What's your favourite basic dice rolling system? For checks in general, I mean
A single dice, two-three of the same minor die, a dice pool to signify stats?
Tell me about that basic system that you'd want to take with you and use it everywhere
>>44251457
I personally adore Die Pools but my players don't, which is a damn shame.
I live and die by the One Roll Engine. It's the fastest, most intuitive system I think I've ever come across.
Basically you roll a pool of d10s, usually made from Stat + Skill, and you look for a match, like 4,4 or 6,6,6. The number of dice in the matched set is called the Width, and the number on the dice is called Height, so 6,6,6 has a Width of 3 and a Height of 6, and is expressed s 3x6.
This tells you a whole lot. It tells how fast the action is (an action with greater Width is faster than one with lower Width), how good the performance is (based on Height). Most importantly for combat, it resolves initiative, damage and hit location all at once (Width tells you your speed and how much damage you did, Height gives you the location).
Once you play a few games with it, it becomes effortless to boil down any action or number of actions into a single roll. It's beautiful.
>>44252182
Hit location works in such a way that the head is not any harder to hit than the other body parts, but it's nearly impossible to defend from attacks targeted at the head. Doing things quick doesn't let you take more turns no matter how high your width is.
I've only played d20 and I like it just fine. I read about gurps' system though, and I thought it sounded pretty good. Can't convince my players to try it though.
d100 with 00 being 0
D6 Dicepools
>Varied results
>D6 are easy to come by
>Satisfying to roll as a player
>Easy to use as a DM
>Allow for incorporation of various factors by modifying both the dicepool and the number of required successes
>Chances of Fuckups and Great Moments are still there, but not too huge on either side
>Results you get aren't all over the place
I fucking adore them.
>>44252182
What's the minimum size for a die pool?
It'd have to be at least 10 right, to ensure a match every time? Or would a no match be the same as a natural 1 in many houserules?
>>44251457
Earthdawn's step system. Linear-distribution unpredictability for novices, more consistent bell-curves for the pros. You get more consistent as you get better at something, which I find to be fucking cool.
>>44253257
Also
>cubes are the perfect shape
I don't know what to call it but I liked how Ironclaw 2e handled it. As you got better in a skill or stat it'd go to d4 -> d6 -> d8 -> d10 -> d12 -> d12 + d4, etc.
>>44253381
No match is a failed action, and any match at all is a success, if only barely. No minimum, but less than 2 is a failure because
>getting a match on one die
>>44253381
There's no minimum. A match is the basic unit of success. Think of "getting a match" as being the same as the Base DC in target-number games. You get a match, you succeed. You don't get a match, you fail. You have less than two dice, you literally can't succeed. You have more than ten dice, you literally can't fail (the system doesn't usually let you do this outside of fringe cases).
>>44252351
Dunno if all the ORE games do this, but multiple actions are very much a thing in Reign. In Reign, the way it works is this:
>Declare you're doing two things (or three, or four, or whatever)
>Drop a die from your pool for every extra thing you want to do
>Hope to get that many sets
If I want to hit a guy twice and I have 8 dice in my combat skill, then I take one away and roll seven. If I get two matches (or one big match I can split up), I get to use both of them.
I'm okay with a lot of systems. I think my least favorite is something like d20, where there's only ever a single straight, uniform randomness that can have scale problems where the random aspect is eventually overwhelmed. But I still play plenty of d20.
Dicepools are interesting but I don't like how hard they are to analyze.
I really prefer it when the range is fairly wide. For instance, I don't like it when a +1 is a fairly significant bonus, because I like room to fine-tune difficulty more.
But I do understand that people really don't like a billion fiddly modifiers.
I also like things that naturally emulate a bellcurve. The 3d6 of GURPS is nice, but I wish it had a larger range.
I've tried a couple times to talk my group into trying out a computer based system that uses 100d2, but they were always extremely leery, and now too many have moved away or gotten weird houred jobs and we haven't played in months.
The system I'm working on is D20 for skills, attacks, etc, but Damage is done with D6 dice pools (normally 4, 5 or 6 is a success).
