Dice pool system

[clash]

I've been musing on the idea of creating a system that uses dice pools to replace both action economy and hp.

The basic idea is any given character has two values.

1. Number of total dice
2. Number of dice they can use in a single turn

They then have two pools for a round in combat. An attack pool and a defense pool. At the beginning of each round all the combatants take a bummer of dice from their total remaining equal to the number of dice they can use in a turn and divide them between the two pools however they choose. Then offensive abilities each use various number of dice from the offensive pool and they are countered by defensive abilities with that character drawing from their own defensive pool. Once a character runs out of dice in their pool of total dice their available abilities they can use become severely limited as the creature is exhausted.

So am example that hopefully makes more sense.

Tom is fighting a goblin. Tom has 15 total dice and can use up to 5 dice per turn. The goblin has 8 total dice and can use 3 per turn.

Tom assigns 3 dice to offense and 2 dice to defense. The goblin assigns 3 dice to offense and forsakes his defense. The goblin is faster and goes first using a lunge ability for 3 dice to attack Tom. He rolls low and gets 6 total. Tom has a shield ability that blocks up to 4 damage per dice. He spends two defense dice. The goblins attack is blocked and does nothing. Next is Tom's turn. He sees the goblin is attacking recklessly with no defense and makes a basic attack for 1 dice. The attack connects and slays the goblin while the goblin has 5 total dice remaining. The other two dice in his attack pool stay there and get added to at the start of the next round.

Example 2

Tom is now fighting an orc. The orc has 12 total dice and can spend 5 per turn. Tom and the orc trade blows each blocking the other until the orc is down to 2 dice. He assigns 1 to each pool but Tom's assigns 3 to attack and overcomes the orcs 1 dice defensive ability and slaying the orc after it runs out of dice.

Basically this creates a system where action economy has a direct relationship to durability and allows creatures to be slain in a single strike that lands without making the other actions useless until that strike lands and you have to choose to focus on offense or defense. It's very rough and in the early idea phases but are there any thoughts on it?

Additionally, you could have creatures not slain in a single hit and instead get wounded. For example fighting a dragon you might have

1-3: leg
4-5: wing
6: slay

Where you have to roll the number on at least one offensive die on the attack to deliver that type of wound.

[Maat Mons]

What happens if you allot dice to defense but don’t spend them that turn? Such as if no one attacks you? Are the dice simply lost with no benefit? Can a player choose to allot fewer total dice than their maximum to last more rounds?

The defensive ability you mentioned seems to expend dice but doesn’t seem to require rolling them. If the dice are just acting as points to spend to fuel an ability, and there isn’t an effect tied to what numbers show on them when rolled, why not just call them points? You have a pool of points you can allocate to offense and defense each round. You can take various actions each round by spending points. Sometimes you roll a number of dice equal to the point cost of the ability, but other times you don’t.

Are all the dice in the pool the same? Or do you have different sizes of dice? If all the dice are interchangeable, that seems to further argue for just calling these pools of points. If someone can say, “Oh man, things are serious. I’m going to spend one of my d20’s,” that would help make it relevant that these are dice being spent, not points.

When does dice allocation take place? Does each person take a turn each round, with dice allocation and any attacks made taking place then? Or is each turn divided into phases? With everybody taking turns allocating dice during the allocation phase, and everybody taking turns attacking during the attack phase?

Do players get to know how monsters have allocated their dice? That could be valuable tactical information, right there. Or do players have to choose their dice allocations without knowing what their enemies are planning? Will monster entries tell the DM how each monster will typically allocate its dice?

You mentioned someone can lose by running out of dice. Also, you mentioned hit point damage. So, your dice pool and your hit points represent two separate resource pools? And either one running out is a lose condition? You said something about the dice pool being tied to health, but the only connection you mentioned seems to be the ability to spend dice to avoid losing health.

Will there exist any ability to regain dice? Such as by spending a turn doing nothing else? Will there exist any exceptional monsters that regenerate dice every turn automatically?

