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Are Dice Pools Good, Actually?
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7907420" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>Most of what I'm playing these days involves dice pools of some sort or other.</p><p></p><p>Classic Traveller is mostly rolls of 2d6. Sometimes 3d6. The addition is easy. The smaller spread of results on 2d6 makes ties more common, and I like ties (when used with Let it Ride, to force the conflict onto a different field of endeavour).</p><p></p><p>Prince Valiant officially (ie as per the book) uses coins, with heads as success and tails as failure. This is the same as rolling dice labelled 0 and 1 and adding, I guess, but in our group we mostly use standard d6s and count successes - most of use are "evens" but our most diehard Burning Wheel fan is 4+. There is nothing "weird" about it that I've noticed, nor has anyone in our group complained. Pool sizes range from 1 or 2 to 15+ when a strong knight is jousting in heavy armour on a mighty steed in defence of lover or honour..</p><p></p><p>Burning Wheel is pools of d6s, generally similar in size to Prince Valiant. Normally 4+ is required but under peculiar circumstances it can be 3+ or even 2+. I have a set of charts that lists the probabilities for a given size of pool against a given obstacle.</p><p></p><p>What I like about the Prince Valiant and Burning Wheel pools is that (1) ties are more common, and (2) there is always a chance of failure when the dice are rolled. (BW is explicitly "say 'yes' or roll the dice", and Prince Valian works on a similar ethos.) This isn't something that you get with target number systems.</p><p></p><p>The most baroque dice pool system our group plays is Marvel Heroic/Cortex+ Heroic - the dice can be of all different sizes from d4 to d12, and the default is to add 2 to get the result to determine success against a target number, and then a third die determines the effect but based purely on its size, not its result. I haven't tried to create any probability charts for this as the maths would be above my pay grade!</p><p></p><p>The only system I play where the pool is rolled and you just keep the best die is Cthulhu Dark. By default there are no target numbers, only degrees of effectiveness of outcome. But sometimes an opposed die is rolled that sets the target number for success.</p><p></p><p>I think there are challenges in a <em>roll and add vs target number</em> system similar to those in a single die system like D&D or RQ, namely, that if the system allows lots of modifiers then if the maths is not carefully worked out success or failure can become automatic. Classic Traveller avoids this problem (in my experience) by keeping modifiers small. Rolemaster avoids it by having a mixture of auto-fails and open-ended rolls - the latter making it a dice pool system where the number of dice is randomly determined. I don't think the issue was all that well throught through in AD&D design, and I gather it can be a problem in 3E D&D as well. In 4e D&D I only encountered it at one point in one build - the Sage of Ages epic destiny.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7907420, member: 42582"] Most of what I'm playing these days involves dice pools of some sort or other. Classic Traveller is mostly rolls of 2d6. Sometimes 3d6. The addition is easy. The smaller spread of results on 2d6 makes ties more common, and I like ties (when used with Let it Ride, to force the conflict onto a different field of endeavour). Prince Valiant officially (ie as per the book) uses coins, with heads as success and tails as failure. This is the same as rolling dice labelled 0 and 1 and adding, I guess, but in our group we mostly use standard d6s and count successes - most of use are "evens" but our most diehard Burning Wheel fan is 4+. There is nothing "weird" about it that I've noticed, nor has anyone in our group complained. Pool sizes range from 1 or 2 to 15+ when a strong knight is jousting in heavy armour on a mighty steed in defence of lover or honour.. Burning Wheel is pools of d6s, generally similar in size to Prince Valiant. Normally 4+ is required but under peculiar circumstances it can be 3+ or even 2+. I have a set of charts that lists the probabilities for a given size of pool against a given obstacle. What I like about the Prince Valiant and Burning Wheel pools is that (1) ties are more common, and (2) there is always a chance of failure when the dice are rolled. (BW is explicitly "say 'yes' or roll the dice", and Prince Valian works on a similar ethos.) This isn't something that you get with target number systems. The most baroque dice pool system our group plays is Marvel Heroic/Cortex+ Heroic - the dice can be of all different sizes from d4 to d12, and the default is to add 2 to get the result to determine success against a target number, and then a third die determines the effect but based purely on its size, not its result. I haven't tried to create any probability charts for this as the maths would be above my pay grade! The only system I play where the pool is rolled and you just keep the best die is Cthulhu Dark. By default there are no target numbers, only degrees of effectiveness of outcome. But sometimes an opposed die is rolled that sets the target number for success. I think there are challenges in a [I]roll and add vs target number[/I] system similar to those in a single die system like D&D or RQ, namely, that if the system allows lots of modifiers then if the maths is not carefully worked out success or failure can become automatic. Classic Traveller avoids this problem (in my experience) by keeping modifiers small. Rolemaster avoids it by having a mixture of auto-fails and open-ended rolls - the latter making it a dice pool system where the number of dice is randomly determined. I don't think the issue was all that well throught through in AD&D design, and I gather it can be a problem in 3E D&D as well. In 4e D&D I only encountered it at one point in one build - the Sage of Ages epic destiny. [/QUOTE]
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