Dice pool game design woes

[Sacrosanct]

Opposed rolls would probably be the best solution, with the additional benefit that a roll could still be considered successful even if it fails to generate any successes as long as it's larger than the opposing one. You can even treat such rolls as success with complications.

That's how I do it. And this discussion is one of the reasons I went that way

Yeah as a very very general rule of thumb rolling twice the number of dice than the target number gives you about a 50/50 chance. Very roughly. Dice pools are defintely one of the least intuitive mechanics when it comes to estimating your odds; I like them though as I enjoy adding and removing dice as modifiers, and throwing a handful of d6s is fun (fireball!) -- I've made quite a few dice pool games.

Dice pools are much harder to figure out the math and odds, but I think they are more fun at the table in actual play, as you attest. And faster. It's definitely a better system for people who struggle with remembering all modifiers, and when you're just comparing highest vs highest, it speeds up combat by a significant amount.

*Edit Here is the link to the work in progress version. This is not the whole rules, just what I plan on having in the SRD so it would eventually be public anyway. Go to page 22 for a description on how they work (I don't expect you or anyone to read the whole document unless you want to lol). Feel free to mine this for ideas.

 

[MatthewJHanson]

This sounds like a job for AnyDIce!

I think I made this function correctly: AnyDice

The above is for rolling two dice you can change the number of dice by changing "2d" right after "output". It assumes that there are three successful outcomes on a d6 (4-6) and one of those successful outcomes causes the die to explode (6).

I capped the number of explosions at 6, because it can't actually do infinite, and I figured 6 should be plenty.

 

[clearstream]

This sounds like a job for AnyDIce!

I think I made this function correctly: AnyDice

The above is for rolling two dice you can change the number of dice by changing "2d" right after "output". It assumes that there are three successful outcomes on a d6 (4-6) and one of those successful outcomes causes the die to explode (6).

I capped the number of explosions at 6, because it can't actually do infinite, and I figured 6 should be plenty.

6 is expressly enough, because that's the highest TN!

 

[Morrus]

This sounds like a job for AnyDIce!

I think I made this function correctly: AnyDice

The above is for rolling two dice you can change the number of dice by changing "2d" right after "output". It assumes that there are three successful outcomes on a d6 (4-6) and one of those successful outcomes causes the die to explode (6).

I capped the number of explosions at 6, because it can't actually do infinite, and I figured 6 should be plenty.

Oh, that's super helpful.

Is that for only one die can explode, or that any of them can?

I'm not sure I'm reading it right. If I'm reading it right, the table then looks like this:

TARGET NUMBER ->	1	2	3	4	5	6
1 die	50%	25%	13%	6%	3%	2%
2 dice	75%	50%	32%	19%	11%	6%
3 dice	88%	69%	50%	34%	23%	14%
4 dice	94%	81%	66%	50%	36%	25%
5 dice	97%	89%	77%	64%	50%	38%
6 dice	98%	94%	86%	75%	62%	50%

 

[MatthewJHanson]

Is that for only one die can explode, or that any of them can?

That's for any of them exploding.

 

[Blue]

To flip the question around - why is the task resolution assuming a single roll of the dice pool?

Just like in some RPGs it's not a single roll to drop a foe, but a cumulative effort, having tough targets require cumulative effort even to attempt is not a bad thing.

And then you an get into interesting aspects of multiple rolls. Perhaps each roll pushes completion time up a track, so minutes becomes 10s of minutes becomes hours, etc. Is there an inherent cost to a roll, like an exhaustion pip or something? Perhaps you can only continue if you get at least one success.

 

[Morrus]

Well that might have solved the problem! Thank you! I'll try this in the next playtest.

 

[Blue]

Prince Valiant has a rule that if all the dice are successes, an additional success.

This makes a too-small-by-one pool twice as likely to succeed at a task than an just-enough-to-succeed pool.

TN 2. 1 die = 50% chance, 2 dice = 25%
TN 3. 2 dice = 25%, 3 dice = 12.5%
...

Basically, you are replacing a 50% success die with a guarenteed 100% success.

In other words, it would often make mechanical sense to have a less skilled character try something to improve the chance of success, if you know the TN going in.

 

[Nutation]

It's a feature not a problem. There solved it for you.

If they want to succeed they need to lower the TN some how, like taking extra time, or getting help.

ICONS takes this approach. Sometimes the PCs are facing an opponent whose Coordination or other attribute is so high that victory is impossible. The PCs will have to try Combined Efforts or exploit a Quality (weakness) of the opponent. I've also seen this in systems where armor subtracts from damage. This comes up in superhero games, where a thug might have zero chance of shooting Superman with a gun. It could come up in other settings by designer intent.

 

[Morrus]

To flip the question around - why is the task resolution assuming a single roll of the dice pool?

It's a fairly fast-paced starship skirmish game which might have lots of ships on the map. Speed is a design goal.