Averaging Dice Mechanic

[asurai]

So I've come to rather dislike singular dice rolls such as the D20. Because personally, I have horrible luck when it comes to such things. I quickly grew tired of this when first starting TRPG's when character after character of mine was taken down due to a botched roll on my behalf. Sure I could get a re-roll from my, very generous, GM because he knows my luck is that horrible, it's a hot topic of jokes at games.

So while working on a TRPG of my own, which I'll post up information on later, I knew right away I wanted that if I'm going to be using dice that I wanted a system that let you be lucky while unskilled in something, but as time went on and you became more skilled, your results were less random. I wanted this to represent that when you first start in a skill you're more reliant on luck but your results are less random and thus you grow more professional and masterful of your skill of choice.

I tried a lot of different things, and here is what I've come up with.

There is 10 skill levels, and having a rank of 0 in a skill is possible. A rank of 0 meaning you are untrained in said skill.

so what you'd roll for each rank would go accordingly

00 - 2d10
01 - 2d10+1
02 - 3d10+2
03 - 3d10+3
04 - 4d10+4
05 - 4d10+5
06 - 5d10+6
07 - 5d10+7
08 - 6d10+8
09 - 6d10+9
10 - 7d10+10

So as you can see every 2 skill levels, yes I use level and rank interchangably, you increase your die pool by 1. Now here is where the "averaging" part comes in. Now on ranks where you roll an even number of dice, you take the two middle dice you rolled and average them. Then add the modifier listed. For dice rolls with an odd number of dice, you take the middle die rolled, whatever it is and add the modifier listed.

This has lead me to get some very favorable results. However I have had a few people say that while the results are very nice, it is also somewhat complicatd and a pain in the rear, and rightfully so as I fully acknowledge this.

So that is why I posted this here. I was hoping that everyone here in the playground could give me some advice, tips, suggestions, opinions, etc. on this mechanic and maybe how I could refine it to make it more elegant and refined possibly. Anything you all have to say on it would be greatly appreciated.

[Kane0]

Before we can help, can you please define the boundaries of what your rolls should look like, eg what a good and bad roll will look like.

[DerTollUdo]

Additionally, this system seems like you are incapable of getting a high roll. Since you take only the middle die you never see the high end or low end unless you threw really bad or really good to start with. In which case, why even use this system?


Averaging would be better if you actually took the average of what was rolled, but that isn't exactly quick...To get the higher end or lower of the dice, you could always just take the highest and lowest die and average them. Then you can see a good roll come from one really high die and lots of low ones. Showing that having more skill makes things better for you.

[Quellian-dyrae]

This does seem fairly complicated. What about something where as you get better at a skill you not only get a bonus added to your die roll, but also establish a minimum roll. For your stat system, maybe something like +1 per skill level and minimum roll is equal to half skill level rounded up. So at level 7 you're rolling 1d10+7 with a minimum d10 result of 4.

Alternately, you could give +1 to the roll at odd ranks and +1 to the minimum at even ranks. That keeps the total benefit still equal to skill level.

What could also be an interesting mechanic is that for critical rolls (defenses against incapacitating or deadly effects, checks to accomplish plot-forwarding actions, social rolls to resist doing something against the character's nature...whatever) characters get a certain number of rerolls depending on how important it is, maybe capped by a sort of character rank. So like...mook-type NPCs never get a reroll, typical NPCs can get one, PCs and named NPCs two, bosses and plot-critical NPCs three, or something. And something like a save vs. death might allow up to three rerolls, something that leaves you helpless up to two, and something that just leaves you unable to act up to one. Similar scale for other critical rolls.

[asurai]

ah, yes. Sorry everyone. I should have been more clear with that. The way it works is that you should ideally get an end result of 5 plus modifier. The fact that you will hardly get a high end roll or low end roll means that when you do get such a roll it will be seen as more "special". At least that was how it was envisioned, anyways.

Additionally that would be how the difficulty of such tasks would be - you would make it equivalent to the average roll of skill level. So say you want to get an average task for someone of skill level 5 to complete, then they would aim for an end result of 10. And if you wanted a task for someone of that level to be harder or normal you could go up or down then to make the task easier or harder to complete.

I hope that that clarifies things more. Again, sorry about the confusion.

@Que - Yeah that would be an interesting mechanic for re-rolls and I shall certainly give that some thought. Thanks for the idea~!