I thought it would be shit but it's surprisingly great. You get the joy of the nat 20 on occasion and once in a while you surprise yourself on damage or survive a massive hit, plus rolling a fuckton of d6 because your entire party is boosting you feels great.
Early Shadowrun's D6-pool with a variable target has most of the math benefits of D6-pool (it's less intuitive) but with much more flexibility allowed to the game system.
>>44253257
Star Wars D6 needs more love. Yeah, FFG is a hella fun system, but people forget a system just as fun also exists.
>>44251457
>>44252797
The new deta green / eclipse phase, D100 doubles are criticals back jack system works wonderfully in my humble opinion.
>>44253622
I always call that die size progression.
I always liked dice upgrades system for skills and attributes, upgrading dice feels good.
Gurps 3d6 roll under
It's nice. They based it on a good understanding of probability and bell curves. Allows for very useful +/-1 bonuses, but also mitigates bonus bloat with diminishing returns.
>>44251457
I don't have much of a preference, but I don't like the d% because it feels to scientific and absolute.
I like dice pools from a pure mechanical standpoint, but they don't have enough granularity in the low power spectrum of characters, so they don't work well with the atmosphere I want.
>>44252351
You've singled out probably the biggest problem combat wise with ORE; fortunately the system is flexible enough that you can introduce your own fixes to correct that without screwing with the math too badly
either 2d6, or savage worlds' dice progression.
Why savage worlds? because you don't need to add shit which is great for when you're making loads of attacks.
Autofire shouldve been a die downgrade instead of a -2.
Sadly it doesn't matter because they already fucked up the system with Bennies and loads of other crap that it didn't need. Also exploding dice, which were necessary but I still hate that shit. Oh well...
>>44253381
What other people said, you can never roll more than 10d for an action.
You can still have a dice pool that technically has more than 10d, but that means you can use your extra dice to offset penalties. For instance if you have a total of 11d for a ranged attack, that 11th dice can be used to offset a -1d penalty for attacking outside of range.
>>44254812
I don't play savage worlds, but I feel with you. Bennies are awful.
>>44254812
Why were exploding dice necessary?
>>44251457
I've been brainstorming a DBZ-style dice-pool hybrid system for a little bit, and this seems like a not-shit place to put it.
>Standard-issue separate stats and skills dealy
>Skills are hard capped at a minimum of 0, and a maximum of 5.
>Stats can theoretically go between positive and negative infinities, but are almost always between -1 and +10.
To roll a check:
>Roll a number of d10s (marked 0-9) equal to your skill.
>Arrange the dice in whatever order you want, usually highest to lowest.
>Add a number of 0s to the end equal to your stat.
So if you have 1 in a skill and 2 in a stat, you could roll 0 (a critfail), 1 00, 2 00, 3 00, 4 00, 5 00, 6 00, 7 00, 8 00, or 9 00.
10% chance of a 'critfail' (read: automatic failure), blocky even spread. This is someone with superhuman abilities, but a sub-par technique, essentially running on gut instinct and beginner's luck. Think early Dragon Ball Krillin playing Dance Dance Revolution.
2 in a skill and 1 in a stat lets you roll 00 0, 10 0, 20 0, 21 0, etc. all the way to 99 0.
1% chance of critfail, and a bell curve weighted towards the higher end. This represents a peak human reasonably skilled at something, like a professional statistician doing economics or something.
3 in a skill and 0 in a stat gives you 000, 100, 200, 210, ... 999, with a 0.1% chance of critfailing.
This is an average human who refined their technique to professional levels. Their bell curve is heavily weighted towards higher numbers.
4 in a skill and -1 in a stat puts you at a range of 000.0, 100.0, 200.0, 210.0, ... 999.9.
This is a sub-standard skilled person who trained so hard they achieved amazing skill, like an elderly kung-fu grandmaster. They have a .01% chance of critfail, and almost always get higher numbers in their rolls.
>Contd.