Edit: If you do have multiple different die types, it might be better to have low rolls be more desirable than high rolls. If you make high rolls more desirable, someone who spends a d20, but only rolls a 3 will feel like they wasted the die, since 3 is about what they’d expect from spending a mere d6. If low rolls are better, then smaller die sizes are better. That results in a situation where the using the good dice gives you less uncertainty, because of the narrower range. If the good dice are instead the ones with a larger range, and thus higher uncertainty, choosing to spend those good dice becomes a major gamble.

[clash]

Excellent questions and great reply. Ill see if I can address them.


What happens if you allot dice to defense but don’t spend them that turn? Such as if no one attacks you? Are the dice simply lost with no benefit? Can a player choose to allot fewer total dice than their maximum to last more rounds?


Unused dice would carry forward to the next round.



The defensive ability you mentioned seems to expend dice but doesn’t seem to require rolling them. If the dice are just acting as points to spend to fuel an ability, and there isn’t an effect tied to what numbers show on them when rolled, why not just call them points? You have a pool of points you can allocate to offense and defense each round. You can take various actions each round by spending points. Sometimes you roll a number of dice equal to the point cost of the ability, but other times you don’t.

Are all the dice in the pool the same? Or do you have different sizes of dice? If all the dice are interchangeable, that seems to further argue for just calling these pools of points. If someone can say, “Oh man, things are serious. I’m going to spend one of my d20’s,” that would help make it relevant that these are dice being spent, not points.


I had thought about using action points. The dice would provide an easy physical way to allocate to separate pools and track them was my thoughts and everyone has a dozen d6's at their disposal. I'm interested by the idea of having different dice sizes. That could make things interesting where you allocate them but would be more cumbersome to track.

I hadn't thought on the rolling vs not rolling too much but my idea there was that you would roll offensive abilities and defensive ones just worked. It should be more reliable to defend than to attack in this system.



When does dice allocation take place? Does each person take a turn each round, with dice allocation and any attacks made taking place then? Or is each turn divided into phases? With everybody taking turns allocating dice during the allocation phase, and everybody taking turns attacking during the attack phase?

Do players get to know how monsters have allocated their dice? That could be valuable tactical information, right there. Or do players have to choose their dice allocations without knowing what their enemies are planning? Will monster entries tell the DM how each monster will typically allocate its dice?


Everyone would allocate dice then everyone would take their turns after dice have all been allocated. I'm not sure on the order but I imagine everyone just allocating their dice at the same time to speed things up. Monster entries would likely tell the DM strategies for dice allocation and actions I would imagine.



You mentioned someone can lose by running out of dice. Also, you mentioned hit point damage. So, your dice pool and your hit points represent two separate resource pools? And either one running out is a lose condition? You said something about the dice pool being tied to health, but the only connection you mentioned seems to be the ability to spend dice to avoid losing health.


Damage numbers only exist to overcome defense. There would be a hit points pool. Normal creatures are taken down once a blow lands and exceptional ones might use a wound system instead but I would still expect no more than a few decisive blows. It gets much easier to land those blows once the creature runs out dice to use on defensive abilities.



Will there exist any ability to regain dice? Such as by spending a turn doing nothing else? Will there exist any exceptional monsters that regenerate dice every turn automatically?


The dice would regenerate anytime you have a minute to catch your breath so basically between combats.

Outside of that I could imagine a few exceptional monsters that regain them but I think it would be a very small number per turn or maybe a limited use ability to get more. I think something more common might be a base ability that can be used without consuming dice on a creature.



Edit: If you do have multiple different die types, it might be better to have low rolls be more desirable than high rolls. If you make high rolls more desirable, someone who spends a d20, but only rolls a 3 will feel like they wasted the die, since 3 is about what they’d expect from spending a mere d6. If low rolls are better, then smaller die sizes are better. That results in a situation where the using the good dice gives you less uncertainty, because of the narrower range. If the good dice are instead the ones with a larger range, and thus higher uncertainty, choosing to spend those good dice becomes a major gamble.

I actually like the idea of counting successes and failures on the dice as it makes so you don't have to add up a bunch of dice and is likely faster with larger pools. Then each defensive ability could block a certain number of successes. Still not sure about the multiple die sizes though.