[Thomar_of_Uointer]

You may want to consider other popular non-d20 systems, do some research before you start homebrewing. White Wolf, for example, uses die pool mechanics (each result of 8, 9, or 0 on a d10 is a success, and multiple successes give you exceptional results.)

[asurai]

Thank you for the advice, much appreciated. Though I have done some research. Generally my group seems to dislike success based systems like that for whatever reason. I'm impartial to them myself due to horrid luck when it comes to dice rolls. On that note though, I have found Talislanta yesterday and I do kind of like that it uses a d20 but that success is based more so on your skill rather then having to worry that even if you roll a 12 with a +8 modifier you still won't be able achieve a certain task. So more research could never hurt. I will admit I am also thinking of possibly trying to think up a system that is diceless, but that is proving to be quite the project.

[Togath]

for a dice mechanic aimed at getting average results a system based off of using 3 d6s could work, the average is 10.5 and the results from it are biased to average results instead of more random results

[ericgrau]

If you want a high chance of average and a low chance of extremes without such a complicated system try check = modifier + XdY where X is high and Y is low. So you might use lots of d4s, for example. Nothing to drop that way.

Alternatively you could always roll 5d10 and take the middle number and add it to your modifier, without the "5" ever increasing. Or you could do 3 or 7 but it would always stay the same regardless of level. True someone could become practiced enough with something that they rarely do poorly, but that shouldn't also make it so they rarely do very well. The flat modifier represents that advancement well enough.

[asurai]

Hmm, all very interesting ideas. And I do like the thought of 5dX+modifier. I'll have to do some playtesting and see how it works out. Thanks you two for the ideas and input. Very much appreciated! I will let you all know how it goes. Any and all ideas, etc. are all still apreciated and welcomed of course!

[Xechon]

If I am not mistaken, any number of rolls on any die would give you what you want. Personally, my favorite is the (+d6)+(-d6), where there are two set dice rolled and the positive one is added to the negative for a range of 5 to -5, with 0 being the most common. Then, you could add implosion/explosion rules and just keep skills being numbers added.

Also, for keeping skill skill and luck luck, I had an idea a while ago to roll for obstacles instead of for the skill check. That way, your skill number stays reliable, but the challenge could be harder than it necessarily should to you, or easier, but with the average of the challenge itself. It doesn't really change much, but there you go.

[erikun]

I cannot help but think that xd6-take-highest might produce rather similar results, although without the awkwardness of locating the middle die in your pool. It has the same benefit as your system (removing randomness) while producing gradually higher results on the die, and likely about the same results towards the high end.

I haven't worked out the probability to see how the two compare, though.

[Straybow]

00 - 2d10
01 - 2d10+1
02 - 3d10+2
03 - 3d10+3
04 - 4d10+4
05 - 4d10+5
06 - 5d10+6
07 - 5d10+7
08 - 6d10+8
09 - 6d10+9
10 - 7d10+10 Do you perhaps mean d20s instead of d10s??? Me confused. With respect to that confusion, and noting that I would use d20s, I'll just use the word dice instead.

I would always use an even number of dice and average the middle two. Otherwise the switching back and forth between 1 flat die distribution and 2 averaged dice distribution mucks everything up.

00 - 2dice
01 - 2dice+1
02 - 2dice+2
03 - 4dice+3
04 - 4dice+4
05 - 4dice+5
06 - 6dice+6
07 - 6dice+7
08 - 6dice+8
09 - 8dice+9
10 - 8dice+10

[Siosilvar]

Do you perhaps mean d20s instead of d10s??? Me confused. With respect to that confusion, and noting that I would use d20s, I'll just use the word dice instead.

I would always use an even number of dice and average the middle two. Otherwise the switching back and forth between 1 flat die distribution and 2 averaged dice distribution mucks everything up.

-snip-

It's even easier to always use an odd number of dice and pick the middle one. Ordering in your head is easy. Adding potentially double-digit numbers and division by 2, although not terrible, is comparatively pretty difficult.

1dX
2@3dX+1
2@3dX+2
2@3dX+3
3@5dX+4
3@5dX+5
3@5dX+6
4@7dX+7
4@7dX+8
4@7dX+9
5@9dX+10

Relatively easy to remember, too: 1 die, + 2 dice per 3 points of skill (rounded up). Take the middle, then add your skill.

