Star Wars d6 -- wild die?

[The_Universe]

The wild die was not rolled in addition to your skill, but as a part of it. If you had a skill or attribute at 1D+2, the one die would be the wild die. If you rolled a 6, the official mechanic was that you got to roll it again, and add that to the total, as well.

If you had a skill or attribute at 2D+2, one of the dice was "normal" and the other was the wild die. If you rolled a 6, roll again (you could, iirc, keep rolling 6's forever, adding each to the total if you happened to hit that extreme improbability.

However, if you rolled a 1 on the wild die, you removed that dice, and the highest die in the pool. So, if you have a skill at 5D, and you rolled a 2, 3, 4, 5, (and a 1 on the wild die) you'd remove the 1 and the 5, bringing your total "skill check" to 9.

Star Wars D6 was the first game I ever loved. *tear!*

 

[The_Universe]

That looks about right to me.

The very first time I played, the very first thing I rolled for was to crawl through a small stream that was running underneath a shock-fence. The ditch the stream made was the only place the fence could be bypassed without going over it (which couldn't be done without alerting all the bad guys in the compound).
I rolled a 1 on the wild die, the tip of my bounty hunter's jetpack touched the shock-fence and it zapped me badly enough (I was in water after all) that I went unconscious and the other PC, a quixotic jedi, had to revive me.

On the other hand rolling a 6 on the wild die led to many spectacular actions by my character; actions like taking out an AT-ST with one well thrown grenade.

Speaking of spectacular, a jawa PC in a game I was running once destroyed an AT-AT with a single shot with a sporting pistol (did something like 3D+2 damage). Since there was a die cap of 3 for going from character to walker scale, there was a nearly unimaginable amount of 6's rolled.

 

[kenobi65]

The Universe described the mechanics of the Wild Die exactly correctly. And yes, it was a feature of the d6 SWRPG from the Revised version (blue cover with Vader's mask) forward.

Although I, too, loved the d6 SW game, IMO, the Wild Die had way too much effect. Think about it -- it's affecting one out of three rolls, for good or ill. A bit *too* random for me.

 

[Bran Blackbyrd]

Slight correction:

The Wild Die was not an extra die. It was one of the dice pool you rolled.

Yeah, I wasn't paying much attention to the wording at that hour.
It was not an "extra die", you just designated one of your pool as the wild die.

It basically makes it so that no matter how low-level or bad you are at something, you always have a decent chance at heroic success. On the other hand, no matter how high-level or good you are at something, you have a pretty good chance at failing miserably.

 

[irdeggman]

Henry got it right on the wild die thing, at least that was the edition we used before switching to d20 Star Wars.

An example of what this wild die can lead to - my character, a Klatoonian rustabout made a check to see if he could "recognize" where a new player's PC had come from. The player had gone to great lengths to work out with the GM that his PC was from a place that no one had heard from. Well after (IIRC) 5 wild die rolls - the GM said that Krunch (my PC who always referred to himself in the 3rd person, and still does in his d20 reincarnation) had acually heard of the planet and knew something about their races. At a different time Krunch (the sometimes lucky) was making a juryrig attempt to keep the ship running after the engine blew out (again after many wild die rolls) he managed to patch it up with duct tape and chewing gum and become the ship's engineer, at least in teasing.

Krunch's greatest skills were his martial arts ones. "When stormtroopers dance with Krunch they call his name when their helmuts collapse." Dancing is how Krunch refers to his martial abilities, which comes in real handy when the party decides to take out some one sneakily "You know Krunch ole buddy maybe you should teach this bloke how to dance."

 

[Quasqueton]

Wonder why the game designers added the wild die mechanic after the first edition of the rules? What would be the benefit of adding *more* randomness to a game?

And is there something similar in the d20 version of the game?

Quasqueton

 

[The_Universe]

Wonder why the game designers added the wild die mechanic after the first edition of the rules? What would be the benefit of adding *more* randomness to a game?

And is there something similar in the d20 version of the game?

Quasqueton

Part of the problem seemed to be that the heroes of the Star Wars galaxy, as statted out in the game were drastically less powerful than their evil counterparts. Without the presence of a wild die, there was no way to "explain" how Luke defeats Vader at the end of RotJ, or how the emperor manages to "miss" both of them with his last blast of Force Lightning.

Secondarily, it was a useful mechanic in that it also served to "explain" some of the things the heroes failed at, but shouldn't have. Han Solo snapping a twig behind the scout trooper is just one example - he had to have rolled a mishap in order to explain that failure in the realm of his relatively high die-code.

At least that's how I always explained it to players.

 

[Henry]

Wonder why the game designers added the wild die mechanic after the first edition of the rules? What would be the benefit of adding *more* randomness to a game?

And is there something similar in the d20 version of the game?

Quasqueton

There were a couple of things changed, not necessarily for the better. For instance, damage was accorded by comparing the dice pool roll of your damage (e.g. Blaster 4D) to the victim's con (anywhere from 2D to 4D). In the original edition, it was based on multiple factors; if you rolled up to twice higher, wound, up to three times higher, serious wound, etc. (fuzzy on the categories, now).

In the newer editions, it was a simple difference. If you rolled 0 to 3 higher, it was a stun, 4-6 higher, a wound, etc. roll 18 higher than the person's con, and you killed them outright. BOY did you need those force and character points!

Force skills were elaborated, too. They were dirt simple, and a jedi could pull off darn near anything he could roll high enough for. Give him a lightsaber, and screw special training - he added his Control Force Dice directly to lightsaber damage. In later editions they included force powers (basically "tricks" like lightsaber combat that you had to roll to get running in an encounter, instead of it just working right away). This tradition carried over into d20 SW's Force skills like Battlemind.

Ship combats were broken into individual dogfights, and speed as a dice code too. Want to lose someone? roll a dice code versus their speed. In the second edition, it was strict units counted out, and lent itself to grid-combat.

The first game was definitely simpler and faster to run than the second, but the 2nd edition had some fun elements added.

 

[kenobi65]

Wonder why the game designers added the wild die mechanic after the first edition of the rules? What would be the benefit of adding *more* randomness to a game?

And is there something similar in the d20 version of the game?

As Henry notes, the Revised (and Revised and Expanded) rules were substantially more complicated than the first edition rules, beyond just the addition of the Wild Die.

No, there's nothing like the Wild Die in d20 SW.