mach1.9pants
Hero
The thing I really love about WHFRP3E is the way the result tells you so much about why you failed or succeeded, it gives a basis to hang the RP around.
Dice Pools Or Variable Dice?
firesnakearies
Explorer
Indeed. I love the different kinds of dice and how they represent different narrative factors in the result of an action. It really gives you a lot of information that you can use to describe events, if you want to.
I think I've had a lot more experience with variable dice than with pools - only played WoD a few times.
I do like both and they do significantly different things.
Cyberpunk in its raw form has D10s and D6s with the occasional percentile roll on 2 D10s.
My heavily modified house/alternative rule mishmash uses every die type there is and more - mostly to handle varying weapons/combat damage.
For a start, I adopted Rogue's modified calibre damage table which uses variable dice to emulate the damage range of various weapons. Then I applied it to FNFF2013's drops in damage over increasing ranges - which further necessitated changing the dice (drop from 2d6 to 2d4 over distance etc).
When reworking the bludgeon damage, I took the opportunity to use different dice for different attacks - hands, feet, elbows, knees, forehead, short lever, long lever etc - to approximate the different levels of damage each could do.
I also replaced the Hit Location roll with percentile dice to facilitate emulating the percentages given in real data taken from firearms assaults (someone else approximated the same data using D12s but I figured "hey, we can just do straight percentile here") and replaced the task resolution with my own D20 system based on levels of proficiency.
So in my games you can expect to roll anything from a D2 to a D100 depending on what you're doing:
Do you hit him? Roll D20 against your attack skill and apply modifiers vs his D20 and modifiers and defense skill to find out.
Hit him? Cool. Roll percentile to see where. Leg? Dandy. You're using a 9mm at medium range so roll...
Converting all that to a dice pool would mean simplifying a lot - resulting in ridiculously high values for some things - or rolling an inordinately high number of low level dice (or tossing lots of coins, given the lowest die is a d2.) I like keeping division of results to a minimum so I'd take 1D2 over 1D10/5 any day...
I do like the flexibility of variable dice.
I do like both and they do significantly different things.
Cyberpunk in its raw form has D10s and D6s with the occasional percentile roll on 2 D10s.
My heavily modified house/alternative rule mishmash uses every die type there is and more - mostly to handle varying weapons/combat damage.
For a start, I adopted Rogue's modified calibre damage table which uses variable dice to emulate the damage range of various weapons. Then I applied it to FNFF2013's drops in damage over increasing ranges - which further necessitated changing the dice (drop from 2d6 to 2d4 over distance etc).
When reworking the bludgeon damage, I took the opportunity to use different dice for different attacks - hands, feet, elbows, knees, forehead, short lever, long lever etc - to approximate the different levels of damage each could do.
I also replaced the Hit Location roll with percentile dice to facilitate emulating the percentages given in real data taken from firearms assaults (someone else approximated the same data using D12s but I figured "hey, we can just do straight percentile here") and replaced the task resolution with my own D20 system based on levels of proficiency.
So in my games you can expect to roll anything from a D2 to a D100 depending on what you're doing:
Do you hit him? Roll D20 against your attack skill and apply modifiers vs his D20 and modifiers and defense skill to find out.
Hit him? Cool. Roll percentile to see where. Leg? Dandy. You're using a 9mm at medium range so roll...
Converting all that to a dice pool would mean simplifying a lot - resulting in ridiculously high values for some things - or rolling an inordinately high number of low level dice (or tossing lots of coins, given the lowest die is a d2.) I like keeping division of results to a minimum so I'd take 1D2 over 1D10/5 any day...
I do like the flexibility of variable dice.
ValhallaGH
Explorer
Which system I prefer depends upon what I want out of it.
For high-heroics I generally prefer Variable Die systems (d20 is the most common, especially Mutants & Masterminds 2, but others are used as well). The potentially infinite scaling and hard minimums (and maximums) better suit my idea of high-power gameplay.
For gritty, scrappy, or brutal feeling campaigns I much prefer Dice Pools (especially the Original Deadlands system). Some of them are badly designed (nWoD & Witchhunter: need an 8+ per success, if you're rolling dice then you've already failed) but many are just fine (L5R is a blast, and the original Deadlands is easily one of my top 2 favorite games of all time). While characters can be powerful, and tough, there's always a chance that they go from Awesome to Dead in one hit.
So, which I want to use depends upon the tone and style of the game I want to play. Which I like more is a matter of my mood when I answer the question.
For high-heroics I generally prefer Variable Die systems (d20 is the most common, especially Mutants & Masterminds 2, but others are used as well). The potentially infinite scaling and hard minimums (and maximums) better suit my idea of high-power gameplay.
For gritty, scrappy, or brutal feeling campaigns I much prefer Dice Pools (especially the Original Deadlands system). Some of them are badly designed (nWoD & Witchhunter: need an 8+ per success, if you're rolling dice then you've already failed) but many are just fine (L5R is a blast, and the original Deadlands is easily one of my top 2 favorite games of all time). While characters can be powerful, and tough, there's always a chance that they go from Awesome to Dead in one hit.
So, which I want to use depends upon the tone and style of the game I want to play. Which I like more is a matter of my mood when I answer the question.
Dice4Hire
First Post
In interestes of coming clean I ahve never played al ong game with a dice pool, though I would like to. I did Deadlands, but to me, it is mroe of a hybrid than a pure dice pool as it has different kinds of dice.
But I like the idea. The problem I ahve with D&D ( in any incarnation) is the swinginess of low levels, and the guaranteed success of higher levels, where in many cases (like tumble in 3.X, where the dice are efffectively meaningless.
I would like to see a game that did mroe dice pools, as it is easy to roll lots of dice, and success is easier to see.
I'll ahve to give one a try. Anyone know a good free or cheap game using dice pools? Preferably fantasy?
This brings up the fact that there are a couple of different kinds of "dice pools"
Summing: you roll the dice and add them up to yield the number you're generating. Old d6 Star Wars used this, if I recall correctly.
Number of Successes: Every die you roll is trying to hit a target number, and the number of dice that hit the number determines how well you succeed. World of Darkness games use this style of pool.
Height of Success: Every die you roll is trying to hit a target number, and how high the best one rolls determines how well you succeed. Deadlands uses this style.
In my experience, in sum and NoS mechanics, playing with the number of dice in the pool is a common modifier. HoS mechanics do this less - in Deadlands you typically only change the number of dice you roll by spending chips (like action points) or by increasing skills between sessions.
Now, you can hybridize among these - the superhero game "Godlike" uses a mix of the latter two styles on a roll.
Saeviomagy
Adventurer
The one amazing bit of shadowrun 2nd ed was the use of the combat pool.
Basically you got a bunch of dice that you could use either in attack or defense, but once you used them in a round, they were gone. And by "use in defense" that basically meant "the only way to not get shot is to spend some of them".
And earthdawn wasn't great because of it's mechanics: it was great because of how it explained all the standard fantasy tropes. It would be pretty trivial to transplant all of the concepts of earthdawn into any level-based game like D&D.
Basically you got a bunch of dice that you could use either in attack or defense, but once you used them in a round, they were gone. And by "use in defense" that basically meant "the only way to not get shot is to spend some of them".
And earthdawn wasn't great because of it's mechanics: it was great because of how it explained all the standard fantasy tropes. It would be pretty trivial to transplant all of the concepts of earthdawn into any level-based game like D&D.