[asurai]

Yes I did infact mean D10 and not D20. It was because for the sake of having to ever average dice then I'd rather only ever have to add 2 numbers that are 10 or less.

And thank you guys ever so much for the advice and input; I highly appreciate it, of course. =3

And although both do seem viable, I do have to wonder, do you think people would ever think having to roll 8 or 9 dice would be too much? I capped it at 7 originally because I felt it'd probably be the most dice anyone would ever want to actually roll - especially if played in real life.

As for taking the highest - I'd have to work out the probabilities to see how they compare. And it would probably be rather nice I imagine. I suppose I went with averaging to go with a theme, not to mention it was the best I came up with at the time.

Thank you once again, everyone~!

[Straybow]

Yes I did infact mean D10 and not D20. It was because for the sake of having to ever average dice then I'd rather only ever have to add 2 numbers that are 10 or less. Dividing by two and rounding up really isn't that hard... I've known complete math incompetents who could do it right every time. d10 makes too small a range.


And although both do seem viable, I do have to wonder, do you think people would ever think having to roll 8 or 9 dice would be too much? I capped it at 7 originally because I felt it'd probably be the most dice anyone would ever want to actually roll - especially if played in real life. Hey, none of that! This is all about you. :smallwink:

[asurai]

I would agree, though for something like an RPG, however it does seem to make it look rather ugly even if it functionally works rather well. And I wish to view it from everyone's perspective. =3 So what do you all think should be the maximum amount of dice should should be expected to roll?

[Veklim]

....depends on the size of the dice.... :smallwink:

[playswithfire]

This gets away from the d10s, but should give reasonable results with less math.
{table=head]Rank|Die 1|Die 2
0|d12|d12
1|d12|d10
2|d10|d10
3|d10|d8
4|d8|d8
5|d8|d6
6|d6|d6
7|d6|d4
8|d4|d4
9|d4|d3
10|d3|d3[/table]

Roll 22-(die 1 + die 2)

[asurai]

@Playswithfire: That is... Quite ingenious it seems. o.o I'd say the only problem with it is that it still leaves room for an unlucky rank 10 person to be bested by a rank 0 person without some kind of modification to the final result. Though I know that could potentially complicate things more. It still to me at least, is somewhat important to preserve the fact that if someone with rank 0 in a skill faces someone with rank 10 in a skill in some kind of face off, the rank 0 person should ideally stand chances that are pretty much 0, if not outright 0. That way someoen doesn't have to worry that the other person gets super lucky and rolls 2 1's and they don't and suddenly they lose as a result.

[Veklim]

I like it, and a simple way to go about stopping lucky rolls for amateurs out-performing a skilled practitioner would maybe be as simple as increasing or decreasing the initial number, so perhaps for every rank higher than you an opponent/challenge/encounter happens to be, you could subtract 1 from the number, so a rank 4 person challenges a rank 8 person, the rank 4 has to perform at (22 - 4) - 2d8. So the first number essentially becomes the 'difficulty modifier'. Think it would work...

[playswithfire]

If I've done the math right, a level 0 has about a 2.55% of beating a level 10. That a character of any rank could potentially beat a character of any other rank just with various degrees of likelihood is sort of a given in the mechanic I posted, since all characters have a maximum possible roll of 20, but I liked that since it accounted for things like a sucker punch or, as you said, luck, which does occasionally allow untrained people to beat more skilled opponents.

That said, you could always make it 22 + (ranks/2) - (die 1 + die 2) if you want to make it harder for low ranks to beat high ranks or even +ranks if you want; ranks/2 is sufficient to make it impossible for level 0s to beat level 10s.

EDIT: ninja'd on the second point

[Veklim]

EDIT: ninja'd on the second point

:smallwink:

Great minds...!

[asurai]

I -love- it~! Though plus rank/2 works just as well as plus rank, plus rank does look more aesthetically pleasing to the eyes one would imagine. That's probably the hardest thing. The math is much simpler now though which is the big thing. And I suppose if Weapon Of The Gods can get away with it's dice system, then I can get away with something like this, which is much simpler then WotG. So I think I'll probably go with this for now unless some other alternative suddenly springs up. Though any opinions, ideas, suggestions, etc. would still be highly appreciated and welcomed~! I'll have to make sure to give you credit for the dice system in the PDF, PWF. =3

Thank you everyone, you've all been a great help~!