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Arceius
2011-10-17, 06:24 PM
I've been fooling around with a couple of different role playing games recently (DnD, Harnmaster, Storyteller nWoD, FATE) and I'm wondering if there is some sort of general consensus on which dice system is the most versatile, speaking in terms of it's 'main' way to roll. DnD has the D20, Harnmaster goes with D100s, Storyteller loves itself some D10s as they're everywhere, and FATE sticks with the entire FUDGE/GURPS type D6s in which you actually just have +, -, and ~(neutral). Which dice systems would you say works best overall? And what sort of systems exist that I don't know about (I'm sure there are weird ones out there).

Kaun
2011-10-17, 06:39 PM
General consensus on the internet? :smalleek:

hehe, truth be told the best answer your probably going to get is ...

"Depends on what you are trying to run."

DukeofDellot
2011-10-17, 06:45 PM
GURPS uses regular d6s...

But there is no best way, there is only the way that you prefer, which will inevitably be different from what I prefer.

Tengu_temp
2011-10-17, 07:16 PM
It doesn't take much skill with math to convert all or almost all dice systems to a percentage chance of success, so it doesn't really matter which dice you use. Other elements of the system are much more important.

Anderlith
2011-10-17, 10:07 PM
I prefer, roll x keep y. Bonus points if you get to roll xdy keep z

Knaight
2011-10-17, 10:26 PM
It doesn't take much skill with math to convert all or almost all dice systems to a percentage chance of success, so it doesn't really matter which dice you use. Other elements of the system are much more important.

Some, however, can be a huge pain. Take a look at ORE at some point, where things like "variable difficulties" and "die penalties that affect different die totals differently" and "lots of moving parts" make converting to percentage nightmarish.

Onto the OP: It depends on the game, and there is a large variety. I rather like the 0 centered Fudge spread, the 2 variable ORE results generated by looking for matches in a pool of dice, and the typical dice pool system.

Arbane
2011-10-17, 11:05 PM
It doesn't take much skill with math to convert all or almost all dice systems to a percentage chance of success, so it doesn't really matter which dice you use. Other elements of the system are much more important.

The Weapons of the Gods system laughs scornfully at your futile efforts.

(It works by rolling a bunch of d10s, taking any sets that match, with the number of matching dice as the 10s value and the number on the dice as the 1s value. Plus you can add/subtract a fixed bonus, add extra dice via luck points or a special mechanic called "The River"... if the writer hadn't included a probability chart in the back, I'd need to go back to Advanced Prob & Stat to have a prayer of guessing the odds.)

Another "pain to figure percentages" system is the new Warhammer RPG - you get a bunch of different (custom-made for the system) dice based on skill, stat, how much effort you're making, and the degree of opposition, and the symbols you roll tell you the various effects (success, failure, wounded, exhausted, other weirdness...)

Autolykos
2011-10-19, 03:02 PM
My favorite system is probably that of (3rd Edition) Shadowrun. The difficulty of a task gives you a target number, and your skill determines the number of D6 you get to roll against it. Every result at or above the target number is a success, and the number of successes determines how well you accomplished the task. If the target number is higher than 6, you can reroll all 6es and add 6 to the new results (rerolling all 6es again, if necessary...). IMHO it just feels good to roll a lot of dice, the system uses very little math (target numbers above 6 are pretty rare, and comparing is much faster than adding), and allows even unskilled characters to succeed at ridiculously hard tasks (altough it's extremely unlikely).
4th Edition is similar, but abolishes target numbers completely (you always roll against 5). Instead, your skill is modified and you may need a certain amount of successes just to get the task done. It's still ok, but loses exactly the strongest points of the 3rd Edition rules.

My second favorite is GURPS, mainly because it can also be done with D6 only, and has a nice "bell-shaped" distribution (instead of the flat one you'd get with a D20).

GungHo
2011-10-19, 03:17 PM
It doesn't really matter to me any more now that it all goes into a computer with sound effects and fancy pictures.

In the olden days, I tended to prefer D6 over anything because I was poor and I could raid monopoly sets, backgammon sets, and yatzee sets and come out with stuff to roll. So, I played a lot of rogues with short swords as a result. Yeah, you could make fun of me for having a bunch of different-sized dice with your fancy faux-ivory dice with 20" rims, but I could actually roll 10d6.

Nowadays, I only care if I have to program something special, like with the proprietary Warhammer dice.

TheEmerged
2011-10-19, 04:00 PM
I rather liked the one from Alternity.

