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View Full Version : Which kind of die mechanic is best for a superhero rpg?



xBlackWolfx
2012-12-23, 03:50 PM
My latest attempt at a superhero rpg used an odd step-die/dice pool system. Each of a character's stats where rated from d4 to d12, and stats fell into three categories: attributes, skills, and powers. Most rolls in a game required you to roll at least two (sometimes three) die. For example, if you were punching someone your roll for damage would be your die for strength plus your die in your superstrength power (assuming you had one). In the game, attributes were limited to human ranges, powers were required to push them beyond human norms. As for how results were determined, I had two different ideas: one was simply a roll-and-add approach, which i made as a relatively simple alternative to my original idea. It was a comparative method similar to WoD, except a die could roll more than one success. For example, if you rolled 4 or higher, you got 1 success, if you rolled 8 or higher you got 2 successes, and if you rolled 12 (the highest possible on any available die of course) you got three successes, i later decided that intervals of 3 where preferable (and easier to think of on the fly) than multiples of 4.

But this has several issues. One is the limited scalability, since everything has to be rated on a scale of 1 to 5. Another is the fact that no matter how big the die get, there is always still a chance that you'll roll an abysmal roll, infact a character with d12 speed could possibly be beaten by a character with a speed of d4.

What kind of dice mechanic do you think works better for a superhero rpg? Step-die, roll-and-add (like Mutants and Masterminds), dice pools, roll-under (like GURPS), what?

I personnally don't like simple roll-and-add since it makes math rather complicated with the large numbers common in superhero rpgs, which is particularly bad for the fast-paced action they often require (imagine you had to roll d20+34, now add 17+34 in a split second, you get the idea)

I've even contemplated an odd system like the marvel universe rpg, where characters simply have a number of points which the player can spend to automatically succeed at tasks, the challenge being his point pool is limited thus he must purposefully choose to fail at certain tasks just to save his points for later. Not sure how that would work in practice, though I don't imagine it would work too well.

Zman
2012-12-23, 04:28 PM
Have you looked at the Marvel Superhero RPG? It used an interesting system where you simply moved tokens around to designate what you character was doing and directly compared results.

Now, their implementation was flawed and had no variability, but it was extremely easy to learn and pretty fun if you could overlook the flaws. I would suggest a similar mechanic with the addition of a +1/+0/-1 Dice modifier or something similar to fudge dice from the Fate/Dresden Rpg System.

Ninjadeadbeard
2012-12-23, 04:53 PM
You could try a D20-roll-under system. You could reduce non-ability score modifiers by putting a "Mod = Character Level" limit.

Additionally, you could treat Powers more like Feats. Super Strength would come as a Feat Chain, where every Feat would increase the die level or add a big modifier to Strength Rolls. To fix the problem of a human crit'ing and beating the Hulk in an arm-wrestling contest, every Super Strength Feat could increase the Strength Score required to compete against that character. Superman, with a maxed-out Super Strength Chain, auto-wins any Strength checks he makes up to a certain point (planetary?), and no character with a Strength Score below, like, 40, can even effect him with a Strength roll.

Grod_The_Giant
2012-12-23, 11:12 PM
I've never found roll-and-add to be particularly clunky-- addition is pretty fast, and a lot of the time it's pretty clear whether you succeeded or not ("17+34 is... a lot, OK, you hit"). I've been running M&M for a while now, and have never had a problem with the time taken by math. d20 swinginess, yes, but not speed.

Dice pools have their own problems-- my experience (using Exalted) was that they took more time to roll than a simple roll-and-add, and-- at least the way Exalted did them-- could sometimes be more swing-y than a d20, in that there weren't mechanics for taking 10 and the like.

You could look at something like I did in STaRS, my homebrew system-- the basic mechanic is that you have a skill ranked 1-10 (in practice limited to 3-8), and you try to roll under that with a d10. Players do all the rolling, and instantly can tell if they passed or not, so it plays pretty fast, but it has some of the same scaling issues as your attempt. I use abilities that either give you situational bonuses, or alter the scale of things you can roll for/autosucceed on, which... is a new element and still needs more playtesting, so we'll see.

Ultimately, I think I simple xdy+z (1d20, 2d10, 3d6...) mechanic works best. Players are used to it from D&D and the like, the math really doesn't take that long in practice-- what really slows the game down are people not remembering their modifiers and needing to look up abilities. Something like 3d6 + modifiers should give you a fairly reliable bell curve and prevent too many upsets.