>>44255144
5 in a skill and -2 in a stat gives you a range of 000.00, 100.00, 200.00, 210.00, ... 999.99.
This is a functionally crippled character with legendary skills, like Odysseus put into the body of a 4-year-old child. The inconsequential .001% crit-fail rate and bell curve plastered to the higher end makes failure essentially not an option for this character's power levels.
0 skill is a nonability, like a rock's ability for fighting. No matter how strong it is, it won't punch youuntil it gets a good enough teacher, at least. The stats can go infinitely low, in case you wanted to roll a campaign about wuxia molecules, or infinitely high, for universe wrestling tournaments. Skills can theoretically be raised beyond 5, but the math gets very fuzzy and strange after that.
Given that a character with high skill and low stats is objectively better than one with high stats and low skills, skills are obviously more expensive, tighter-focused, and/or much harder to raise after chargen.
Buffs and debuffs can range from adding to or subtracting from one or more of a character's dice rolls, forcing them to put higher dice at the end of a roll, adding/subtracting/multiplying/dividing a static or percent modifier, very rarely giving them bonus or penalty (the latter more common than the former) dice, or whatever you happen to come up with.
With this system, you could set a static DC for destroying the Earth at 1,000,000 or so and have it be proportionately harder or easier depending on what power level your campaign's running at.
I haven't gotten any minutia worked out, so if any anon wants to steal this (with at least nominal credit, of course), feel free.
>>44255129
Practically no would ever get a raise with out them.
>>44255144
I can't run the math but I think your system can work... I have to say though it seems like you just wanted a way to have its of characters could roll over 9000.
>Impaired
1d6
>Incompetent
2d6
>Average
3d6
>Trained
4d6
>Skilled
5d6
>Expert
6d6
It's cut down on our dice oceans in Shadowrun considerably.
>>44251457
I use a 2d6 opposed roll system
>>44254585
Is there any more fantasy games like? I want to get my players off the teat of d20. The farthest they've gone is 4e.
Texas holdem dice.
I've only ever used a couple homebrew systems (IRC-based SCP Foundation RP stuff), but the one that I've seen hit the best balance between usability and simplicity is FATE dice, either 4df or (preferably, depending on your opinion of crits) 6df. Not as easy to use on tabletop I expect, but it's fine with a dicebot.
>>44259050
Savage Worlds.
>>44251457
Paranoia.
Have the players roll dice, spend points to change the result of those rolls, argue with each other, then make up whatever result you feel like.
Rules just slow down the path to you death and the death of communists
>>44252182
I looked at that dice system and I felt extremely unsure. The probabilities seemed really wonky to me, like you either have extremely little chance for success or extremely high chance for success.
The game I was looking at (Wild Talents) also had some mechanics like Hard Dice and Wiggle Dice. Hard Dice are always ten and Wiggle Dice can be whatever number you want.
It felt like an interesting idea but I'm just not sure how they would actually function in a game.
>>44253257
If there's anything that's right about Shadowrun's mechanics, it's that it uses D6 dicepools.
>>44251457
>>44253622
Seconding Ironclaw. Not just the die size progression specifically, but the actual resolution method. It breaks up each roll modifier or factor into separate dice, and you compare pools of these. It's really really nice for narrative flow and detailed combat without wasting much time, as it's really easy to identify what was significant in a resolution. There's less math involved than most other systems, they got rid of all the roll modifiers they could in the second edition, so it's pretty lightweight.
Player has some level of "advantage" due to various factors.
Rolls [1+advantage]d10, and uses whichever die was highest. 0 counts as 10. If multiple 0's are rolled, it's a crit. More 0's = stronger crit.
Negative advantage works basically the same, except the lowest number is picked and 0 is regarded as 0 instead of 10.
It's a WIP rolling system for my shitty homebrew. I wanted to mainly use d10s, because d10s are my favorite. I also wanted to have crits, but I really hate how randumb crits can get in d20-based systems, with a 5% chance for each type of crit, meaning any given roll has a 10% chance to wreck immersion.