You start with a d20, and the object is to roll low. So you *subtract* a bonus from the result and *add* a penalty. Yes, that's backwards to a lot of people but stay with me here.

Instead of a flat bonus/penalty, however, you're getting a step bonus/penalty. With 1 step you roll a d4; with 2 steps you roll a d6; and so forth until you start adding d20's for each additional step. Most of the time you're going to be in the 0-3 steps range (up to d8).

Let's talk about your target range now. You start with your attribute score (generally 10-14, can get as high as 17) then add the number of skill ranks you have -- so with an attribute of 14 and 2 skill ranks, your target number for a normal success is 16.

Cut that in half, and you have your number for a Good success (8 for our example). Cut THAT in half and you have your number for an Excellent success (4 for our example) I may be mis-remembering the exact names, but you get the idea. Higher degrees of success do more damage/allow better results.

So in our example, if you had a 1 step bonus you'd roll a d20 & d4. You'd then subtract the d4 result (say 2) from the d20 result (say 11) for your result -- 9, in this example, a normal success.

Totally Guy
2011-10-19, 04:54 PM
It's not what dice you roll, it's why you roll them.

JaronK
2011-10-19, 05:50 PM
I'd vote for a system like Shadowrun 4e, where you have a set TN (5 for Shadowrun, other systems use 6 or 7 or 8 on a d10), and your skill in whatever it is is represented by the number of dice you roll, with a variable number of successes. It avoids D&Ds binary success and failure issues.

JaronK

Shadow Lord
2011-10-19, 06:01 PM
Just so long as you get exploding dice, it's amazing. I add exploding dice to all of my games, because I love me some exploding dice.

Tengu_temp
2011-10-19, 06:12 PM
The Weapons of the Gods system laughs scornfully at your futile efforts.

I know that game (and I like it a lot). Technically it's very easy to count the probability by hand, since it only uses d10s - just bear in mind that easy doesn't mean not mind-numbingly time-consuming.

DonEsteban
2011-10-19, 06:18 PM
There is no consensus on the internet. Just opinions. Want to hear mine?

There really is no 'best' dice 'system'. And you can't separate the dice rolling mechanics from the rest of the system... I'll still try to give a quick answer:

I like the D20 system for it's simplicity. Any fool can estimate the success probability for a modifier of +x and a DC of y. What I don't like is the wide spread. Especially for opposed rolls the probability for either side to succeed is large even for widely different skill modifiers.

That's the advantages of dice pool systems. It is much more probable to get an average result, less probable to get a very high or low result. Although this, too, is not always desirable.

I'm hesitant to use the more obscure systems. (GM: "Would you try to use skill A where you can roll 14d4 with a target number of 3 and you need at least 9 successes or skill B where you can roll 8d6, with exploding sixes, target number 4, 4 successes. Which one do you want to use?"; Player: "Umm, hold on a second..." (pulls out calculator))

Kurald Galain
2011-10-19, 06:24 PM
It doesn't take much skill with math to convert all or almost all dice systems to a percentage chance of success,

World of Darkness is a good counterexample.

Suppose you roll 5 dice at a difficulty of 7 and need 2 successes to pass... is your chance to success most reduced by (a) a -1 die penalty, (b) bumping the difficulty to 8, or (c) requiring a third success?

Emmerask
2011-10-19, 06:25 PM
It is pretty much a matter of taste, so there can be no best system, only systems that work for the group and systems that donīt.

There can be mechanically good and bad systems however ie systems that are easy and donīt overcomplicate things vs systems that are complicated without any reason for being that way...

I personally like shadowrun 4e a lot

Kurald Galain
2011-10-19, 06:29 PM
To me, the most important quality of a dice system is that it's quick. That is, when asked to make a test, players shouldn't have to spend time remembering what kind of dice they should roll and how many of them; furthermore, they should be able to see very quickly whether or not they succeeded.

A secondary quality is that I like bell curves, as they make the outcome less random.

3E / 4E D&D does well on the first, not so much on the second. GURPS is good at both, as is FUDGE. White Wolf does very well at the second, but fails at the first. Alternity fails the first criterion hard, as does 2E.