[Maat Mons]

Is it generally going to be the case that offense dice are going to be spent during your turn, and defense dice are going to be spent during other peoples’ turns? If so, choosing how many dice to spend during your turn and how many to leave in reserve is effectively the same thing as deciding how to split your dice between offense and defense. Letting people chose to end their turns with dice unspent, so as to potentially be able to use them in response to an attack, seems much more streamlined than asking everyone to declare at the start of each round how many dice they’ll set aside to spend during their turn, and how many they’ll set aside to spend reactively on other peoples’ turns. It does have the side effect that no one has dice available for defense until they’ve already taken at least one turn this combat, but that could be seen as a good mechanic.

If enemies can see how many defense dice every player has, the obvious choice is to attack whoever has the fewest. For one thing, that will be the easiest person to kill. For another, that will be the person who allocated the most to offense, meaning they’re the most dangerous. So, the more dice you allocate to offense, the more you’re doing for your party. This is true in the sense that you’re doing more to kill the enemies. And it’s also true in the sense that you’re pulling enemy attention onto yourself. A tank, counterintuitively, needs to put all his dice into offense, in order to make himself an appealing target for enemies. Someone who puts all their dice in defense is doing nothing to help bring the encounter to a close, and is also ensuring that enemies will focus their attacks on the other player’s, so they’re not even acting as a warm body to soak up some of the damage. This makes allocating dice to defense a selfish action, that benefits the individual at the expense of the rest of the group.

If you allocate dice to offense, whether or not you get to use them is entirely within your control. You just choose to attack on your turn. If you allocate dice to defense, whether or not you get to use them is entirely within your enemy’s control. He just chooses to attack someone else instead of you. Since dice allocated to offense are guaranteed to be useful, but dice allocated to defense might easily go unused, this suggests dice allocated to defense need to somehow accomplish more than dice allocated to offense, so the greater effect when used can compensate for the lack of certainty that they will be used.

Even if enemies don’t get to know how many dice each player has allotted to defense, and thus can’t deliberately ensure whoever has a lot of defense dice doesn’t get attack, and they all get wasted, allocating dice to defense is still a gamble. Some uncertainty is inevitable in a game that involves dice. But choosing to make a gamble feels different than just being subject to the inherent randomness of the game. Some people focus more on their wins than their losses. These people will always enjoy gambling. Other people focus more on their losses than their wins. These people will hate this aspect of the system. Every turn provides a new chance of guessing wrong on how many dice to put aside for defense. Every wrong guess provides a new source of self-recrimination, which will build up over the course of each fight, and across all the fights in the campaign. The good guesses will be quickly forgotten, and the bad guesses will haunt them forever.

If player defenses need to be worn down, and refresh themselves each round, wouldn’t the logical thing for enemies to do be to all gang up on one player? That way, they can be pretty sure the combined strength of their attacks will overwhelm whatever amount of dice the player had set aside for defense. Really, the dumbest thing they could do would be to split their attacks against multiple players. That just means they’re likely to each individually fail to actually land any successful damage on anyone, since they have to contend with all the dice that anyone has allocated to defense. A player won’t like being singled out and ganged up on, but if you don’t do it, you’ll be artificially handicapping the monsters with bad and unrealistic strategies.

Will there be any abilities that allow you to give some of your dice to other players? A way to play a sort of support character?

[clash]

You bring up a lot of excellent points and good things for me to think about.


Is it generally going to be the case that offense dice are going to be spent during your turn, and defense dice are going to be spent during other peoples’ turns? If so, choosing how many dice to spend during your turn and how many to leave in reserve is effectively the same thing as deciding how to split your dice between offense and defense. Letting people chose to end their turns with dice unspent, so as to potentially be able to use them in response to an attack, seems much more streamlined than asking everyone to declare at the start of each round how many dice they’ll set aside to spend during their turn, and how many they’ll set aside to spend reactively on other peoples’ turns. It does have the side effect that no one has dice available for defense until they’ve already taken at least one turn this combat, but that could be seen as a good mechanic.


