

The only higher-but-not-over system that I can think of is Unknown Armies. And that uses only the percentile dice. Yes, I think what you have may be original. Interestingly, it reverses the normal die pool. Instead of skill giving more dice, and difficulty affecting the target, skill gives a higher target, and "lack of difficulty" gives more dice.

Ingenious. What are you going to use it for?

I'd also take a look at a system with a zero to eight scale, using D20s. This would give you more room to play with, gives a greater range of results, and D20s are far more common than d12.

Why the artificial cap at six dice? More would be rare, so you wouldn't have to roll lots of dice too often. So why not let someone roll them if they have that many edges? I like your diminishing returns rationale, but it seems very terminal. How about after five dice you need two edges to get another die? That would cover the diminishing returns, and handle most situations. At fifteen edges you'd be rolling ten dice. Which would be really rare.

The doubles rule is a little stilted, too. You can only roll even results above your skill. How about you roll as many dice again as matched less than target, and add the result of the new roll. This allows any result, the system can explode infinitely up, and skill limits the explosion successively, which is cool. Just an idea.

How do you handle difficulty, subtract dice, lower result, lower target? Or something else?

Mike

Pendragon used a high as possible without going over mechanic (something I've stolen multiple times for Home Brew and call The Price is Right rule)...But I also have not seen the mechanic used with multiple dice simultaneously in a commercial game.

I've toyed with it a few times (in fact a project I'm working on right now) in a full Dice Pool as a way of giving dice two dimensions (number of successes plus highest number rolled). But the method described here is quite elegant. Although scrounging up even six d12s would be a challenge.

Valamir wrote: Pendragon used a high as possible without going over mechanic (something I've stolen multiple times for Home Brew and call The Price is Right rule)...But I also have not seen the mechanic used with multiple dice simultaneously in a commercial game.

Rhysas,

Tell us more about the project- premise, color, flavor, mojo, character options, setting detail, influences, and design history.


Oh, and for the purposes of ritual magic, your family names down your mother's side for the last seven generations and your blood type.

Excellent points, Mike. Thanks for the feedback.

Mike Holmes wrote:
Why the artificial cap at six dice? More would be rare, so you wouldn't have to roll lots of dice too often. So why not let someone roll them if they have that many edges? I like your diminishing returns rationale, but it seems very terminal. How about after five dice you need two edges to get another die? That would cover the diminishing returns, and handle most situations. At fifteen edges you'd be rolling ten dice. Which would be really rare.

Mike Holmes wrote:
I'd also take a look at a system with a zero to eight scale, using D20s. This would give you more room to play with, gives a greater range of results, and D20s are far more common than d12.

Mike Holmes wrote:
The doubles rule is a little stilted, too. You can only roll even results above your skill. How about you roll as many dice again as matched less than target, and add the result of the new roll. This allows any result, the system can explode infinitely up, and skill limits the explosion successively, which is cool. Just an idea.
How do you handle difficulty, subtract dice, lower result, lower target? Or something else?