"Lets talk about dice mechanics" Topic

When you want to influence the outcomes of a dice roll, we tend to just go for the +/- 1 but there's a lot more tools in the tool box.

So let's talk about them, what you've used, what you like and don't like and how they can be combined in interesting ways.

Options I can think of include:

Modifying the roll (adding or subtracting from the score rolled).

Rerolling failed (or successful) dice.

Exploding dice (dice that score a particular number are counted and then rolled again).

Capping dice rolls (any score over/below a certain number is counted as rolling the cap)

Changing the number of dice we roll by adding to or subtracting from the dice pool.

Opposed rolls where two rolls are compared to each other.

And probably a bunch more I am forgetting right this second.

So let's talk about them.

I found the Shockforce 'roll x & keep y' to be interesting, at least. Could represent accuracy and power, sort of, with just one roll.

Dice pools. You have 15 dice. Roll as many as you want to this turn, but you'll have less next turn… either lose them as you use them or lose them based on the results.

I don't favor any more be mechanic over another, but I do prefer that a given game system should use only one or two. An additional plus would be to minimize the number of modifiers or multipliers to less than 6. This minimizes the amount of chart referencing and speeds up the game.

my favorite dice mechanic is to assign the possible range of outcomes percentages of success or failure and roll once with a pair of d10, maybe twice per combat if the granularity gets too fine. Buckets of dice, confirmations, rerolls, tweaks to the number, just add wristage and waste time. Do the math before play in the combat charts and play on.

Sometimes rerolls are "reroll 1s" instead of "reroll misses". Tones it down a bit.

andy

One mechanic you forgot is the "die progression" mechanic where modifiers move you up or down the number of sides on the die. d8 + 2 = d12. I have thought about this some, and even went to the trouble of getting d4 through d24 with each type of die a different color, but I haven't designed with it yet. Just something I keep mulling in the back of my head. This has the drawback of trying to find the RIGHT die after modifying, but it has the interesting benefit that someone rolling a d4 has some chance of defeating someone with a d24 if using opposed die rolls. There is an intuitive appeal of this to me in some situations, such as hand-to-hand combat. Using multiple dice gives a different probability distribution than a single die. I like the uniform distribution in this case.

Recently, in Combat Patrol, I replaced the dice altogether with a card draw mechanic (see the rules' Web page for an instructional video). This mechanic replaces figuring out modifiers, rolling a die, and looking up results.

While this is somewhat of a religious argument, I agree with Mick the Metalsmith that a single die roll is preferable to me over a bucket of dice. First the more dice you roll the more average the result. Second, it just seems like a time waster. Figure out the odds and build it into the CRT.

Let the flaming being.

Buck Surdu

I am a fan of different things for different aspects. My rules use:
- number of dice for unit strength and support
- modifier for morale and formation
- rerolls for influence of generals.

Dice pools. You have 15 dice. Roll as many as you want to this turn, but you'll have less next turn… either lose them as you use them or lose them based on the results.

That's not a dice pool.

A dice pool is when you have a number of dice, and roll them looking for matches. It's a bit like Liar's Poker. Three of anything beats two of anything. But within the same number of matches, the higher numbers win, thus a pair of fives beats a pair of threes.

It's typically used to show relative quality. Good-quality units have more dice to roll. Heroes add special colored dice to the mix, or perhaps a hero or wizard can be a "wild" die, matching up to any existing matches and thus making them greater (there has to be at least one match already, for the hero to add to.)

Different unit abilities could allow you to do things like counting multiple pairs. Under normal circumstances if you have two pairs, for instance, you'd have to pick one. But your unit might be able to use two, three, or any number of matches.

I find funky dice mechanics to be an exercise in futility. I like them to be straight forward and simple…easy to understand by anyone. Favorite mechanic is Hit-Save. I also like single roll to hit.

I've always understood "dice pool" to be "roll multiple dice, count successes" similar to the Shadow Run or White Wolf roleplaying games.

What you describe is used on the Godlike and Reign roleplaying games where the number of the matched set describes the hit location and the number of dice in the set describes the damage inflicted.

Have fun with this one:

Each figure is worth a certain Fire Rating. Add up the total Fire Rating in the squad and roll a D10. Roll *under your fire rating to hit. Number rolled is number of hits scored.

For light cover roll 2d10, heavy cover 3d10. Firer moved? Add another d10.

If ANY die misses, all shots miss. Take the *lowest* hit rolled (if any) and that is the number of hits scored.

This game then has the target roll upon next activation for effect. Effect ranges from nothing (Carry On!) to one loss, half losses, to rout (pick up the entire unit).

Stryderg, I like that dice pool (or whatever it should be called) idea. Available dice could be lost through casualties or morale or general decline in effectiveness of units or armies.

I have some averaging dice but I don't what I originally got them for.

I'm generally abandoning convoluted dice mechanics for other means most of which require the players to do more

There's nothing convoluted or funky about a dice pool. If you can understand 5-card poker, then you already know the mechanic. Although there aren't as many possible results as in poker, nonetheless you can have more or fewer dice in your hand. But it's the same idea.

I think for a lot of guys, "convoluted" means: "I haven't done it before, therefore I'm not interested."

I often wonder how anybody ever learned anything new.

I called it "dice pool" because you start with a "pool of dice to choose from". Made sense to me.

It's part of the mechanics used by some of the Two Hour Wargames and known in those rules as "bonus dice". I think it would work well when trying to model attrition and putting risk into the decision making process.

For example: you start with 15 d6. Your first task requires a total of 6 when adding the dice rolled. You lose any die that rolls a 1. How many d6 do you roll? More means you will definitely reach the target number but with more chances of decreasing the number of dice in your "pool" for later.

