Author Topic: What's your favourite "dice based resolution mechanic"?  (Read 28294 times)

Offline Bard

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Re: What's your favourite "dice based resolution mechanic"?
« Reply #40 on: November 10, 2011, 07:58:21 PM »
That's why I said it's rather useless for rolling physical dice, in fact I'm very much suggesting to use a roller script or program. I think even P&P games have to move with the time, and there is nothing wrong with rolling electronically at the table, too.

If we were to go down that route, it would make no sense to use dice at all, or simple stats or anyting, you could just use way more math to achieve the result you want for your "random aspect" of the game and then make an app for that.
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Offline brainpiercing

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Re: What's your favourite "dice based resolution mechanic"?
« Reply #41 on: November 11, 2011, 06:59:50 AM »


If we were to go down that route, it would make no sense to use dice at all, or simple stats or anyting, you could just use way more math to achieve the result you want for your "random aspect" of the game and then make an app for that.
That's true, but then using a randomizer like that serves my purposes. I could use any other randomizer, too,  but IMHO 3d6 is a sweet spot. The more dice you have the more average your rolls generally become. 2d6 is still a bit too flat, 3d6 is nice. And it also gives a convenient range for modifiers.

Also, sticking to conventional stats will retain a transparency with other games, and keep the game accessible, IMHO.

Offline professorgear

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Re: What's your favourite "dice based resolution mechanic"?
« Reply #42 on: November 15, 2011, 12:24:39 AM »
I'm really surprised at how many people support the Fate/Fudge die system as seen in DFRPG (Dresden Files RPG). In my group of eight or so people, none of us like the die system, and we're familiar with most of the systems out there. It adds more complexity to a single dice system, and for what benefit? With aspects and fate points, you can almost always "pay" to have a higher result than you roll. Additionally, you can roll into the negatives, effectively undoing the skills of you character. Finally, the average of the die roll is a 0, so as a rule your die roll has no effect. And this is when you're attempting against defenses that are relatively high and so on.

That being said, I came on this board hoping someone could resurrect the otherwise very fun DFRPG by changing out its die system. The Fate system with aspects as someone put it makes role-playing a mechanic of the game and is very effective and fun.

Offline professorgear

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Re: What's your favourite "dice based resolution mechanic"?
« Reply #43 on: November 15, 2011, 12:26:48 AM »
I've never played D20 epic. Has anyone noticed a problem with how rolling complicates/weakens at higher levels?

Offline Bozwevial

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Re: What's your favourite "dice based resolution mechanic"?
« Reply #44 on: November 15, 2011, 01:08:26 AM »
I'm really surprised at how many people support the Fate/Fudge die system as seen in DFRPG (Dresden Files RPG). In my group of eight or so people, none of us like the die system, and we're familiar with most of the systems out there. It adds more complexity to a single dice system, and for what benefit? With aspects and fate points, you can almost always "pay" to have a higher result than you roll. Additionally, you can roll into the negatives, effectively undoing the skills of you character. Finally, the average of the die roll is a 0, so as a rule your die roll has no effect. And this is when you're attempting against defenses that are relatively high and so on.
It's a bell curve system. Getting a +4 on the fudge dice is a really impressive thing and statistically shouldn't happen that often, given how big the difference is between a Mediocre (+0) and a Great (+4) result is. The distribution means that most of the time, you can expect to succeed on a task with a difficulty equal to your skill, you're likely to need to spend a fate point on one with a difficulty one higher, and you'll almost certainly need one for a difficulty of two higher. That makes it easier for the GM to assign difficulties to tasks without worrying that the RNG will vary wildly like it does in a d20 system, where you're as likely to perform at an average level as you are to make a superhuman effort, and as likely as you are to make a half-assed attempt.

Negative die results might seem odd, but they're actually the same thing as making the curve go from 0 to 8 and bumping up the difficulty by 4 points. The curve is just centered around zero here because that plays more nicely with the math and looks better on paper. Besides, people can and do perform worse than their potential in real life because of all kinds of crazy circumstances. Automatic success is covered when your skill is 4 points higher than the difficulty (which is pretty incredible) or you burn fate points to add to your roll, which is fine because automatic success should be reserved for mundane situations (which don't normally merit a check because they are boring) or simple tasks performed under stress by professionals (which are rarer).

Having the average be zero, again, is helpful because it gives the GM a good idea of what his target numbers should be. It also reduces randomness, which tends to favor the players. As for high defenses, you can get around those by playing with maneuvers and temporary aspects, or in the case of certain supernatural monsters, satisfying the Catch.
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Offline veekie

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Re: What's your favourite "dice based resolution mechanic"?
« Reply #45 on: November 15, 2011, 02:10:00 AM »
For high defenses, take any mage and dump as many Declarations and Assessments for free tags to your disicipline roll. Watch.
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Offline brainpiercing

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Re: What's your favourite "dice based resolution mechanic"?
« Reply #46 on: November 15, 2011, 05:33:41 AM »
I've never played D20 epic. Has anyone noticed a problem with how rolling complicates/weakens at higher levels?
In Epic bonuses go COMPLETELY off the RNG, which basically means you want to get them so high you don't even need to roll in every case. GMing becomes really quite impossible, because you either make defenses that always succeed, or never succeed (for a given character), and offense likewise. There is only a very narrow gap where the RNG still works, and it's impossible to fit that in for the entire party.

