thoughts on house rule

[aneirin]

Hello, been thinking of starting a game and doing some test rolling and noticed once you get to level 4, especially with 2 specialities, you are getting over 21 rather easily. I have been thinking of making it so every level after level 3 doesn't get you a die 6, but a die 4, and specialty dice are applied to die 4's before 6's. If you have a penalty die though, you remove a d4 before rolling and apply bonus die to your 6's if there are no 4's left.

Some test rolling is coming up with.much better numbers this way, what do the rest of you think about this? I can see full plate causing a problem due to the amounts of degrees of success needed. But I will just tell my players to play smart. Use teach to cost them dice, reckless attacks, knocking them over or getting someone to help or grab them.

[DaimosofRedstone]

Hello, been thinking of starting a game and doing some test rolling and noticed once you get to level 4, especially with 2 specialities, you are getting over 21 rather easily. I have been thinking of making it so every level after level 3 doesn't get you a die 6, but a die 4, and specialty dice are applied to die 4's before 6's. If you have a penalty die though, you remove a d4 before rolling and apply bonus die to your 6's if there are no 4's left.

Some test rolling is coming up with.much better numbers this way, what do the rest of you think about this? I can see full plate causing a problem due to the amounts of degrees of success needed. But I will just tell my players to play smart. Use teach to cost them dice, reckless attacks, knocking them over or getting someone to help or grab them.

Your rolls are off.
Statistically speaking a w6 is on average 3,5 ((1+2+3+4+5+6)/6=3,5), which makes 4 dice 14 on average, less with modifiers, so, on average, it is not 'rather easy' to get over 21 with 4 die, that is 6 die (6*3,5=21), but bonus die are not added on but exchange for other, lower die.
So i see no need for a houserule.

[Cataphract]

I'll agree with Daimos.

Aside from the fact that putting an entire new die in a game relying on d6s is a needless complication, I believe you make the mistake of adding bonus dice instead of just dropping the lowest.

At Rank 4, you have an average of 14. Even with 4B in a specialty, you're looking at 18- generally, a good approximation is that each bonus die adds 1 to the average result.

At Rank 5, that's 17,5 and with up to 5B, 21. Don't forget that those with rank 5 are some of the best in the land (Jaime Lannister's skill at arms, for example).

At Rank 6, of course, you have an average of 21, which would be expected considering you're a master (Syrio Forel's skill at arms).

[aneirin]

It is not so much the high rolls that bother me, it is the chance of failure, how often someone rolls under 12. It doesn't seem to happen a lot and success seems guaranteed in many cases, unless an unskilled person tries it. But a party will always send a skilled person for the test. The only way to bring failure into it is to orchestrated it so people take checks.they aren't trained in. Or to day to every test, oh, you need two degrees for it to do what you want rather than succeed. After all, the stories are all about people failing! I want more failure

And a bonus die isn't really a plus one, with 4 test die and 2 bonus, you have a very high probability of a one and a six, leading to a maximum plus 5 and a very high chance of a plus 1. With.there being an equal chance of getting a higher number and taking into account that you may not roll a one, bonus die are closer to giving plus 3 or 2.

4 test die average 14, with two bonus die you are looking at 19 to 20 which gets very close to heroic. People are looking at doing heroic actions.close to half the time, or possible half with modifiers. (though may need a statatician to work out bonus die bonuses as I am sure more bonus.for would provide diminishing returns, each die providing less of a bonus.

[DaimosofRedstone]

Why 'try to bring failure' to the game?
Sooner or later the average catches up with everybody and if you have a group you need to force to make mistakes (presumably because you try to generate interest and story twists thorugh failures) than you might have of a case of 'no common creative purpose' which is the scourge of every gaming group.

[Paedrig]

Also i must say even with 4 dices you still have enough chances to miss. We had some more or less embarassing events concerning to this...
And quietly frustrating for the matter because i could not rescue some persons of interests - twice (although i had 4 dices).

To making the whole thing more complicated...
And i must say i hated the idea of D&D to use x-types of different dices.
Therefore i go with the sceptics...

[aneirin]

Looks like the rule wouldn't work! I guess I should just have to play the game and see in practice myself how often people are doing heroic actions and how often people are failing.

As to making the system more complicated...you may be right. Then again the latest game we have been playing is MERP, at low levels. (roll a dice 100 and add all modifiers to it, i.e. +5 or 10 up to 25 for stat bonuses, +5 for each rank in the relevant skill, plus or minus depending on the difficulty, add class bonuses (+2 or 3 per level), if you get over 75 you are only partially succesful, to be 'succesful' you need to roll over 110 and for an absolute success 125. Easy tasks are plus 30, and so that means with no skills (at -25) you only have a one in 20 chance of getting a sucss (need to roll 96, so that means you can roll another d100 and add it and if you roll 0-4, you roll again and subtract! -30's give critical failur)

So yeah, we don't like things easy, failure is what happens more often than not for our group unless our characters are really trained in it (skill modifiers invested can give +25 at 1st level) giving us little less than 50% of doing easy tasks under pressure.

And I love using different dices! I really enjoyed the Serenity RPG system. Average skill is a D4, and every skill increase gives you and additional bonus (1 gives you a d6 instead of a d4, two gives you a d8) and you also roll your stat dice (average is d4, better is d6) and so on.

[Cataphract]

It is not so much the high rolls that bother me, it is the chance of failure, how often someone rolls under 12. It doesn't seem to happen a lot and success seems guaranteed in many cases, unless an unskilled person tries it. But a party will always send a skilled person for the test. The only way to bring failure into it is to orchestrated it so people take checks.they aren't trained in. Or to day to every test, oh, you need two degrees for it to do what you want rather than succeed. After all, the stories are all about people failing! I want more failure

And a bonus die isn't really a plus one, with 4 test die and 2 bonus, you have a very high probability of a one and a six, leading to a maximum plus 5 and a very high chance of a plus 1. With.there being an equal chance of getting a higher number and taking into account that you may not roll a one, bonus die are closer to giving plus 3 or 2.

4 test die average 14, with two bonus die you are looking at 19 to 20 which gets very close to heroic. People are looking at doing heroic actions.close to half the time, or possible half with modifiers. (though may need a statatician to work out bonus die bonuses as I am sure more bonus.for would provide diminishing returns, each die providing less of a bonus.

Actually, the best chance you have for your players to fail is to challenge them at their weak points. I love doing that, but that's also because of my bias towards well-rounded characters.

Don't forget that not every difficulty is 12. Don't be shy with modifiers or simply raising the difficulty when it's called for. Sure, an athletic PC with Athletics 4 might have little trouble jumping from one roof to another in clear conditions.

Try doing that at night, with a half-moon, raining, and while he's being peppered with arrows.

That's what stories are made of.

BTW, MERP sounds totally needlessly complicated and counterintuitive Again, kinda biased, but with plenty of proof. If you like different dice types, try Savage Worlds- it's a lot like the CORTEX system.