Favored dice mechanic.

[Sanguinarious]

What dice mechanic do you like?

2/3d6, d20, d100, fixed number of dice, dice pools, multiple dice types like d4 for low level stats and higher dice for better ones, etc?

Just curious. Frankly I like d100 as in BPR and 150x, as my mind at any rate is wired to think in terms of percentages, like a 60% chance, 20%, etc. I just find it easier than working how my chance to succeed is if I have to roll 12 or less on 3d6 and I just don't like the d20 systems in general. (Armor reduces damage, not chances to hit.)

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Like for what purpose?

For most purposes you get more "realistic" results if you are rolling several d6s (or one of the other smaller dice) together, producing a bell-curve of results, which is the nature of most random results for most things in life.

However I find what the streaky results of, say, a d20 lack in "realism" (in general application) they often make up for in compelling gameplay. Extreme results are, after all, generally where incorporating randomness into the game actually pays off by making a difference. If I was looking for a reality simulation I'd avoid streaky single dice mechanics like the plague, but I'm looking for a game with memorable moments and high stakes rolls.

The d20 has become the iconic die of rpg gaming, like it or lump it. I personally am a fan. I rarely see the need for the enhanced granularity of a d100 (and would rather avoid the weird 2d10s system of achieving it), when a d20 does the same thing in equivalent increments of 5 (usually more than enough granularity), but if you want that granularity or you want to more easily think in percentages it obviously is what you choose. I also think the d20s kid brother, the d12, should see more use.

 

[Sanguinarious]

For what purpose? Routine skill use/task resolution.

I also favor systems that are not exclusive. Some games seem addicted to a single djce type, like gurps which acts like d6 is the only dice ever made. While the d100 systems I use do use the 2d10 for most tasks, they aren't dice bigots. They use all sorts of dice for damage from the tiny but deadly d4 to the d12, tho I'm not sure it uses d20s. (Have to check)

I kind of like d100 for crits. If you make a fail 100 and a success 01, it makes crits rare and memorable. With a d20 they're 5x more common. Also you can raise the chance of a crit fail by 1 on D100 and make it twice as common, tho still very rare. On d20 if you raise a crit fail chance by 1 on d20 you make it 10%, which is maybe too likely to make them special or memorable.

But each likes their own.

 

[RivetGeekWil]

I prefer dice pools to single dice. What dice they are doesn't matter—all d6, all d10, Fate dice, a mix of sizes. I just don't like flat distributions.

 

[ThrorII]

I just finished running a 6-month campaign of Wild West Cinema for my group. The core mechanic is d6-d6, resulting in a +5 to -5 range. Players only roll. Most rolls are against a 1-10 TN scale, or roll against an NPC's stat (player roll d6-d6, plus their defense skill rank, trying to beat the attackers Attack TN).

I found it liberating as a GM to not touch dice. The players loved rolling "to Hit" when attacking or "to dodge" when attacked.

 

[jdrakeh]

Xd6 with results of 5 and 6 being counted as hits vs a difficulty threshold (with a single hit being needed to do most things). Sometimes I like to throw in exploding dice on a roll of 6 for more 'pulp' games.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

What dice mechanic do you like?

2/3d6, d20, d100, fixed number of dice, dice pools, multiple dice types like d4 for low level stats and higher dice for better ones, etc?

Just curious. Frankly I like d100 as in BPR and 150x, as my mind at any rate is wired to think in terms of percentages, like a 60% chance, 20%, etc. I just find it easier than working how my chance to succeed is if I have to roll 12 or less on 3d6 and I just don't like the d20 systems in general. (Armor reduces damage, not chances to hit.)

Assuming we are talking general action resolution mechanic, I really like dice pools that sum up the results of 1 larger die and a variable number of smaller dice.

I really wish my first experiment with this had gone better, because I loved it, but players just couldn't get past certain issues with it. Specifically, it was percentile dice plus d10 rank dice. I liked designing for it because the probabilities are really clear on a basic level, and I gave complex actions a die penalty so that rather than more ranks doing nothing for you, they allow you to pull off more wild stuff and be nearly guaranteed success on basics, but the fact the system had no static modifiers of any kind in any context meant that it was always possible to fail.

Where it fell apart was that the probabilities didn't really allow for results over 100 to be a special result like a nat 20, but I could not get players to not expect it to be, and people who don't like math just have an easier time intuitively understanding the rough odds of success with smaller numbers, even though the math was actually very transparent to anyone who didn't dislike math. It also seems to take less cognitive load for some people to add 5+5+4 than to add 45+5+4.

When I switched to 1d12 plus d6 rank dice, everyone just super easily groks the entire system. No one expects a 12 on the d12 to be a "crit", no one gets stressed by basic action resolution, it just...runs.

I do wonder if the percentile version would run better using a success ladder like I am now, rather than the roll over TN I was using back then. It was fun to have a game where only the d10 was ever used for anything. Like the whole system was based on units of 5 or 10 or 100.

But people do have more d6s, and it's fun to give the d12 some love.

 

[Yora]

I like the Blades in the Dark system.

Roll a d6 for every point in the relevant attribute and each additional bonus that applies. The one dice with the highest number is the result of the roll.

It has all the nice aspects of a dice pool, but it doesn't require you to do any counting. You don't even have to make an addition or subtraction of modifiers to that result, because that was already done when determining the number of dice to roll.

 

[John Dallman]

3d6 roll low, as used in GURPS and Hero System. It gives adequate randomness without the swinginess of d20.

 

[overgeeked]

I like small dice pools. Two is best, but up to 4-6 dice tops. Same die types or mixed, doesn't matter. I generally prefer additive dice pools rather than counting successes vs a fixed target number. But I do like systems like PbtA. 2d6+mods I think is ideal. But d6 through d12 dice pools are neat too.