"Bucket O Dice games" Topic

There are a fewo f them out there and my friends and I were teasing some ideas I had come with and they were really liking the idea of incresing the number of dice to roll to increase the probability of penetration.

We were using the situation of hits using probabilty dice then to penetrate required rolling a 1 on a d6. But modifiers were adding dice to roll instead of adding numbers to the die roll. My friends are D&D players so they thought this was great. But really aren't you only still getting about a 16% chance just but with more dice getting more chances to get it?

The Watch Your Six combat system uses six sided dice. Modifiers increase or decrease the numbers of dice thrown.

The math is complex. I have had lots of folks tell me how easy it is to compute the odds, then tell me "you can do this on a spread sheet", then shake their heads and walk away.

By increasing or decreasing the numbers of dice, in essence, you provide more chances to achieve a "hit" but retain the ability to "miss" no matter how many dice are thrown -- and the howls of anguish are loud and long when 24 dice are thrown and none of them show a "6".

Essentially you get your biggest jumps in probability of getting a desired result with the first few dice added. After that you get diminishing returns for each additional die cast.

mjc

We prefer d10. Most games use percent to hit mechanics that give a far greater to hit than happened in reakity. Most gamers would get tired of the misses and quit playing if actual to-hit chances relected reality.

For example, I watched a couple of Old West gun fight/bank robberies the other night that two guys stood less than 10 yards away from each other and they missed numerous times. One guy was hit in the arm. the other not at all. In a case in 1870, a gun fight between a posse and bandit relatives took place in a town near me in Alabama. The buildign at the end of town, they took refuge after they shot the sherrif had so many holes in it. That the building was torn down for being unsafe. Several people were wounded but ono one killed inside (until they were hung). These types of odds would frustrate gamers.

Bucket of dice with low chances to hit like a 0 is too high but as low as it gets. Modifications to the numebr of dice rolled is easier than modifying the to-hit number. So this system reflects that type of action.

"…you get your biggest jumps in probability of getting a desired result with the first few dice added. After that you get diminishing returns for each additional die cast."

The important thing that occurs, IMO, is that the odds of a "super-dee-duper" hit (or failure, if that's what you're rolling against) increase with more dice, so the advantage is not so much with "ho-hum" stuff but in increasing the odds of a "Wow!" occurance.

I was first introduced to the idea of bonus dice vs. arithmetic modifiers by the Over the Edge RPG by Atlas Games. Since then the concept has been a staple of all my homebrew RPGs and wargames. Although the chance of a 1 on a d6 is still 16.667% on each die rolled (independent events), the odds for the group of dice as a whole do increase with more dice rolled and thus your chances of hitting or penetration or whatever do increase. Quidveritas is correct, a spreadsheet helps confirm this. I prefer bonus/penalty dice because it keeps the range of possible results the same. If for example you set a 2 as the minimum for success on a d6 roll and then roll with a +1 modifier, the unit you are rolling for can never fail that action, and might also end up with a "7" which may be meaningless. If you add a d6 instead, there is an increased chance of success, but still some suspense as you could get snake-eyes and fail. A score of 6 would also still be your maximum result.

An interesting anecdotal evidence showed that the good guys that were firing were getting 75% penetrations at the optimal range. Given the circumstances that was working quite well.

It's more of a fluke that the percentage was that high but they all thought they were rolling HOT so I left it at that.

I have come across a d6 system where 6's are hits, but so are double 5's. I like this as it takes the edge off rolling huge numbers of dice and lucking out on just 6's. I'm now tempted to make treble 4's, quadruple 3's etc hits too!

and that system/game is…..

Multiple dice (depending on exactly how success is defined) usually has the effect of making more average results over time. Would you rather do d20 damage, or 2d10 (I realise 2d10 can't roll 1, so lets ignore 1's on the d20- reroll).

d20 gives 1 10% chance of 19 or 20, 2d10 gives 3%. BUT d20 gives 10% chance of 2-3 (reroll 1s), 2d10 again only 3%.

10-12 on 2d10 is 28%, rather than 15% on d20

It comes down to reliable vs spectacular

and that system/game is…..

Impetus….and Basic Impetus

RudyNelson:

Yep. Western casualty counts are fairly easy to determine. OK Corral: Thirty-six shoots were fired plus a double-barrelled shot-gun among eight men [seven really] standing less than thirty feet away from each other. There were six hits.

When you get into large numbers of men and armies, those bullet/body counts get a lot more problematical.

Bill

@RudyNelson: Those old robberies sound really interesting to watch, do you have a link for them?

And yeah wild west era revolvers were just terrible for accuracy. Kind of funny considering all the Clint Eastwood movies that portray otherwise.