I think the system would include active defense dice as well. Things like healing, or creating a barrier with a spell, or the equivalent of the d&d dodge action would all be uses of the defense action on your turn. I think you would always want to be able to spend defense dice even before you've taken a turn or combat would be very short in a system with no hp, but I dont mind allocating some to offense and leaving the rest unspent. Or alternatively just spending dice on your turn, instead of allocating them. I did like the stegic element hmm. Something to think on.



If enemies can see how many defense dice every player has, the obvious choice is to attack whoever has the fewest. For one thing, that will be the easiest person to kill. For another, that will be the person who allocated the most to offense, meaning they’re the most dangerous. So, the more dice you allocate to offense, the more you’re doing for your party. This is true in the sense that you’re doing more to kill the enemies. And it’s also true in the sense that you’re pulling enemy attention onto yourself. A tank, counterintuitively, needs to put all his dice into offense, in order to make himself an appealing target for enemies. Someone who puts all their dice in defense is doing nothing to help bring the encounter to a close, and is also ensuring that enemies will focus their attacks on the other player’s, so they’re not even acting as a warm body to soak up some of the damage. This makes allocating dice to defense a selfish action, that benefits the individual at the expense of the rest of the group.


All of that is assuming you don't have tanking abilities which either a) protect your ally from an attack or b) force the enemy to attack you. Both of which I think would be a must of this game.




If you allocate dice to offense, whether or not you get to use them is entirely within your control. You just choose to attack on your turn. If you allocate dice to defense, whether or not you get to use them is entirely within your enemy’s control. He just chooses to attack someone else instead of you. Since dice allocated to offense are guaranteed to be useful, but dice allocated to defense might easily go unused, this suggests dice allocated to defense need to somehow accomplish more than dice allocated to offense, so the greater effect when used can compensate for the lack of certainty that they will be used.



This is a good point. I think defense dice generally speaking need to be more powerful than offense dice. To balance the scale here. It also will help with the defeat by attrition mechanic.




Even if enemies don’t get to know how many dice each player has allotted to defense, and thus can’t deliberately ensure whoever has a lot of defense dice doesn’t get attack, and they all get wasted, allocating dice to defense is still a gamble. Some uncertainty is inevitable in a game that involves dice. But choosing to make a gamble feels different than just being subject to the inherent randomness of the game. Some people focus more on their wins than their losses. These people will always enjoy gambling. Other people focus more on their losses than their wins. These people will hate this aspect of the system. Every turn provides a new chance of guessing wrong on how many dice to put aside for defense. Every wrong guess provides a new source of self-recrimination, which will build up over the course of each fight, and across all the fights in the campaign. The good guesses will be quickly forgotten, and the bad guesses will haunt them forever.



I think this comes back to actual tanking abilities that can to some degree contorl the behaivour of the enemies.




If player defenses need to be worn down, and refresh themselves each round, wouldn’t the logical thing for enemies to do be to all gang up on one player? That way, they can be pretty sure the combined strength of their attacks will overwhelm whatever amount of dice the player had set aside for defense. Really, the dumbest thing they could do would be to split their attacks against multiple players. That just means they’re likely to each individually fail to actually land any successful damage on anyone, since they have to contend with all the dice that anyone has allocated to defense. A player won’t like being singled out and ganged up on, but if you don’t do it, you’ll be artificially handicapping the monsters with bad and unrealistic strategies.



I mean the dice are a metagame concept that enemies cant see but that being said yes it logically makes more sense to attack the guy thats leaving himself wide open and killing all your men. Unless oyu try to attack him and his buddy steps in front with a tower shield. Also do you think it would be good to have defense abilities apply for the whole round instead of a single attack? This would make people less likely to gang up on those already displaying impressive defensive abilities and would make the dice more powerful which might balance them better.




Will there be any abilities that allow you to give some of your dice to other players? A way to play a sort of support character?

This is all in my head right now but I think so. I could see an offensive or defensive buff falling into their respective pools. Not necessarily giving your dice to them but giving them bonuses to their fighting.