What's your favorite dice system?

[DeviousQuail]

D20s are my go to because I play D&D more than anything else. The math is clean, if a bit boring at times, and it's become iconic enough that most anyone I game with has experience with them.

2d6 is my favorite bell curve dice system. It creates a better feel for being skilled at something without removing the chance for particularly high or low rolls. The biggest downside I've found with them is that some games can make the roll nearly meaningless with potential modifiers.

I haven't played too many dice pool games but I've recently been delving into Coriolis' d6 with a success on a 6 system and I really don't like it. The game and it's trappings are amazing but the pile of dice gets real big, real fast, and I don't like games that stack up tons of different modifiers from different places whether its more dice or greater +/-.

The best dice pool I've played is probably Betrayal at House on the Hill. It uses six sided dice with 0, 1, and 2 as the outcomes (1/3 chance of each similar to Fate Dice). You roll your pool of dice and get a bell curve of outcomes. The average roll is always equal to the number of dice you're rolling so it's easy to gauge against the difficulty thresholds, your max roll is double, and your min roll is 0 so every roll has a chance to fail. The biggest downside is I haven't played using this in a TTRPG, just the board game. For all I know it sucks outside the confines of Betrayal.

 

[Campbell]

For me it's hands down Forged In Dark dice pool (used in Blades in the Dark). Wildsea also uses a variation of it. Static dice pool of d6s, only the highest counts. 1-3 results in a complication and you make no progress. 4-5 is success with complication. 6 is a success with no complications. Multiple 6s are a crit.

What I love about is that dice pools are fairly small, there is always a chance for success and failure, that the game is weighted towards success with complications which helps to propel the game forward, and that there is no need to mess around with target numbers.

 

[Blue]

The best dice pool I've played is probably Betrayal at House on the Hill. It uses six sided dice with 0, 1, and 2 as the outcomes (1/3 chance of each similar to Fate Dice). You roll your pool of dice and get a bell curve of outcomes. The average roll is always equal to the number of dice you're rolling so it's easy to gauge against the difficulty thresholds, your max roll is double, and your min roll is 0 so every roll has a chance to fail. The biggest downside is I haven't played using this in a TTRPG, just the board game. For all I know it sucks outside the confines of Betrayal.

This does work in RPGs. FATE uses Fate dice (often seen as dF on automatic rollers) which are six sided dice with two each of -1, blank, and +1. It's always four dice, and it averages around your skill so it's very easy to estimate what you will get. FATE also has Aspects you can engage after you roll for additional bonuses or a reroll if they apply and you spend the meta-currency.

 

[DeviousQuail]

This does work in RPGs. FATE uses Fate dice (often seen as dF on automatic rollers) which are six sided dice with two each of -1, blank, and +1. It's always four dice, and it averages around your skill so it's very easy to estimate what you will get. FATE also has Aspects you can engage after you roll for additional bonuses or a reroll if they apply and you spend the meta-currency.

I know it doesn't matter mathematically but I like the idea of 0, 1, 2 more than -1, 0, 1. Perhaps I should try a FATE game so that I can know instead of just guess.

 

[Emirikol]

We really, really reallyenjoyed Warhammer Fantasy Rolepllay 3e. The stance dice were very popular. The entire system with Special actions made it fantastic.
Didn't care for the SW dice change. Felt too sterile and petty.

 

[Tonguez]

D20 is a brilliant % system, simple and elegant

d6 pools, count successes

 

[DrunkonDuty]

I like systems with a bell curve. 2d6 and 3d6 work well, simple and fast to do the calculations.

I also like a good dice pool. I've enjoyed WEG Star Wars; Shadowrun, and L5R. I do enjoy rolling big fists full of dice.

I don't like D20 as I think the dice roll completely outweighs whatever bonuses a character may have.

 

[Aldarc]

I know it doesn't matter mathematically but I like the idea of 0, 1, 2 more than -1, 0, 1. Perhaps I should try a FATE game so that I can know instead of just guess.

It's pretty intuitive in play, since the gut reaction I've seen players do after rolling is to remove dice that cancel each other out: i.e., -1 and +1.

 

[Arawn76]

Best dice system? D100, easy to grok with any player it’s fairly instinctual to grasp pass and fail, difficulty is an easy division of a whole number Skill 70%, Hard roll (2/3rds rounded up) 47%

Best implementation? Mythras, clever and innovative use of that D100 to give us great social, exploratory and combat systems.

Also some of the best setting books I’ve ever seen.

 

[dragoner]

I like polyhedrals, fancy math rocks, and now one can buy them everywhere so not as much a gimmick as they were in the beginning. With the discussion of statistics, as someone who evaluates numbers for a living, what one really wants is that every time the players touch the dice, they should have about two thirds to a third of a chance of success. This way they feel they have an acceptable amount of risk vs reward.