DarkArcanist
2011-10-19, 06:45 PM
I'm hesitant to use the more obscure systems. (GM: "Would you try to use skill A where you can roll 14d4 with a target number of 3 and you need at least 9 successes or skill B where you can roll 8d6, with exploding sixes, target number 4, 4 successes. Which one do you want to use?"; Player: "Umm, hold on a second..." (pulls out calculator))

Just to be nitpicky, dice exploding wouldn't matter in a "successes" system.
:smalltongue:

Knaight
2011-10-19, 07:09 PM
Just to be nitpicky, dice exploding wouldn't matter in a "successes" system.
:smalltongue:

Dice exploding in a successes system means that the new rolls are treated as new rolls that can generate successes, so yes, it matters. Significantly.

Tengu_temp
2011-10-19, 08:11 PM
World of Darkness is a good counterexample.

Suppose you roll 5 dice at a difficulty of 7 and need 2 successes to pass... is your chance to success most reduced by (a) a -1 die penalty, (b) bumping the difficulty to 8, or (c) requiring a third success?

C, obviously. Both a and b give you an average roll of 2 successes with 2 successes needed, while c gives you an average roll of 2.5 successes with 3 successes needed.

That's assuming 10 means 2 successes, not an exploding die. But with exploding dice the final result is the same, just the numbers are different.

Howler Dagger
2011-10-19, 08:59 PM
Just so long as you get exploding dice, it's amazing. I add exploding dice to all of my games, because I love me some exploding dice.

I presume you mean roll high on your dice, roll it again and add, as long as you keeep rolling high you keep rolling? One variant I used for Fist Full of Dice was imploding dice, where if you rolled a one you would roll again and subtract it from the rest.

Anderlith
2011-10-19, 10:45 PM
I do have a soft spot for exploding dice. The fact that you could possibly go ape-crap crazy & perform something amazing is a real game changer.

Gralamin
2011-10-19, 10:54 PM
World of Darkness is a good counterexample.

Suppose you roll 5 dice at a difficulty of 7 and need 2 successes to pass... is your chance to success most reduced by (a) a -1 die penalty, (b) bumping the difficulty to 8, or (c) requiring a third success?

It's actually really easy to count WoD dice, once you know the trick.
P(d) = Probability of beating the difficulty, not including the numbers the dice explodes on, n=number of dice, P(e) = Probability of Exploding. I'm going to leave out the one slightly complex case, where P(e) > 0.1 and P(d) < P(e)

E(n,P(d),P(e)) = nE(1,P(d),P(e)) (Independence of expectation)
E(1,P(d),P(e)) = P(d)*1 + (1+E(1,P(d),P(e)))*P(e)
E(1,P(d),P(e)) = P(d) + P(e) + P(e)*E(1,P(d),P(e))
(1-P(e))E(1,P(d),P(e)) = p(d) + p(e)
E(1,P(d),P(e)) = (p(d)+p(e))/(1-P(e)), with a limit where P(e) =1, then E = Infinity.
So, if 7,8,9 give 1 success, and 10 explodes with a success, then:
E(1, 0.3, 0.1) = 0.4/0.9 = 0.44...
If 8,9 give 1 success and 10 explodes with a success then:
E(1, 0.2, 0.1) = 0.3/0.9 = 0.33...
8 gives one success, 9 and 10 explodes with a success then:
E(1, 0.1, 0.2) = 0.3/0.8 = 0.375
etc. So it's always going to be of the form "All the numbers that give me at least one success, over the probability of not exploding" multiplied by the number of dice you have available.

WoD Dice pools generally are pretty close to their expected values, so just comparing the difference between the expected value and what you need gives you a pretty good guesstimate of the difficulty difference.

5*0.44 = 2.2, vs 2 you can guess just from that it should be pretty close. (A) -1 die gives instead 1.76. (B) 5*0.33 gives you 1.65.
2 - 2.2 = Expected win (-0.2)
(A) 2-1.76 = 0.24
(B) 2-1.65 = 0.35
(C) 3-2.2 = 0.8

C being the hardest, followed by B, then A is a good guesstimate.


Edir: Or if you are lazy, a full accurate picture (http://anydice.com/program/a3b)

Arceius
2011-10-19, 11:22 PM
Did my thread just get partially hijacked by math?

...

Awesome.

In other news, thanks for the input. I like knowing about the different systems and how they work. It seems to be that the most versatile is a success based system with D10s (or d6s if you want ease of access). That Alternity system sounds a bit involved. Me Gusta.

CarpeGuitarrem
2011-10-19, 11:36 PM
World of Darkness is a good counterexample.