With this system, critical success only occurs if you're at some kind of advantage, and critical failure only happens if you're at a disadvantage. And it's still very rare compared to crits in most systems. The rarer a crit is, in my opinion, the more powerful it can be without breaking the game.
>>44254593
>>44259050
1d4chan calls it 'dice stepping'
What do you do after d12? 2d6 or +2
>>44251457
>Rolling 7 or 9 dice with a decent range (like d20s), and taking the middle roll.
Game mechanics can step it up so you take a die other than the middle one.
Essentially, playing with bellcurves. Also, degrees of success.
>>44259819
Ironclaw does d12,d4. Later you'd have d12,d12,d4. It capped at d12,d12,d12 I think. Not d12+d4 mind you, since the dice are counted separate. Each additional die creates the possibility of a greater degree of success, since the margin of success is the number of succeeding dice. So you'd increase the odds of succeeding at all up to having 1d12 then pumping more XP into it for d12,dX and onwards would increase the chance of a greater margin of success with diminishing returns on increasing odds of success.
Conveniently dice stepping has diminishing returns on odds of success with larger dice, as well as more dice.
>>44259421
The system also had some neat stuff with more dice vs larger dice. The higher skilled die (larger) had a flat chance of auto-succeeding against smaller dice no matter how many smaller dice, but the lower skill (smaller dice) with more factors in his favor (more dice) had an increasingly better chance of success outside of the higher skill's auto-success. It left a nice clean margin for the higher skill that's important in different character builds (many vs large dice).
>>44259327
The probabilities are extreme, but that's not so much a bug in the system as its way of expressing competence. Characters are good at the things they know how to do and bad at the things they don't. Active defenses and multiple actions keep things from getting too silly at the high end of the spectrum.
Like, let's take a guy who has 7 dice in his pool. He can attack, and have an over 90% chance of success. Or he can attack twice, and lose a die from his set to drop him into the 80s. If another character hits him before he can go, he loses a die from one of his sets (if any), which foils his attack. In addition, if the opponent is parrying he doesn't just have to get a match, but he has to beat their parry as well.
Characters who are built to be competent are extremely competent at the basic task. If that guy was just hitting a target dummy, he'd have an extremely high chance to do so. But the system scales with him--the more skillful his opponents are, the more capable they are of turning his successes into failures.
The result is characters who both to put points into something are generally very good at it unless someone wants to stop them from doing it, at which point the difficulty of the task matters less than the competence of the person trying to stop them.
The game is pretty boring for the most part but I like the rolling d6 keep & system.
If you're good at something you roll a lot of dice and keep the 3 highest.
If you're bad at something you do the same thing only now you keep the 3 lowest.
Functional, Elegant and simple.
I've got an idea I wanted to shoot off.
Players have stats rated 1 to 5. 1 been terrible and 5 being god like.
Please roll a single D6 and then multiply their stat rating to get the result. Giving a possible range of numbers from 1 to 30.
Flat modifies are added after that number for penalties and bonuses as skills, weapons and gear.
Serviceable?
>>44262740
It's super swingy.
Superman can still get a 5.
But that depends on what you want to do.
Rolling d6 for each point is a lot more stable, and at 5 will get around 17.5. But that's if you want consistency. If you want equal chance of failure and success, go ahead.
>>44260945
The result, which I really like, is that large dice pools reflect not only a better chance at success, but a wider ability to do things. This is especially evident in Wild Talents, where there are a very wide array of attack modifications you can make at the cost of dice. You can take a regular attack at 10d, lose 1d for to increase Speed, another 1d to make it Deadly or Careful (making all the damage you do lethal or non-lethal), and another 1d to increase Damage and still be rolling 7d, which has a very high chance of success.
>>44253257
how many games use d6 dice pools? other than shadowrun and i guess star wars from what i hear
My group is having our first session of a horror, mystery, low power magic, 1950's lovecraftesque game tonight.
We're using a D20 system, but we replaced the d20 with 1d10+1d12.
We like the curve, and slightly adjusted numbers for the new "center."
We're hoping it runs well.