Offline Bard

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Re: What's your favourite "dice based resolution mechanic"?
« Reply #47 on: November 16, 2011, 11:49:42 AM »
I've never played D20 epic. Has anyone noticed a problem with how rolling complicates/weakens at higher levels?
In Epic bonuses go COMPLETELY off the RNG, which basically means you want to get them so high you don't even need to roll in every case. GMing becomes really quite impossible, because you either make defenses that always succeed, or never succeed (for a given character), and offense likewise. There is only a very narrow gap where the RNG still works, and it's impossible to fit that in for the entire party.

It really depends on HOW FAR into epic you go. For the first 4-5 levels it's not THAT different from level 19-20.
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Offline brainpiercing

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Re: What's your favourite "dice based resolution mechanic"?
« Reply #48 on: November 16, 2011, 12:33:13 PM »
I've never played D20 epic. Has anyone noticed a problem with how rolling complicates/weakens at higher levels?
In Epic bonuses go COMPLETELY off the RNG, which basically means you want to get them so high you don't even need to roll in every case. GMing becomes really quite impossible, because you either make defenses that always succeed, or never succeed (for a given character), and offense likewise. There is only a very narrow gap where the RNG still works, and it's impossible to fit that in for the entire party.

It really depends on HOW FAR into epic you go. For the first 4-5 levels it's not THAT different from level 19-20.
Yeh, but enter epic spells, which can happen as early as lvl 21, and you're screwed. Granted, you can choose NOT to break the game for a while. It took our now defunct epic group into level 40 to actually seriously break it. As it was in the end, basically the only way to play was stacking enough respawns, automatic resurrectsions, you name it on top of each other while being basically immune to everything except straight damage.

Offline Shining Phoenix

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Re: What's your favourite "dice based resolution mechanic"?
« Reply #49 on: November 16, 2011, 02:45:39 PM »
Yeh, but enter epic spells, which can happen as early as lvl 21, and you're screwed. Granted, you can choose NOT to break the game for a while. It took our now defunct epic group into level 40 to actually seriously break it. As it was in the end, basically the only way to play was stacking enough respawns, automatic resurrectsions, you name it on top of each other while being basically immune to everything except straight damage.
Why not find some way to make yourself immune to damage too?
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Offline RedWarlock

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Re: What's your favourite "dice based resolution mechanic"?
« Reply #50 on: November 21, 2011, 08:33:52 AM »
I'm gonna chime in that I've always like d20, but the nWoD system is pretty good for its purposes too. Exploding dice are just such a fun mechanic to add in. I've been looking at the Dresden Files RPG, and while I really like the concepts behind the Fate points and everything, the Fudge dice haven't really clicked with me yet. I'll have to go re-read the rules.

I'm writing my own system that sits somewhere between d20 Modern and nWoD in mechanics. For my main dice roll I use 3d6 with exploding 6's, on a dice+mods=result system.

Really enjoying the number averages I get, and it helps offset some of the wild differences between high and low bonuses (like for skills), especially since I'm using an uncapped XP-based free-progression system. I also don't have a crit-fail or a crit-hit mechanic, instead the amount the attack roll exceeds the defense number is rolled into the damage, and skills include above-DC exceptional results.
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Offline Bloody Initiate

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Re: What's your favourite "dice based resolution mechanic"?
« Reply #51 on: December 15, 2011, 09:12:20 PM »
For just "favorite" I'd probably go with Shadowrun's fistfuls of d6s. It's the most consistent result you can get (Increasing the dice pool size just does that).

For simplicity + efficiency I don't think you can beat a d20. You have enough numbers that it's not TOO simple and the human brain can easily keep track of it.

I actually think I hate WoD darkness's dice systems, because at least the ones I'm used to are d10s  (Which are just clumsy compared to d6s). Basically it's like Shadowrun's system only worse in every way. You roll fewer dice, and your chance of success on each die is lower, so it's less consistent and generally still very much about luck.

I generally don't like d100 systems. They tend to feel pretty random, and you also can often look at them and KNOW that a d20 would have been simpler and just as good in almost every aspect. Developers don't use every number on the d100, they tend to use every 5 (I'll spoil the surprise, that's 20 possibilities). When they DO use every number on the d100, it's too much and slows the game to a halt while people look at charts trying to figure out what happened.
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Offline veekie

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Re: What's your favourite "dice based resolution mechanic"?
« Reply #52 on: December 16, 2011, 12:00:12 AM »
One thing about the d10 dicepool system is that it would be so much better as a dicepool if only they just used d6s instead. Greater dice availability, faster reckoning, and better stability while still being dicepools.
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Offline Noliar

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Re: What's your favourite "dice based resolution mechanic"?
« Reply #53 on: December 16, 2011, 07:59:22 PM »
Seconding the ORE dice pool looking for matches - very elegant.

I also like the Mutants and Masterminds damage save mechanic.

Offline Bozwevial

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Re: What's your favourite "dice based resolution mechanic"?
« Reply #54 on: November 20, 2012, 02:46:20 PM »
I think your minion's slipping, phaedrus.
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Offline phaedrusxy

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Re: What's your favourite "dice based resolution mechanic"?
« Reply #55 on: November 20, 2012, 02:46:54 PM »
I think your minion's slipping, phaedrus.
Good boy. Gave him a +1.
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