Suppose you roll 5 dice at a difficulty of 7 and need 2 successes to pass... is your chance to success most reduced by (a) a -1 die penalty, (b) bumping the difficulty to 8, or (c) requiring a third success?
Actually, that's only oWoD. nWoD vastly simplified it to where each die has a 3/10 chance of success. It's also really quick and easy to pick out the successes, especially if you have the White Wolf dice (I'm sure that others also make them this way...) that color the 8/9/10 differently. You learn very fast to pick out the 8, 9, and 10.

nWoD math is then quite simple to guesstimate. You can assume an average of one success per three dice rolled. The probability of rolling a success is 0.3 on any given die, plus (0.1 * 0.3) 0.03 repeating for the exploding 10's, which means that you literally have an expected average of 1/3 of a success per die. So, one success per three dice. In practical terms, a three-die penalty is equivalent to docking one success.

One system I really like (but haven't played with yet) is the One Ring RPG's system. You roll a 12-sided "Fate Die" which has results from 1 to 10, as well as an Eye of Sauron and a Gandalf rune. The Eye of Sauron counts as a 0, and it triggers negative effects from conditions. (The example they give was the Madness condition, or something like that, where the Eye triggers a bout of madness.) The Gandalf rune makes the entire roll a basic success, though particularly difficult things require a certain number of degrees of success.

Degrees of success come from the other dice that are rolled: 6-siders, one for each level in the appropriate ability. You add all the dice together, and you also count up the number of 6s (marked with an extra Tengwar rune on the official dice). The number of 6s is the degree of success.

I don't think it's terribly math-friendly, but it's a nice, intuitive, easy to read system. Just check for the Eye or Gandalf, sum the numbers, and count the Tengwar runes.

Gralamin
2011-10-19, 11:52 PM
Did my thread just get partially hijacked by math?

...

Awesome.


I tend to do this >_>. I took way to many statistic courses for my own good.

I like Silhouette's system: Roll xd6, keep the highest. If there are multiple 6's, then your roll is 5+(numSixes) (in other words, get +1 for each 6 past the first, so If you have 3 sixes, your roll is 8.) It keeps numbers small, makes skilled characters roll incredibly consistently, and allows jack of all trades to function a bit better.

Edit: and because I can, here (http://anydice.com/program/3ec) is how the probabilities look for it.

erikun
2011-10-20, 12:55 AM
It's not what dice you roll, it's why you roll them.
*slow clap*

Anyways, I happen to like my d8s. They are terribly underused, though.


More seriously, I am a fan of dice pool/success systems or roll-under percentile (for clear chances of success). Fudge dice are nice, too. That said, the dice are probably one of the last things that I look at unless it is really clunky. I haven't played any of the more unusual dice systems, though, so I could be missing something.

deuxhero
2011-10-20, 12:55 AM
Fatal's system

Sidmen
2011-10-20, 02:46 AM
I happen to enjoy Dragon Age RPG's 3d6 system where one of the d6's is an off-color and is used to determine degree of success (1 being barely successful and 6 being "pulled off expertly").

The system is a standard "Add the dice together, add your ability, subtract penalties and add bonuses, compare to difficulty number." but seems so much more than that.

Tyndmyr
2011-10-20, 07:54 AM
I do have a soft spot for exploding dice. The fact that you could possibly go ape-crap crazy & perform something amazing is a real game changer.

I'm also definitely a fan of this. It's the best of crit mechanisms.

CarpeGuitarrem
2011-10-20, 07:59 AM
I happen to enjoy Dragon Age RPG's 3d6 system where one of the d6's is an off-color and is used to determine degree of success (1 being barely successful and 6 being "pulled off expertly").

The system is a standard "Add the dice together, add your ability, subtract penalties and add bonuses, compare to difficulty number." but seems so much more than that.
Oooh, that is cool. I like systems with little gimmicks like that. Not always easy to figure out probabilities, but there's some things that you can't quantify in numbers. I'm perfectly fine trusting that the math is reasonably balanced in a system.

I'm more interested in whether dice will give interesting results than whether they're an accurate marker of success/failure chances. Thus, why I like the One Ring system.

Kurald Galain
2011-10-20, 08:01 AM
Thus, why I like the One Ring system.

What does it do?

CarpeGuitarrem
2011-10-20, 08:09 AM
What does it do?
Summary on the previous page, near the bottom, in my longer post. :smallwink:

Long story short, some of the dice (it uses a d12 as a d10, with a "0" and a "crit" result added as well, plus a d6 pool) have special markings on some faces. The 0 on the d12 triggers a negative effect on characters, and the 6s on the d6s add degrees of success, which let you do things more impressive than the base difficulty.