Evens & Odds results (a slight advantage to Evens with 2D6. ;-)
Such as: Each player rolls a D6, scores of both added, attacker for the turn wins with even results, defender with odd results. Multiple figure combats resolved same way, rolling a D6 for each figure involved.

I've always liked the idea of using 2d6 to generate a primitive bell curve.

I do not like "cute & complicated" dice mechanics whose only purpose is to show off how "clever" and "different" the game designer is. This detracts from the game for me.

you lost me at 15 d6.

I generally think 2 or 3 dice make a great bell curve that you can modify +1 or +2 as needed. I do like random events though and I want the roll to be actually representing something concrete like movement rate, how well you suppressed or pinned a unit with your hail of fire etc.

Look at the minis, measure the distance, check the weapons chart for that distance, modify if the troops are other than regular, and roll one die for hit or miss and one for hit location. Use the same mechanic for air, ground, or sea combat, vehicles, troops, and animals. Quick, simple, easy, time / motion study shows it's fast, and easy to learn.

I don't want to do addition, or subtraction in my head, I don't want to read several dice, I don't want to try to mix and match things. Real generals move the troops and perhaps select targets, not spend inordinate amounts of time fooling with the charts and dice.

I use a custom d20 with 5% increments on each side, 5% to 100% for hit or miss. I use a d6 for hit location, 1 is the top of the mini and 6 is the bottom.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
Bunker Talk blog

As an aside, I'd agree that "dice pool" is just the concept of rolling a variable amount of dice, where things add to the pool and things take away from it. How you interpret the results of it are another thing entirely (against a fixed number, match like values, etc.)

I'd once had a similar idea as Styderg, were the pool of dice was more or less fixed and ran out as the game progressed. The dice abstractly represented energy, fuel or other resources that were expended to move and fight (even for defense), and players could control/gamble how much to commit.

Beyond the fixed amount of dice at the start of the game, certain events might grant a small increase during the game from capturing objectives (fuel depot, communications tower, weapons cache, etc.) to salvaging supplies from casualties, etc.

Originally, the idea was that any action required spending some dice from the pool and some things might grant free/bonuses dice on top (situational, troop quality, equipment, leaders, etc.), or even remove dice. Once the dice were used they were gone. I do like the idea of 1s affecting whether the dice are lost… though possibly flipping it around and saying any 6s allow the die to be retained?

In general the idea was to allow the dice mechanic to bring a bit of abstract resource/risk management to the game beyond just the loss of troops, etc.

@ daler240D

Zematus explained it better than I did. Thanks.

I recently started a blog where I discussed some dice mechanics:

wargaming-mechanics.blogspot.be

Sword and Spear uses a set of dice for attacker and defender (the number varies depending on troop type and situation) and these are then matched against each other (like Risk) resulting in hits or morale checks (potential hits).
Ideally for me, a single roll of one or more dice should be able to generate the result. It's often difficult to manage that, though.

I use:
Addition/subtraction when I am trying to change the probability of a result.
Same with re-roll a miss.
Adding or subtracting dice changes the amount of damage that can be done.
That works when you have to roll a certain number to do a quantified amount of damage.
If you were using the number rolled to define the amount of damage you do. then modifying the die roll makes for a different result.
Oh and I go for the buckets of dice approach. I think gamers like to roll lots of dice and then crow or moan about what they rolled.

I use firing dice that let me roll 'normal' D6, no more than seven at a time (and that's rare, usually two to four), and when I look at the results I know exactly what happened in terms of casualties, morale, and how many units were effected, nothing else required. ;)

V/R,
Jack

@OP

Although it's good to know what different mechanisms exist, I think mechanisms is approaching the problem backwards.

You should figure out the average number of hits (or mean value to hit) that you want for the rules and the distribution of the probabilities. For instance 1 d6 has the same mean as 7d6 hitting on 6 but the distribution of outcomes is very different

When you have your mean and distribution figured out, you want the simplest mechanism that will achieve that

John

jwebster +1

I don't know how many times I have found that some convoluted dice mechanism still only results in a 16.6% chance of rolling a hit instead of 16.6666666.

JustJack +1

I use 2D10 for a 1-100 result on a binomial table. So with one die roll of two dice, I can get statistically correct results for casualty rate from 1-99% for any number of targets. I need a chart of course but it's still much quicker than multiple dice, multiple rolls, and multiple results. However, after playing WH 40K with my kid I understand the fascination players have with multiple dice and mechanics. I sure many would find my way boring.

Wolfhag

Sometimes the dice mechanics are what make the game fun. :)

There's another variation on the Dice Pool which shows up in more board-gamey settings: Mixing dice with different ranges of success. This is similar to the "dice progression" where you might adjust the "size" of the dice rolled d4->d6->d8->d10, but in board games often comes with d6 dice with custom sides and different colors.

By default you would roll some number of the "basic" dice with the "standard" range of success. And then optionally you may be allowed/required to add in (or replace) different dice with better/worse ranges.

The Elder Sign game uses Green/Yellow/Red dice where the basic Green dice has 1-3 success results, 2 special results and one special/bad result. The Yellow (better) drops the "bad" result to give 1-4 successes, and the Red (best) adds a "wild" result.

Super Dungeon Explore uses Blue/Red/Green dice with increasing numbers of "stars", but each has a different mix of "special" (hearts and potions) sides… so you can trade raw success for chances at bonuses.

Dino Dice uses Green/Yellow/Red, but the dice get "worse". Where Yellow and Red are more "dangerous" with increased odds of failure.